March 30 - April 2, 2017: A Visit to San Antonio
March 8-18, 2017: A Visit to Fort Lauderdale
Return to the Index for 2017

March 19-26, 2017
Guy Blair's Visit to Fort Lauderdale

 

For our second half of our second trip to Florida this year, our friend from San Antonio, Guy Blair, came to spend the better part of a week with us here in Fort Lauderdale. This page contains the photos and movies we took during that visit.

 

Walking Around Fort Lauderdale

One of the neat things about the Florida condo is that it is right in the middle of everything in Fort Lauderdale, and so just walking off the property puts you in the neighborhood known as Colee Hammock- generally the area to the east of Federal Highway and before you cross the Himmershee Canal the Himmershee Canal as you head east towards the ocean.


One morning the three of us went out into the Colee Hammock neighborhood for a walk. We didn't go far- just east to the Himmershee Canal, and then around the streets that border it over to the new Amaray Apartments high-rise a few blocks north of the condo. We took a number of pictures around this new building, and you might want to look at a few of them:

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

From the front of the Amaray, we could look southwest towards the light-green Riverside Hotel and the now topped-out Icon Las Olas. We walked over towards that area to get a closer look before having lunch and then returning to the condo.

The Icon Las Olas

This view looks southwest and was taken from a block south of the Amaray Apartments.

  
Las Olas Boulevard

This picture, taken at the intersection of Las Olas and SE 8th Avenue, looks west towards downtown.

 

A Walk Along the Hollywood Beach Boardwalk

We enjoyed our trip down to Margaritaville with Ron and Jay last week, so we thought that we'd take Guy down there this week- not so much to see the hotel but to take a long walk along the boardwalk and runs along the Atlantic Ocean.


We planned to have lunch again at the Landshark Bar and Grill, it being a very pleasant outdoor venue. You have probably already read about the Margaritaville hotel and resort on the previous page, so I won't repeat all that information here.

I do want to show you what the Margaritaville Resort looks like, so I have borrowed a picture from their website (not having been able to take a good picture of the resort from ground level).

I usually also like to show an aerial view when possible, although I found that the views available online are not current, as you can see from the view below, which shows the resort still under construction:

As we did when we were here with Ron and Jay, we had lunch at the Landshark Bar and Grill that overlooks the wave runner.

The Wave Runner at Margaritaville
(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

At right is a movie of some people using the wave runner (one of whom works for the hotel and is showing how it's done). We did spend a bit of time showing Guy the hotel itself, but didn't take nearly as many pictures as we did last week:


Guy Took the Two Pictures Above

(Click on Thumbnails to View)

After having some lunch, we went down to the boardwalk and spent the next couple of hours walking first south (until we got to a point where there was some construction going on) and then back north and past Margaritaville to a rather more scenic section.

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We took a number of interesting pictures, and I've put them in the slideshow at left. Use the arrows in the lower corners of each picture to move from one to the next, and track your progress with the index numbers in the upper left of each one.

I made a movie at Margaritaville as we started walking south; you can use the player below to watch it:

The Boardwalk at Margaritaville
(Mouseover Image Above for Video Controls)

Attached to one of the buildings at Margaritaville there was this odd lighthouse. The streets that go east from A1A dead end into the boardwalk, and as you walk along, there are markers to tell you what street you are passing (in case you are looking for where you parked, I guess). Since Guy is from Connecticut, he asked me to take a picture of him with the marker for Connecticut Street, and you can see that picture Along the boardwalk, there are markers built into the seawall that tell you what street that , here. The last picture I took was actually a composite of four different images so I could create a panorama looking out to the ocean that would have Fred and Guy at both ends of it. It isn't perfect, but here's the result:

We enjoyed showing Guy the Hollywood Boardwalk, and we had another nice lunch at the Landshark Bar and Grill. In mid-afternoon we headed back to the condo in Fort Lauderdale.

 

The Lowe Museum at the University of Miami

On another day of Guy's visit, we thought that we would pay our first visit to the Lowe Museum, which is situated on the campus of the University of Miami, southeast of downtown Miami just west of US1. We'd found the museum online, and it looked interesting.

Picture Title

Getting down to the museum was pretty easy; all we had to do was hop on I-95 south past downtown Miami to where I-95 ends and becomes US1 south. About three miles down US1, we found the turn into the campus of the University of Miami.


The Lowe Museum and Part of the University of Miami Campus

What eventually became the collection of the Lowe Museum began as an ad hoc collection of art pieces that in the 1940s was kept in a couple of classrooms at the University. These objects were used in various classes and for research. The collection grew, and by 1950 had totally outgrown the space that could be devoted to it by the University.

Enter the philanthropists Joe and Emily Lowe- they made a major gift to the University and specified that the funds should be used for the maintenance and expansion of the collection. Spurred by that gift, other patrons and donors contributed, and it became possible for the University to begin construction of a free-standing museum facility; that facility opened to the public in 1952. When it opened, it was the first art museum in South Florida. Today, the museum's collection contains more than 19,000 objects and is one of the most important in the southeast, with strengths in Renaissance and Baroque, American, Ancient and Native American, and Asian art.


The Lowe Museum		  
Fred and I at the Lowe Museum

We parked in a University garage and went into the museum, where there was a nominal admission fee for folks not either students or connected with the University. We spent about three hours wandering around.

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We found much in the museum that was interesting- from the art (modern and not much), archaeological items and ancient art, and a couple of exhibitions. We took lots of pictures, and I want to include many of them here.

At left is a slideshow of quite a few of our pictures, and you may enjoy walking through the museum with us, and seeing what we saw. As usual with this album's slideshows, use the little arrows in the lower corners of each slide to move through the pictures. You can track your progress through the 80-odd pictures by referring to the index numbers in the upper left of each slide.

Enjoy walking through the museum with us!

There was one artwork that I couldn't put on one of those slides; it was way too large. Actually, it was so large that I couldn't even get the whole piece into a single picture, and my photo of it is actually a 5-image composite. The work was the set of screenprints entitled "Mao (F.&S. II.90-99)", created by Andy Warhol (the American artist born in 1937); the work was dated 1972. Here is that work (in a scrollable window):

After visiting the museum, we walked across part of the campus to the student center and food court, where we were able to get a late lunch, sitting amid kids a third our age. We took a couple of pictures outside in the bright sunshine:

  

We enjoyed our day at the museum and here at the University; the perfect weather made it even better.

 

Lunch in Wilton Manors

On Guy's last day with us, we took him over to the Courtyard Cafe in Wilton Manors to get some lunch. That's the spot where we usually have lunch at least once with Roger Wilson when we come down for a visit. We also walked along Wilton Drive for a while, as the day was so pretty. Here are the two best pictures that we took along our walk:

  

 

Our Trip Home

Our trip home with Bob began on the 26th and we reached home on the 27th, after stopping in Lafayette LA for the night (as we typically do).

Mealtime for Bob

We didn't take a lot of pictures on the way home- only a few of Bob and Fred (as I am occupied driving, Fred is having to take selfies). That's a nice picture of Bob getting something to eat (he typically doesn't eat much until we stop for the night). He typically just snoozes:


Sleepy Time in Mid-Louisiana

One of these days, I am going to count all the trips we've made to Florida, but at two or three a year, I am sure we are pushing 100.

March 30 - April 2, 2017: A Visit to San Antonio
March 8-18, 2017: A Visit to Fort Lauderdale
Return to the Index for 2017