Wednesday, December 29, 2021- Disembarkation Fort Lauderdale

Wednesday, December 29, 2021; Disembarkation Fort Lauderdale

We had breakfast together in the Concerto Dining room where we discussed the day’s plans.  It turns out that the Zhang’s family flights go out in the evening, so they  needed advice on how to manage having a whole day before their flights went out.  I had suggested they book disembarkation tours which would take store their luggage and take them on tours around southern Florida, but those tours were all closed out the night before.  Ben called Enterprise, and asked if they had a 15 seat van we could rent instead of the minivan, but they said they had no vehicles that weren’t reserved long ago.  Tom was able to get a hold of a compact SUV at Fox Rentals out of the airport, so he could get his family to our hotel to stash their luggage, and then we could tour around Fort Lauderdale together.  So Tom and Ben took an Uber to the car rental agencies and picked up everyone and took them to the hotel where we stored all the luggage.

We drove to the Las Olas shopping district and river walk with perfect weather for a walk.  It was a very pleasant and interesting walk.  We even got to see quite a few iguanas sunning themselves.  

Ciara discovered a very colorful and interesting Cuban restaurant 925 Nuevos Cubanos where we had some amazing sandwiches, which ended up also being dinner because they were so large we could only eat half for lunch.  

We then drove down the Fort Lauderdale beach front and then stopped at Dania Beach where we dipped out feet in the Atlantic.  

The Zhangs were able to gather up their luggage and make their flights without problems, which was a real relief because over the weekend thousands of flights we canceled due to Covid infections causing staffing shortages throughout the airline industry.

Since we’ll be exploring the Everglades and Florida Keys, and we have found this hotel to be poorly situated, we’ll move to a hotel in Homestead.  

We made a run to Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor in Fort Lauderdale for dessert and found it to be a rather unique institution with quite a line out front.  The ice cream proved worth the wait.

We watched “Don’t Look Up” on Netflix together.  It was both funny and ironically sad because it was perhaps a little too close to the realities of Trumpism, Covid Pandemic denialism, and global warming denialism.