If it’s good enough for Spock…

When Norwegian Air announced that it was hoping to launch a ‘low-cost’ transatlantic service from Gatwick to Fort Lauderdale you can imagine the whole of Florida tourism, as well as Royal Caribbean, Carnival et al over at Port Everglades, rubbing their hands with anticipation.

If it finally gets approved, tens of thousands more Europeans per year will suddenly gain access to the Sunshine State’s tourism hotspots, not to mention the armada of cruise liners via a cost-effective alternative to the legacy carriers.

The thing is, though, are visitors missing a trick by immediately skedaddling out of town to another part of Florida or off to the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean via a ship that is often bigger than the island it’s visiting? TravelMole MD Graham McKenzie certainly thinks so.

"Fort Lauderdale itself is a very cool place with a whole host of interesting attractions, excellent restaurants, water sports, sailing facilities and easy access to the airboat rides on the Everglades, plus it’s only five or 10 minutes from the airport in what is normally very light traffic compared to the gridlock conditions of its bigger better known neighbour Miami.

So what can one do? It’s probably easier to state by exception what you can’t do! If nature is your gig then within a 15-minute drive you can get on one of the famous airboats and speed around the Everglades National Park, and if you don’t see an alligator in its natural surroundings then you can count yourself very unlucky.

In addition, there are a multitude of other reptiles and birds that hang around the swamps. Should you be unfortunate then most of the operators have small and if I am honest fairly seedy ‘zoo’ type set ups where you can see some of the native species.

Fort Lauderdale has many other nature ‘outlets’ where you can see and learn about the Floridian wildlife. The best tip I can give you is to stick to the larger of these as some of the smaller ones are awful. The big ones like Butterfly World though are excellent and are good not only for small children but big children as well. Another one that deserves a mention is Flamingo Gardens. Whilst not wanting to get into the ‘captive wild animal’ debate this did appear to be well-run and ‘gives residence to permanently injured and non-releasable birds and animals’.

As I mentioned, the area has so much but I was taken with something that, despite being resident in the states for a number of years and having visited more times than I care to think of, I had missed. The Intracoastal Waterway! A stretch of inland navigable water that is over 3,000 miles long that starts up north in New Jersey and flows all the way down to the gulf Brownsville in Texas. It not only serves as an alternative to the oft stormy Atlantic Ocean for both commercial and leisure shipping but in the past has proven to be an excellent barrier to hostile submarines who wished to destroy allied cargo vessels.

The result in Fort Lauderdale is a facility that can be used for all kinds of watersports but also pleasure cruises that traverse the area. The other spin off of the ICW (as it is known) is the waterfront real estate and all of the captains on the pleasure ships take great delight at telling you who lives where, how much the property cost and a history of how they made their money.

A typical property would be appear to be seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a squillion reception rooms and at least three modes of transport for getting out of town. A snip at $22million unless you want to buy Leonard Nimoy’s pad with its multi-coloured light display, triple aspect water front and heli pad that might set you back even more. After a while it starts to become rather tedious …Beam me up Scotty."

Food is not overlooked here and down town has some very cool restaurants that always seem to be busy …YOLO is my favourite. So to take that theme, if you happen to be in Fort Lauderdale make the most of it…you only live once.

Info :  www.sunny.org

Food: yolorestaurant.com

Car:    www.dollar.co.uk

Hotel:  www.lagomar.com

Air:     www.norwegian.com/uk/