Adrift On The Riverwalk

My sister Susan and I drove down to Fort Lauderdale from Stuart, Florida this past Sunday afternoon to walk along that city's Riverwalk. It has been quite a few years since we last did that, and so I was not quite certain how to get to the area we used to walk along, which I remember as being very beautiful. Naturally, we headed in the opposite direction, and never did find that stretch of riverfront, although many parts of river were indeed very scenic, as seen in the photograph on the left. We very well might have eventually found it, but it started to rain pretty heavily, and we took cover under a shelter along the river. When the rain let up, we didn't want to chance getting caught in another downpour, and so headed to The Wharf for a beer before heading back to Stuart.

When we used to visit Fort Lauderdale years ago, we always stopped at an open-air, riverfront shopping plaza called Las Olas Riverfront. That center evidently went downhill after the Great Recession in 2008, was torn down, and replaced by two high rise apartment buildings and an office tower, which I must say are not nearly as attractive as that park-like shopping plaza. I noticed on a map that The Wharf, an outdoor bar and event center, was right next door to this complex, along the New River. When we arrived, the outside tables were still pretty wet, and so we sat under a large, covered space, on the opposite side of the bar from where there was some sort of mass dance lesson going on. The music was pretty loud, which was a bit irritating, but what I really found disappointing was that the view of the river was obscured by hedges. Why have a patio bar along the Riverwalk if you can't see the river? It boggles the mind.

In any case, as we were leaving The Wharf, I took the photograph on the left of a sculpture attached to that office building next door. And I have to say, it is pretty damn weird. I think there is greenery under the statue's blouse, and it appears that people are actually walking into her chest. We didn't walk over to confirm that, since the skies still looked stormy, and we wanted to get back to the car before the next deluge. In any case, after carefully consulting a google map of Fort Lauderdale (after the fact, of course), I now know exactly how to get to that segment of the Riverwalk we were trying to find, and hopefully we will come back to walk it in a week or two. But only if no rain is forecast within a few hundred miles of the place.