Ft.+Lauderdale


 * Travel Tips for Ft. Lauderdale, FL:**
 * Ft. Lauderdale Wikitravel Website:** []
 * West Palm Beach Wikitravel Website**: []
 * Miami Beach Wikitravel Website**: []
 * Miami Wikitravel Website**: []
 * Everglades National Park Wikitravel Website**: []
 * Florida Keys Wikitravel Website**: []
 * Florida Keys Wikitravel Website**: []

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We headed up to Palm Beach from Ft. Lauderdale. It's only an hour drive. Frontier used to fly to Palm Beach; that's when we first visited this area. This is a great place for people-watching. You have retirees, their preppy progeny, and sunglassed and sarong wearing glamazons hanging around hotel pools. It's a great place for armchair anthropologists and cameras! Palm Beach (Visitor Website: [] ) is home to the world's largest croquet complex. It's all leather armchairs and scotch on the rocks within the National Croquet Center (Website: [] ), across the bridge from Palm Beach proper in West Palm, where you can take a free 90 minute lesson every Saturday at 10:00 AM. Just call in advance to save a spot or two (561-478-2300). If a game doesn't get you in a retro mood, try strolling down Worth Avenue (Websites: [] and [] ), which is known as the Rodeo Drive of Florida. Worth Avenue is a 1920's era shopping street where trust-fund millionaires spend lots of money on useless items like ostrich-leather desks. We think Palm Beach's greatest tourist attractions are the mega-mansions where the rich hangout during the spring. You can rent a bike at the Palm Beach Bicycle Trail Shop (Website: [] ) and ride along Lake Avenue, where the mansions are lined up along the Lake Worth Lagoon. You'll get a better view by taking the Palm Beach Water Taxi (Website: []), which takes you down the shoreline of the salty inlet that seperates the island of Palm beach from West Palm beach and the rest of Florida. The tour leaves you with lessons in ritzy real estate such as one home with six bedrooms and twenty-six bathrooms. Or that the property tax on some homes is about $500,000 per year. If the rich are not your thing, head over to Peanut Island (Website: [] ), where you can swim, shell, or tour the bunker that John F. Kennedy would have hidden out if the Bay of Pigs had escalated in 1961 (Websites: [] and [] ). As for food, there's a huge variety of places to suit any taste. For breakfast try John G's (Website: [] ), a wood paneled diner full of Palm Beach regulars. For something original, try Buccan for lunch or dinner (Website: [] ). I suggest the mushroom and Gruyere pizza. Next door to Buccan is Imoto (Website: [] ), which is owned by the same chef. Imoto serves sushi, as well as small plates like Peking Duck tacos. For late night drinks I recommend two places: Cucina Del' Arte (Website: [] ), which is also a fine Italian Restaurant. For the older crowd, head to the Breakers' Top of the Point (Website: [] and [] ) for martinis and scotch. Late night or afternoon dessert can be acquired at Sprinkles (Website: [] ). People line up for the triple-chocolate ice cream. Lastly, I always mention a brew pub. Give Brewzzi a try (Website: [] ) in West Palm Beach. Enjoy!

