Touring Key West

We slept in the morning, not arising until 7 am. After a shower and a glance at the tour guide books, we caught the hotel shuttle to the old town area of Key West.
We walked around Duvall Street which is "party central" for Key West. Truthfully, it was like the tourist areas of any beach community. Lots of bars, t-shirt and junk shops. We enjoyed the walk but didn't see much there that really interested us. We thought we may go back in the evening for a drink after dinner.

We walked over to the Southernmost point in the continental US. There were a lot of people there taking photos. Most of the people we have seen here are European tourists or older people from the cruise ships.

At the Hemingway House, we had an excellent young tour guide who knew a great deal about Hemingway, his writing and the cats. This kid knew the names and parentage of all 45 cats at the property! About half of the cats were polydactyl and all seemed to enjoy the life of leisure there. We stayed there a good while and enjoyed the house and grounds.
After leaving the Hemingway House we walked around town more and investigated some of the historic homes and parks. We took a quick walk through Mallory Square and through the area where the cruise ships debark.
We caught the hotel shuttle back to the room and rested our feet for a bit then took the rental car to a nearby Publix grocery store and picked up some fruit and cereal for tomorrow's breakfast. Mary got a snack salad and I got a case of soft drinks for the week.  The the temperatures were already in the mid 80s, we thought that taking a mid-day break would be welcome.
At 5 pm we caught the shuttle to the side of the key near Mallory Square to see the sunset. Like many tourist areas of this sort there were many street performers and pan handlers. We bought some excellent mojitos from a cart on the beach and watched the sun go down. There were a lot of vessels in the area including sailboats, sport fishing charters, sightseeing cruises and military watercraft. The saw the Estonians from the hotel at the waterfront photographing the sunset. They seem nice but just reminded me of Steve Martin and Dan Aykroid doing the Czech Festrunk brothers, Georgl and Yortuk, the "wild and crazy guys".

After watching the sunset, we made our way to the Blue Heaven for dinner. We ate in an open air courtyard that was used for cockfighting at times and Hemingway refereed boxing matches there in the 1930s. Mary had a broiled grouper over linguine with a citrus butter sauce. I had jerk chicken with black beans and rice. Both of us enjoyed our meals. There was a local band playing Caribbean music which added to the atmosphere. After dinner, we walked along Duvall Street and enjoyed the evening. We stopped in Capt. Tony's which is the original Sloppy Joe's in the 1930s when Hemingway lived on the Key. There was a live performer who wasn't all that great. I had the only drink they serve which is Pirate's Punch, pineapple juice with rum. The drink was not exceptional but was refreshing after dinner. The shuttle station was a short walk away so we returned back to our room for the night.

One of the things here that we found most amusing is the number of chickens that seem to run free on the island. Most of the chickens are roosters which seems odd since most people who have chickens eat the roosters while they are still young and allow the hens to mature for egg production. Many farms have only one adult rooster which is adequate for their needs. Here, the roosters have the run of the streets and buildings often mooching food like pigeons.  All of the chickens we saw were small light bodied birds, no doubt owing to their ancestry from the game cocks that were brought to the island for the cockfights that were common here a generation ago.

We enjoyed our day here but really don't think we would want to spend a whole week at Key West. It is pretty much like so many other areas of the kind. We will leave in the morning to make our way back north up the Keys toward the mainland.  We will travel northeast from near the zero mile marker on US 1 for most of the day on Wednesday getting us to our lodging in Florida City.   







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