Searching for the Unknown: Fort Lauderdale & Miami

After Washington I headed to Fort Lauderdale in Florida - for no particular reason other than the flights here were much cheaper than Miami where I was heading to next. Anyway I am glad I stopped here for a couple of days as though not a great deal to do it was a nice place to just hang out and wander around. This is the hostel that I stayed at here.

The tiny gekko who was my room mate.....luckily I didn´t end up in the bed with bed bugs that attacked one of the other girls in the dorm!!

Think I saw more boats & yachts in Fort Lauderdale than I did cars - as you can see from the photo´s a lot of waterways and each house seemed to have it´s own boat parking!! Not much evidence or a recession especially when you saw the prices in the designer shops - though some of the local souveigner shops did seem to be struggling.

A definite Spanish influence on the buildings.

Chom Poo Moo nearly ends up lunch for this Great White Shark!

The shopping & cinema complex - just around the corner from here I again got asked if I would give an interview for TV - I decided against it since they wanted to know my thoughts on the US army bombing some village in Iraq - didn´t know anything about it and didn´t think it was wise as a visitor to give my opinion of the Iraq situation!!

Sunset at Fort Lauderdale.

And the beach....

It was too hot to sit at the beach all day so I went for a few long walks (and I needed the exercise. I visited the Hugh Taylor Birch National Park -though not very big it was interesting having this touch of wilderness in the centre of the city opposite the beach.

A big ugly spider....

And a cute little dragon fly.

Though not a lot of cars in the city there were some classics.

Taking the Parrot for it´s afternoon walk.

Next stop was Miami where I stayed in South Beach which was pretty much where I spent most of the week hanging out just watching the world go by - plenty to watch in this town.

South Beach is famous for it´t Art Deco buildings built in the 1930´s during the recession - though quite cheap to build as simple in design it is believed that a lot of the money that went into them came from the criminal gangs and mafia in the other US cities!!

One of the other many Art Deco buildings in Miami this one is the China Grill partly owned by Will Smith who regularly attends for impromtu gigs - no sign of him when I was passing- he obviously didn´t get the message that I was in town!!

Some interesting modes of transport around Miami beach!!

A hard day in the office!!

Lot´s of activity going on at South Beach.

Me on South Beach.

One way of attracting customers to your resteraunt I suppose;...

I couldn't go to Florida and not do an air boat trip of the Everglades - as touristy as this short trip was you do still get up quite close to some pretty big Alligators and pretty birds.

This big Iguana was just hanging about in the trees.

Vultures no doubt waiting for the leftovers of the Alligators dinner!!

Even this little racoon came out to say hello.

This wee Alligator was one that had been resced from one of the Alligator farms as such they cannot be released into the wild so are used for educational purposes - he was solid muscle. They also told us some horror stories about locals finding huge alligators in their gardens - one lady was awakened one night by 6ft guy in her kitchen which ended up being wrecked - but they managed to get him out and back to the wild!!

I spent an afternoon at the Greynolds Love Festival - very entertaining with people re-living the era of the hippy and flower power - some quite impressive outfits!!

Then of course there is the pampered pouches - dog strollers are all the thing over here - not quite sure that is good for the dogs!!

The Vizcaya Museum was not really what I expected to find in the middle of Miami - it was built in the early 1900's by an American Industrialist but based on 400 year old Italian estate!!