Vacation, Day 8 : Fort Lauderdale

We left Miami and made the short drive up the road to Ft. Lauderdale.  We stopped at Target on the way out and didn't happen across a single English speaking person.    Such confusion; isn't Miami part of the United States?   Besides that, the traffic is ugly and the construction is worse than Houston.     I'm sure Ft Lauderdale is much the same, but we did our best to not notice. 

First stop (planned) was the National Art Festival at the Fort Lauderdale Art Museum.

 

This is a juried event and everything fell into fine art categories; paintings, photography, sculpture, and jewelry.   The only textiles I saw were finely handbraided rugs and some custom, and esquisite clothing. I was surprised by the smaller number of arists on hand; I guess somewhere around 50.   I was curious if that was due to the economy or if this is usually a smaller event. 

The event was outside the Art Museum in a lovely setting.   On the backside of this fountain, they had set up about 15 easels and were allowing anyone interested the opportunity to paint.  (Believe there were some type of instructors standing by).  

 

I've misplaced this artist' card and could just kick myself ... her work is lovely and I'd like to see more.  When I first reached her tent, there was a man sitting in the back of the tent.   As I browsed around, I kept thinking how unusual for a man to paint these wonderful dresses.  Then, I caught up with my husband, talking with the actual artist (her husband/helper was in the chair).   I asked her if she had meant to be in the fashion industry and she explained in Barcelona she saw dresses through a window and fell in love with the fabrics and texture as light reflected from them.    Although these particular works would not fit with my decor (or budget), I find them incredible. 

After the show, we took in some lunch at Chili's and headed 15 miles the other direction to visit Sawgrass Mills.  

To quote the survival guide "What has 2.1 million square feet of space, is shaped like an alligator and draws nearly as many annual visitor as Disney World? Sawgrass Mills Mall. What takes a day to walk through, has slow-moving cattle-like crowds and acres of parking lots with no empty space in sight? Sawgrass Mills Mall."

 

This place is a zoo.   No ... it's more than that.   It has more folks shopping on this Friday than the busiest Mall in New Orleans has shopping on Black Friday.    First off, there must have been 5000 cars in the parking lots (which should have discouraged us to begin with), but once inside it got wild.   We wandered, aimlessly (I couldn't think of a single thing I needed), until the whole exercise seemed pointless and it was like "let's get out of here".   Which we did.    Now, I understand that this would be a shop-a-holics dream come true, but I can definitely put this on the list of places not to return.

  

I did, however, enjoy looking at the Carasoul

My feet are tired and I'm getting abit cranky; good time to quit for the day.   So, we went and checked into our hotel for a little R&R.   

Tomorrow starts the cruise .... although we heard it had a small incident in St. Kitts and is going to be a couple hours late .... oh well.