Driving not flying;question

Driving to Ft. Lauderdale for a cruise in January and would prefer to stay an hour or two north to hopefully save some money on a hotel. My question is what town that is an hour or two away might be a good place to stop?

North to south, along I-95 options would be Vero Beach (2 hr from port), Ft Pierce (1.5 hour), and Port St Lucie, a bit further.

Any further south, you are "officially" in South Florida, where winter prices will be even higher.

All 3 of these exits have numerous chain hotel options, at various price points.

Vero Beach also has a nice outlet mall at the exit, if you have a few hours to kill.

To be completely north of the tourist zone, you can check Melbourne or Palm Bay, still less than 3 hours north, many lodging options at the I 95 exits.

Thank you, we will check these out.

We love the luxury of being able to drive to FLL rather than fly.

Directly off I-95 in Melbourne, there's a Full Service Holiday Inn (has nice bar/restaurant) which is where we like to stay. :)

LuLu

We like to come down I-75 and stay in Ft Myers area and then drive across Alligator Alley the morning of the cruise. It take about 2 hrs to make the drive. We stayed at Hampton Inn in Estero when we sailed in Feb.

We like to come down I-75 and stay in Ft Myers area and then drive across Alligator Alley the morning of the cruise. It take about 2 hrs to make the drive. We stayed at Hampton Inn in Estero when we sailed in Feb.

Taking I-75 down to Alligator Alley to get to Port Everglades adds about 70 miles to any trip outside of Florida but it definitely could be worth it if you get a good deal on the hotel. Estero has an Embassy Suites as well and a big shopping center.

I would stay in Vero Beach.

We just stayed at the Hampton Inn Melbourne for four nights, right off 1-95. Nice breakfast, no bar or restaurant. Slept so good there. There is a saloon across the street that has a band on Saturday night where you could hear the bass. They also do mud runs or something behind their property at the saloon. There is a Chuck E Cheese for people that have kids across 192. We ordered pizza and antipasto salads from BIzzarro Pizza (free delivery) that was tasty. The town of IndiaAtlantic has metered parking on the beach about ten miles straight down the road.

One thing to note is there is lots of construction on 1-95 south. We drove 30 miles south every evening to the Fellsmere/Sebastian exit and there was lane shifting and lane closures.

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