Fort Lauderdale Interlude

Cadillac Villas, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Noah and I have been staying in a third floor apartment in the Cadillac Villas off Las Olas Boulevard in Ft. Lauderdale during the 4-day gap between our Panama Canal cruise and our next cruise, a 7-day run to the Eastern Caribbean.  (Early this morning, January 25th, Noah woke me at about 6:15 a.m. because the street was filled with police cars and a helicopter was flying overhead.  When I looked out the 3rd floor window, what do you suppose I saw?  Roger Stone being arrested by the FBI right across the street!)  Here's our nearly-famous front door:

Front door of our "home-away-from-home"

With just a short time to visit, we've been trying to cram in as much of Florida as we can.  We started off by driving through the Keys to Key West along the Overseas Highway:

Overseas Highway, Florida Keys

Once in Key West, we spent a bit of time trying to locate the marker for the southernmost point in the continental United States.  After a bit of searching, we finally located it:

Southernmost Monument in Key West, Florida 

We also took a (very quick) tour of the Hemingway House.  We had to hurry, because our parking meter was running out, but I'm so glad we got to see it.  Hemingway actually lived in the home from 1931 to 1938.  It was a gift to him and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, from her father (he also bought them an apartment in Paris, a couple of cars, and gave Hemingway $25,000, so he could go on an African safari!)  Even though he divorced Pauline, Hemingway retained ownership of the home until his suicide in 1961 (despite the fact that he married two more times--not exactly sure how that worked).  Here I am on the front porch:

Me on Hemingway's front porch (maybe some of that writer's mojo will rub off!!)

Our docent told us that Hemingway was quite superstitious, and he thought that having cats (and lots of them) would bring him good luck.  When he moved away from this house, he apparently left some of his good luck charms behind, because there are currently 55 cats living on the property, all said to be descendants of Hemingway's cats.  Many of the cats are 6-toed, and we were told that all the cats carry the polydactyl gene, though not all actually have six toes.  Here's one I discovered sleeping on an upstairs windowsill.  S/he wanted zilch to do with me!

One of "Hemingway's" cats--don't know how many toes s/he has, s/he wouldn't show me!

After a grueling day driving to Key West and back, we decided to take it a little easier yesterday while still taking in a quintessentially Floridian sightseeing tour:  a trip through the Everglades in an airboat at Everglades Holiday Park!

Airboat at Holiday Everglades Park (not the one I was in, but a nearly-exact replica)

I was thoroughly thrilled by our visit.  The Everglades are amazing.  Did you know the Everglades is not a swamp, but a slow-moving river 60 miles wide and 100 miles long?  I didn't until I visited it!

The Everglades (spatterdock--native--growing in the water & cattails--invasive--growing behind)

We were fortunate enough to see three alligators.  Here is my best shot (they are not very easy to photograph!):

Alligator circling the boat (looking for a handout)

We also saw a number of birds including vultures, grackles, ibis, purple gallinules, and several very large herons.  I was only able to get a good photo of one of the herons:

Tri-colored Heron camouflaging himself in the Everglades

I wasn't able to get a good shot of any of the purple gallinules we saw, but I'm including a stock photo of one here, because they were so darn pretty!

Purple Gallinule (not my photo, sadly)

After the airboat ride, we went to view an alligator show with one of the Gator Boys (guess they had a long-running reality show on Animal Planet--who knew!)  Below is a photo of their toughest gator wrangler:

Buckskin Lily:  Gator Girl

During the show the skies opened up and it poured!!  We got thoroughly soaked, and though it wasn't technically "cold" we got rather chilled, so it was time to call it a day, head back to the pink palace and get dried off.

To finish off our short sojurn in south Florida, today we headed to Hollywood Beach where we rented bicycles and spent a few hours riding up and down the boardwalk.

Get on your bike and ride!!

After our ride, we spent some time strolling along the sand where I collected some interesting shell and coral specimens.  It was a beautiful day, and the ocean water was so pretty (very different from the darker gray-brown water of Southern California beaches).

Turquoise waters of Hollywood Beach, Florida

After that, we had lunch and headed back to the apartment (through some gnarly traffic) where Noah napped and Buckskin blogged.  In the morning it'll be time to pack up again, return the rental car and board our next ship, the Oosterdam for our next adventure.  Look for my next post on that cruise a week from Sunday, February 2, 2019.  Until then, make the most of every moment!

Talk soon!

Buckskin Lily