Las Olas Boulevard is Fort Lauderdale's main cultural artery: a mile-long stretch of galleries, restaurants, boutiques, and outdoor cafés running from downtown east toward the beach. The traffic is slow and the sidewalks wide enough to make it pleasant on foot, which is unusual in south Florida. On weekend evenings the street closes to cars for stretches, and the tables spill out further. It is not cheap — this is where you come for dinner and a gallery opening, not for bargains — but the concentration of quality restaurants and the general buzz of the street make it the most enjoyable part of the city to walk around.
The art galleries cluster in the middle sections of the boulevard, and several of them show serious work by local and regional artists. The restaurants range from casual Cuban lunch spots to proper white-tablecloth seafood operations. The cross streets and short blocks off Las Olas lead to quieter neighborhoods of 1920s bungalows and canal-front homes — worth exploring on foot if you have the time. The eastern end of the boulevard feeds directly onto the beachfront, where it becomes a different, louder kind of scene entirely.