South Florida Fort Lauderdale Miami Shopping Las Olas

Some interesting Fort Lauderdale / Miami places from a native Floridian born here in 1962...

• Sawgrass Mills Shopping Mall - 12801 W Sunrise Blvd, Sunrise, FL 33323. Sawgrass Mills is Florida's largest retail & entertainment center, features more than 350 name-brand stores and outlets like The Gap Outlet, OFF 5th Saks Fifth Avenue Outlet; full-service restaurants like Cheesecake Factory; cinemas and high quality entertainment venues. If you have kids, this mall has the Wannado City theme park. To get to this mall, just get on Sunrise Blvd and start driving west. It's impossible to miss.
• Galleria Mall - This mall has the best upscale 'food court" of any mall I have ever been in. The shops are similar to most malls, but if you want to get a bite to eat there, it's great food. The mall is on Sunrise Blvd east, on the south side of the road, just before you go over the bridge to A1A (the beach). In fact, you can walk to the beach from there in 5 minutes or less.
• Las Olas Blvd - 954.937.7386. Remember when you could just stroll along the walk way and wander into shops looking for unusual or art / craft type stuff? Or get a bite at a small cafe? You can still do that on Las Olas. It is still considered at the forefront of everything from fashion boutiques and art galleries, to memorable restaurants, sidewalk cafes and clubs. They also host a lot of events during the year, such as FTL MODA Fort Lauderdale International Fashion Week or the Festivals of Speed Fort Lauderdale.

• Liquid Land: A Journey Through the Florida Everglades -In 1948, the Army Corps of Engineers launched a project to deal with flooding in Florida's Everglades by building a system of canals, levees and spillways. Misunderstanding the complexities of the ecosystem they were trying to control, the engineers drained the Everglades. In this knowledgeable and carefully researched overview, Levin, a naturalist, writer and photographer, recounts the many negative effects this drainage has had on wildlife and plant life. Half of the original Everglades area has been converted to housing and farmland; the wilderness's ability to recover from natural disasters such as hurricanes has been compromised by human error. Levin, who covered the area by foot, boat and plane, successfully evokes the Everglades of yesterday and today, and details the possibilities that exist for its future.
• Miami Then & Now -A look at the history of Miami, with stunning contemporary and historic photography and captions describing the development of this famous city. Part of the highly successful "Then and Now" series, this book looks at the changes in this exciting city.
• Stranahans of Fort Lauderdale: A Pioneer Family of New River -A well crafted, a story unique to its time and place but...as familiar as one's own family history.
• Florida's Seminole Wars, 1817-1858 - Among the most well known of Florida's native peoples, the Seminole Indians frustrated troops of militia and volunteer soldiers for decades during the first half of the nineteenth century in the ongoing struggle to keep hold of their ancestral lands. While careers and reputations of American military and political leaders were made and destroyed in the mosquito-infested swamps of Florida's interior, the Seminoles and their allies, including the Miccosukee tribe and many escaped slaves, managed to wage war on their own terms. The study of guerrilla warfare tactics employed by the Seminoles may have aided modern American forces fighting in Viet Nam, Cambodia, and other regions. Years before the first shots of the Civil War were fired, Florida witnessed a clash of wills and ways that prompted three wars unlike any others in Americas history, although many of the same policies and mistakes were made in the Indian wars west of the Mississippi.