The Venice of America

We spent the day yesterday meandering around the intracoastal waterway of Ft. Lauderdale on the water taxi. It was a cool, cloudy, windy day, but we still had fun. It was especially neat to see the backyards and parked yachts of the rich and famous. There are all these little man made canals with mansion after mansion. The streets are made of water, and yachts worth millions abound. We enjoyed getting to see Steven Speilberg's yacht. It was in town. It's the dark bottomed one you'll see down below. We got off the water taxi at Las Olas Blvd. and had lunch at a restaurant downtown. We also spent some time at the Galleria mall. John could have spent all day at the Apple store there. :) In the afternoon we actually just came back to the room for a much needed nap. We couldn't believe we slept three hours! Then we headed to Ikea, of all places, for supper. Walked around there, picked up a couple of things to take back to the kids. Then we headed over to Sawgrass Mills Outlet mall, the largest one in the US apparently. Our legs were so stiff and our feet so sore by the time we walked back to the car...lots of ground to cover at that place. Well, this morning we need to get our things packed up to board the ship, return the rental car, and get ourselves down to the seaport. I won't have Internet access on the ship (well, I choose not to at $0.65 per minute) so you won't hear from me again until we're home probably. Here are a few pics from yesterday. It was fun to hear the commentary on who lived where and the stories (rumors?) about their lives. The house below that looks like the whitehouse is owned by the fellow that invented a way to make air conditioning work in cars. He worked for GM so GM didn't want to pay for the technology because they believed it belonged to them since he worked for them anyway. So he sued them and after a long court battle the judge awarded him $2.50 per AC unit installed in a GM vehicle for as long as the patent was in effect. So you can imagine what he was raking in every year and how he could afford to build this place. Incidentally he is also the guy who invented the intermittent wiper. He still lives there at the age of 92. He is now legally blind so can't enjoy the view much, but our water taxi captain said not to feel too badly for him...he just married a 38 year old woman. Oh, the lives of the rich and famous. I wouldn't want it actually. After all, what would be fun if you had everything? I guess that's why so many of them seem to be grasping for bigger and better, a higher high all the time. How much higher can you go though when you call places like this home?