Key West

Today was a much more laid back day than we have had on this trip. We awoke at 5:30 but did things around the house until after 10 am. Cindy had to send several emails for her volunteer work with a nonprofit group in Oregon. We were happy to have some down time and walked around the property here at Pelico Paradise. Mark and I decided that the alarm for the night before was a pump for the sewer system. There hadn’t been a problem since, so we didn’t do anything with it.

We took two cars into Key West on the 30 minutes drive and found a parking space on the small island. We were able to get a spot not far from Duval Street for four hours, giving us all the time we thought we would need to visit the tourist area. We walked along Duval Street and it didn’t take long to get enough of the shops with cheap souvenirs, loud bars and strip joints, so we detoured by Mallory Square then to Whitehead and Truman Streets where Ernest Hemingway’s house stood. Mary and I had taken the tour when we were in Key West in 2013 and found the most interesting part to be the polydactyl cats, so we opted to pass on the tour.

While Mark and Cindy did the tour, we walked around town and met a guy from Ironton, Ohio and someone from Cabin Creek, WV. We stopped at the Mile 0 marker for US 1, then went to the CVS on Duval Street to buy postcards for the Koehler boys and Gran. We were leaving the Key West post office when Cindy called to tell us that they had finished the tour. We returned to the cars and drove the short distance to Higgs Beach to walk out the White Street Pier. We chatted with a family whose daughter attended Marshall and looked around, enjoying the beautiful warm day. A fisherman on the pier was feeding the small fish he caught to a great egret named George.

We left Key West heading to Castaways Restaurant on Marathon Key to meet Steve Minor for dinner. Steve arrived before us and said that Castaways was closed, so we opted to try Seven Mile Grill at the northern base of the Seven Mile Bridge on Marathon Key. We all enjoyed our meals, with most of us having local seafood. It was great to see Steve. He returned to Pelico Paradise with us, where we chatted until 10 pm while Mary, Cindy and Jodie finished the Phase 10 game then played Skip-Bo. We packed for our trip to Dry Tortugas National Park tomorrow.

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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