Spring Break: Fort Lauderdale, 2011!

Who says you have to be in school to enjoy Spring Break?!?  Granted, last time I was in Fort Lauderdale, I was in school and it was spring break.  The Ohio State Sailing Club drove down here, rented 5 boats, grabbed a bunch of bear and sailed around the Bahamas for a week.  This trip is a bit more mellow than that one was, but Fort Lauderdale is Fort Lauderdale.  Pink flamingos, blue hairs, and HAPPY HOUR!!  Gotta love pool side happy hour.  Happy Hour is one thing we in Alaska don't get to enjoy, strick alcohol rules. But, none of that malarkey here!

And, if you are new to this blog and are wondering what Happy Hour in Fort Lauderdale has to do with commercial fishing in Alaska, I'm here to tell ya.  Absolutely nothing!  But, a gal has to get some vitamin D and red tomatoes before the fishing season starts up next month.

Speaking of fishing, we did a chartered sport boat, paid a few hundred dollars to go flop around in the ocean and get skunked.  We even paid extra for bait. $80 a pound for bait fish!  I'm so in the wrong fishery!  Our $37.95 worth got us jack, and I don't mean a jack tuna.  I mean jack as in we caught jack shit.  Well, we did have a shark on for a bit.  Then the skipper was watching the shark and not where he was going and almost ran us right into the navagational marker.  I mean, really, man, even Jimmy Buffet likes to keep it between the navigational beacons.

We are getting lots of water time here.  There is a system of canals and water taxis http://www.watertaxi.com/.  We took one yesterday and cruised around the city via multi-million dollar homes and yachts.  One yacht, built in Holland, costs a million dollar a meter to build.  That's what, $33,000 a foot?  Wowza.  The water taxis are a good way to get local dirt on all the rich people.  Its like reading People for Fort Lauderdale.  "This person fired all his employees then added on to his mansion, where property taxes alone costs $425,000 a year. " That's almost as much as I make a year (haha, just seeing if you are paying attention, it is April Fool's after all.)  But, the water taxis are a cool way to travel and go grab dinner, shopping or a beer.

view from our room

The canals are right outside our window and from the 18th floor we have a nice view. 

canal where we saw the manatee

Even saw a manatee yesterday, right from the balcony! Go go digital zoom!

manatee from 18th floor

ocean to the east!!

All in all, the 85 degrees temps, the thunderstorms, fresh fruits and veggies, red tomatoes, key lime pie, its all what the doctor ordered.  And not a monent too soon either.  Sure makes break up in AK a bit more bearable.  That's the haps for now, I gotta get down and catch the rest of happy hour.  I'll catch ya on the flip side, until then, eat fish!