Christmas in Fort Lauderdale

I was keen from the day we said we were moving to the USA to have an alternative Christmas, and I don’t mean one where my husband spends all day in the kitchen cooking and I get drunk and lairy and then annoyingly competitive during the after-dinner games.

What I meant was not cooking at all and not really doing the traditional. We have sunshine two and a half hours away and so off we popped on the plane for eight full days of sun, sea and Santa.

So the deal is this with Fort Lauderdale, and correct me American chums if I am wrong, but it is pretty trendy, cool and chilled. There is nothing in the vicinity for kids, but why would you need that if you are child-less, rich and between 20 and 40, plus the hell (or heaven, depending on how you look at it) on earth of Disneyworld is but a short trip away, so you would expect people to take their children there instead….

Regardless, FL has a beautiful beach and there are some beautiful places and beautiful restaurants. There was a short stabbing pain when I yearned one night for some trashy entertainment Canaries-style, but it soon passed as I ate fish tacos on the shoreline with my bottle of sparkling.

Christmas in FL is understated, and much like a Saturday or Sunday, I am guessing. It didn’t really feel like Christmas. People hung out on the beach and at the pool and chilled. And that was that.

We drank champagne on the beach (not Harry, obviously) at 9am in the sunshine – that is a little bit of fabulousness (though have since been told that drinking alcohol on the beach is illegal….) 🙂

You can’t argue with this….

Sandy Santa

Santa made an appearance on his dune buggy and handed out candy canes on Christmas Eve. Rock on Santa, you made a four-year old’s day.

Minimal decorations

What caught my eye were the carefully placed Christmas decorations, few and far between, just a smattering of sparkly lights – enough to say, ‘Christmas is here, but we’re cool with it’. To be fair I loved the decorations – done to perfection, and the recycled bottles to make Christmas fish was classy, genius and environmentally friendly, much like the perfect man 🙂

Church

On the night of Christmas Eve, we, all three of us, went into a bar after dinner and seeing the recycled fishes (above) and the barmaid says to us: “So have you guys just come from church?” I nearly fell off my stool. Then I felt bad, because perhaps we should have gone to church and not indulged in snapper and mojitos….but there again….. 🙂

Kissing, hugging, smooching

I have to mention one thing about flying out, which tickled me v v v v much…..

So, there’s quite a queue to go through security on our way out (note – we were actually in the wrong line, which was slightly annoying, but worth making a mistake for given this) and this security guard comes trundling along on his Segway, saying to all in the queue: “If you have any kissing, hugging or smooching to do, do it now before you get to the end of the line, otherwise you just hold up all the other folks. Come on people, kiss, hug smooch now!” Brilliant.

Back home……

Whilst we were away the Connecticut shooting and gun laws debate sadly raged on…

I spoke to some girls from Connecticut in the pool, who said it was a weird and sad state of affairs back home for them and they had heard that people are calling for bullet proof backpacks for kids. What? Really?

Gun sales after the shooting have increased….Piers Morgan is being asked to leave the country because of his views on gun laws, but the Brits don’t want him back. Enough said.

And it snowed in Howard County whilst we were having a ball in Florida. And it’s coming again soon. I’m not a snow person, so expect pictures with window frames wrapped round them.

It’s good to be home 🙂