Florida

In mid-May Lee had a research conference where he had the chance to present a paper.  The conference - ARVO (Association for Research in Vision and Opthamology) - is one of the biggest research conferences internationally in vision.  So, that meant a short hop, skip and a jump down to sunny Fort Lauderdale, where the weather is permanently 85 degrees and sunny this time of year.

The flight with Kaela went well, we got a full 3 seat row on both trips, so she could move around a bit.  Upon checking into our hotel, he told us that he had actually overbooked the rooms and some one would have to be upgraded to the executive suites - for free!  He thought kindly of us since we had a kid.  When walking in, we saw it was a full 2 bedroom apartment: kitchen with oven and stove, full bath, 2 rooms, AC in each room.... We were living it up for those five days.

The hotel also had a nice pool, and we found that Kaela could be quite a fish:

We were in the pool at least once every day.  We had a lot of fun there.  She will splash and kick her feet and be very cute.

One day Lee took off early from the conference and we walked to the beach.  We were only there a little bit - less than two hours, but it was the highlight of the trip.  New England just doesn't have this: warm, sandy beach, warm water, jumpable waves.... Ft. Lauderdale had miles of public beach.  

We wanted to stay, but we had a very tired girl (who fell asleep on the way home).


The water scared her a bit, and she didn't like the hot sand, but she was happy once she was on our shoulders.

Another day we went on a water taxi.  The shore line of Ft. Lauderdale is called the "Venice of America" because rather than roads, it has canals.  This is where all your really rich people (and their lawyers, I'm told) settle down.  So the taxi took us past the mansions, where people have 3 boats in their 'driveway' to drive into the city.  It was fun.

Tired, and happy we flew home.  It was a wonderful vacation.  I stole way too much of Lee's time, as finals were only two weeks ahead of him, but we had lots of fun.  I would recommend Ft. Lauderdale to anyone.