Our transatlantic cruise aboard Caribbean Princess had come to an end in the Florida port of Fort Lauderdale, and as is the way of all these things it had come to an end at a stupidly early time in the morning for those of us who wanted to get back home but were a sizeable portion of the planet away. International flight schedules being what they are, we needed to kill a few hours ahead of heading back to Europe if we didn’t fancy sitting in the airport (and we didn’t), so just like a year earlier when we’d completed our Panama Canal cruise on Ruby Princess in Florida too, we booked a debark tour that would include a drop-off at the airport after some final tourist highlights. That previous year’s tour to see the Everglades via air boat had been an absolute shambles so we picked “the other option” of the Intracoastal Waterway by Boat tour this time around. Would it be better?
Yes. A lot better. Aren’t you happy that I’m not one of those people who asks a preposterously leading question and then says something inane like “Find out at the end”? I like to save people time. You probably don’t even need to look at any of the pictures now at all.
This final post in the travelogue series will simply contain some of the many photos that I took while we spent close to ninety minutes aboard a paddle boat on a sightseeing tour along the Fort Lauderdale waterways. This was a trip that allowed us to see a huge number of houses owned by obviously rather wealthy individuals, some of them famous, plus a great range of architectural styles. We’re fans of architecture, and we’re nosey and love a good look at fancy houses, and we like a good boat tour, so this ticked a lot of boxes for us. I won’t go into all the details of the houses, even though many had histories and famous owners (past or present), and yes, that’s because I wasn’t paying attention to the boat commentary, but the photos should serve as a good taster for what to expect on a tour like this if you’re either visiting Fort Lauderdale for pleasure, or starting or concluding a cruise in the port city.
For far more photos of this tour – and larger ones too, just the way you like them – you can check out my Fort Lauderdale Flickr album.
First up, the view from Caribbean Princess just before we disembarked.
Next, after a short ride by bus from the port – which was crazily busy as their computers had gone down so they needed to revert to manual processing – we arrived at where the Carrie B was docked on the New River.
People who like cruises like ducks for some unfathomable reason, and there was a big one opposite our paddle boat as we found a seat on the top deck.
And now for some of the sights on this tour.
Always nice to do some cruise ship-spotting when we’re out and about, whether we’re on a cruise at the time or not. On this particular day we could see Enchanted Princess, one of the Princess Cruises fleet of ships we’ve not sailed on yet. Of course, as soon as the opportunity turned up to snap a shot of what had been our home for the previous sixteen days we had to grab a picture of Caribbean Princess too.
We finished our tour where we started it. The embarkation and disembarkation point for our boat tour in Fort Lauderdale was next to the Historic Stranahan House Museum, the oldest surviving structure in the county in which Fort Lauderdale sits. Naturally, with this being America, terms like “the oldest” come with the caveat that us Europeans tend to snigger a little bit when we hear them. Stranahan House dates to 1901 which makes it about the same age as the very standard, terraced house we call home.
And a short ride to the airport later was followed by a flight home that finally marked the end of our lovely holiday.
