Fort Lauderdale / Tortuga Country Music Festival

I’m starting to reflect on this past year, and the details are already getting fuzzy… It’s shameful! I’m not that old, right? This is precisely why I need to blog more. I need to document our travels, so I can look back and relive the memories. (Hence me just now writing about a trip I took months ago…)

Our first vacation of 2014 was to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for the Tortuga Music Festival in April. We fell even more in love with country music this year, and this two-day country music fest on the beach was the kick-off to a long series of amazing country concerts in 2014.

I’ve traveled all over Florida, but I really only remember passing through Fort Lauderdale in the past, so it was a new vacation spot for both of us. We loved it. It has the retro charm of old-school Florida that I love (vintage motels with neon signs, pink houses, a bar straight out of Where the Boys Are) mixed with updated, high-end shopping and dining, too.

Tortuga Music Festival is two days on the beach, with an amazing line-up of country music, all benefitting marine conservation. Major credit to Dan for finding out about this event. Once I saw the two headliners were our faves, Luke Bryan and Eric Church, I knew we couldn’t resist making the trip.

In addition to dancing to Luke and Eric on the beach (such perfect nights), we also saw Dierks Bentley, Sheryl Crow, Brett Eldredge, Brothers Osborne, Brantley Gilbert, and Billy Currington. It was a blast to spend two days together seaside, meandering around the fesitval grounds going from stage to stage with our feet in the sand and beers in our hands. The crowd was relaxed and fun-loving. It was a casual festival completely free of pretension. A little downpour on day two didn’t even keep us down. We donned some ponchos and jammed to Brothers Osborne from the front row. Definitely a memory I will never forget.

The festival was the main attraction for our vacation, but we had a few lazy beach days tacked on before and after the festival days for some much-needed relaxation. The days were sunny but windy, so we didn’t spend a ton of time in the water — but we stayed at the beach for hours reading and playing with the paddles we bought at a nearby tourist shop. I devoured Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places while there, and I highly recommend it.

Whenever Dan and I travel, our deciding factor when choosing a hotel is location, location, location. We need to be next to or on the beach and be able to walk everywhere. But we’re also young and have modest budgets, so we lean toward sacrifcing some comforts for a prime location. In Fort Lauderdale, we stayed at the Premiere Hotel, and we would definitely recommend it. It’s a retro motel a half-block from the beach. You can see the ocean from the pool and many of the rooms. Our room wasn’t the best (clean and well-stocked, but a bit noisy on the first floor), but the location couldn’t be beat for the price. Plus, they have beach chairs for guests to take with them to the shore and when you get check in, they hand you a beer! They made it easy to get into vacation mode.

From our hotel, we easily walked up Fort Lauderdale’s main drag, Atlantic Boulevard, for dining and nightlife. Did anyone else watch the ’60s movie Where the Boys Are when they were a kid? I love the movie, about college girls who escape the snow for spring break in Fort Lauderdale, and I’ve always remembered a scene where they party at a bar called The Elbo Room… Well, it’s a real place! A Fort Lauderdale institution. It’s a two-story indoor/outdoor bar on the corner of Atlantic and Las Olas, across from the beach. It was rowdy and crowded every night, with a fun mix of young and old patrons enjoying the seabreeze and live music. It was a fun dive and we went back a few times throughout our stay. I would definitely recommend getting a drink there late-night.

We also explored Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Boulevard and had a phenomonal meal at Big City Tavern. Las Olas is lined with lots of upscale restaurants and shops. Boca Raton is also closeby, so one night, we took a drive and went for dinner at Max’s Grille. We spent a half-day in Miami, too. We had initially planned to spend the entire day and night there, but it was one of the few truly HOT days of our vacation, and we didn’t want to waste it (we realized this after lunch as we were walking down Ocean Drive in South Beach dripping in sweat and staring longingly at the cool water). I really wanted to eat some Cuban food in Little Havana, but our aborted plans meant we’d have to save that for our next trip. It was definitely worth it for a little more ocean time.

I couldn’t have asked for a better time with my best friend. Anyone out there been to Fort Lauderdale? I would love to know what you thought and where you went!

Posted By: Ali Salter · In: Travel