Fort Lauderdale has more to offer than warm weather and beautiful beaches! My wife and I traveled there for a week long vacation and had a wonderful time visiting a variety of restaurants, shops, museums, and fun activities. Here were some of our favourites that are definitely worth trying out if you are in the Fort Lauderdale area.
Downtown Shopping Area
If you like shopping, or just want to bounce between restaurants and bars testing out delicious drinks and food, then check out Fort Lauderdale’s downtown shopping area. The street runs adjacent to the beautiful Riverwalk, where you can hop on a river cruise (the Carrie B Tour is a 90-minute, affordable option) after your appetizers and daiquiris.
Visit the Historic District
After your Carrie B cruise, you can stroll down the Riverwalk to the Stranahan House Museum for a historic tour. The Stranahans were the founders of Fort Lauderdale and Mrs Stranahan was the first school teacher in the town. Walk 15 minutes south of the Stranahan house and you’ll find the Historic Fort Lauderdale Museum, where you can go on another fun tour of the first inn and school house. The Fort Lauderdale Museum also features in house artists who are constantly showing off their new work on the third floor, just ask reception for an artist guided tour of the work.
Try out these Amazing Lauderdale Eateries
First Watch
First Watch is an amazing innovator of deliciousness, and for a great price. I found myself wanting to try everything on their menu! They come out with new specialty dishes, and juices, every week. I ordered four strips of the “Million Dollar Bacon” for an appetizer, followed by a mega delicious (and healthy) quinoa power bowl. My wife got the feta cheese pancakes, luckily she couldn’t finish, yummy for me!
Just look at that bacon!
Sea Watch On The Ocean
Sea Watch, just down the road from First Watch, is a super fresh sea food specialist. Sea Watch is everything seafood, straight out of the ocean, in ridiculously delicious ways. The restaurant is everything you could expect from a high end, ocean view, wedding venue. Delicious food, beautiful ocean, great service and decadent ambiance.
Mai Tai Tiki Restaurant and Polynesian Show
The Mai Kai has frequently been voted the best Tiki restaurant in the world. The restaurant can seat a whopping 650 guests. The sections are named after different Polynesian islands, and features a beautiful Tiki styled garden to walk through in between courses. There are waterfalls, tikis, bridges, flowers, and an awesome view of their ancient Chinese oven where they slow roast all of their decadent meats. The Mai Kai also features an epic fire-baton twirling and booty shaking show. We sat in awe as 3 performers literally placed the on fire batons directly on their bare feet. Definitely check this place out!
Razzleberry’s
This amazing little ice cream gem features specialty Oreo ice creams made in house. My wife and I walk down the beach from our condo almost every night to try their new Oreo flavours. In the week visiting Fort Lauderdale we got to try the Razzleberry Dark Chocolate Oreo, Mocha Oreo, and Red Velvet Oreo. The Red Velvet Oreo in particular blew our minds!
Fun Activities
Xtreme Action Park
Super go karts, glow-in-the-dark Nerf gun battles, rope course, bowling and arcade, Xtreme Action Park has covered all of the varying degree of extreme. The go karts range from baby to super, with the super carts reaching up to 65 MPH and required 3 training sessions on the Pro Karts to be used. The Nerf gun battles, on the Xtreme menu as Bazooka Blast, are fun for you competitive types, and the rope course is the largest obstacle course in Florida. And if those activities are too Xtreme for you… you could always bowl?
Ski Rixen Park
Another fairly extreme activity on our list is the Ski Rixen wakeboarding park. The park pulls you across a half mile of jumps, rails and wipe outs for a super fun and exhilarating wake boarding ride! Seriously though, be careful with this one, water can hurt!
Escapology
Escapology features a whole whack load of escape rooms for you puzzle-loving folks. Make sure to take advantage of the “Twenty Twosdays” where each person can get in for a discounted rate of $22 per person, which is substantially lower than the typical $30 – 35 range for escape rooms. An hour of solving mysteries like the Scooby-Doo gang is super fun!
Fort Lauderdale is full of fun things to do! These were some of our favourites during our vacation. We encourage you give them a try and enjoy the multi-faceted city of Ft. Lauderdale to its fullest!