From Fort Lauderdale we headed south to the Keys. Our first stop on the way to Key West was actually a fruit stand in Homestead (Website: [] ) called Robert Is Here (Website: [] ). The real reason for the stop is the keylime milk shakes, but we also enjoyed visiting the tortoises, iguanas, goats and exotic birds. Robert Is Here is about 10 minutes off the U.S. 1 route to the Keys at 34815 Country Club Road. (Just follow the sign for EvergladesNational Park.) While the key lime milkshakes are the classic way to start a trip to the keys, the coconut, strawberry and pina colada are equally wonderful. The fruit stand is a good place to sample exotic tropical treats, from the scary looking Monstera Deliciosa (looks like a pale green banana with lizard-like scales) to lychees, persimmon, and kumquat. Out back there is a large pen with a variety of animals. The stars are the huge rock-like tortoises with legs as sturdy as tree trunks. The tortoises share a cage with a few goats and on our visit, we watched a goat play king of the mountain on a tortoise's back. He stayed there, shakily keeping his balance as the tortoise lumbered on. We figure to the goats, this is surfing. Visiting the animals, which include caged iquanas and parrots, is free, as are peeks at the Model A Ford and 1913 Detroiter. Our second stop was Islamorada, Florida. The name //Islamorada//, meaning "purple island", came from early Spanish explorers in the area. Its pronunciation has been Anglicized to //aisle-a-more-AH-dah//. We stopped to spend a day and to eat, but if you want to stay, here's a visitors' website: []. We ate at the Marker 88 Restaurant (Website: [] ). This beach-side restaurant offers views of dolphins frolicking in the ocean, along with a proposal-worthy sunset. It has a view that you won't forget. This place is not stuffy. You can wear jeans and flip-flops and fit right in. Try the shrimp with capers and tomatoes. For some fun, try feeding the tarpon at Robbie's, mile marker 77.5 on the bayside, Islamorada, is a major Keys bargain. You pay $1 to go out on the dock and $2 for a bucket of fish. What you see are dozens of massive silvery tarpon fish, some 6 feet long. If you've fed koi at various parks, you can imagine the feeding frenzy when the fish lunging for the food are as tall as you are. One can easily spend a half hour here, and for young children and adults alike, this may be their favorite Keys memory. Robbie's began attracting tarpon, the story goes, when the folks there nursed an injured tarpon back to health. Soon it returned for handouts, and began bringing friends along. Robbie's (Website: [] ) is also a good place to rent sea kayaks for my favorite Keys outing, kayaking to Indian Key State Park (Websites: [] and [] ). In addition to the appeal of the historic rubble of an abandoned settlement that hit its heyday in the 1830s, the island is a good place to snorkel and see colorful reef fish up close. Heading south, we drove to Big Pine Key (Website: [] ) where we stayed at Deer Run (Website: [] ), a nice guest house on Big Pine Key operated by Jen and Harry that serves delicious Vegan food. You'll also discover that a dozen or more Key Deer (Info on Key Deer: [] ) hang out every morning and evening. This four room bed and breakfast is located right on a rocky beach with free use of kayaks, bikes and ahot tub. In the same area is another other bed and breakfast spot that we were told about where the deer are equally visible there: The Barnacle (Website: [] ) has a good reputation. The dog-sized Key deer have lost all fear of man. Feeding members of this endangered species is a crime, but it is apparently a common one. The easiest way to get a close-up look at these deer was to rustle a potato-chip bag. The deer trotted over and stared up entreatingly with their big moist eyes and their long eyelashes. We saw more than a dozen at time: two bucks, many does, and a tiny, tiny yearling. If you don't stay at a spot in Big Pine close to the deer, which is about 30 miles from Key West, we were told it is easy to spot the Key Deer at dusk in a few places: Along Long Beach Drive and on No Name Key (access this adjoining island off Key Deer Boulevard). Once we got to Key West (Website: []), we decided to try the Catamaran Champagne Sunset Sail and, on another day, the Pub Crawl (Website for both: [] ). Of course you have to visit the Ernest Hemmingway House (Website: [] ) and the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Museum (Website: [] ). As for a place to stay, we went through Hotwire and stayed at the Banana Bay Resort and Marina Hotel for $179 per night. It's not the RitzCarlton, but it was solid for a two-night stay. Duval Street is the main social life hangout. There's plenty of places to eat and drink (Websites: [] and [] ). Duval Street rocks in the evening with the numerous bars, most famous of which is Sloppy Joes (Website: [] ), however we can also recommend Flying Monkeys (Review Website: [] ), and Hogsbreath Saloon (Website: [] ). Enjoy your trip to the Keys!

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