Return from Key West

Oh my, it IS a long drive. A friend sent me this news item and I was quite surprised to read that this all happened on the causeway which is about 3 1/2 hours of boredom. Now wonder she could pull that off:

One of the things abut Key West is that it seems like a big bag of nuts has all slid down there to be together. Funny how some places are just so attractive to the oddities of life. But I digress. We spent two full days walking around in 90 degree heat, but I lived to tell about it. Basically there was no wind and I think I found the place on earth where my hair isn't a constant issue because for the whole trip it looked GREAT. (Wind is my arch enemy, humidity is my best friend. I know, TMI.) While LOOKING GOOD, I did see some cool stuff, like some teensy bananas growing next to Hemingway's pool. Tiny bananas, great big pool:
I'll spare you the 20 cat portraits because they were everywhere. I'll spare yo also the Mother Hen and her Chicks portraits because they were also everywhere. One stop was the Hemingway House. We did a self roaming tour and went through all the rooms- the place was beautifully designed to take advantage of the shade and the breezes. I loved the huge French doors in every room leading to wrap around balconies. The house remains unrestored and I loved the scale of it, so different from modern houses yet very livable. It was fun poking around looking at his cups and saucers with the cuttlefish designs. And his quite fabulous bathroom floor tiles. The big windows in the bathroom looked out over his grounds and the room was flooded with light. These tiles have fish and squid in abstract designs that are wonderful. Love the mustard yellow and black too.
And of course we had to partake in the daily sundown ritual on the pier. Last time we were there it was a wooden pier, much smaller. Now it's all stone and brick with fancy steps and sitting areas covered with folks trying to make a buck with whatever talent they think they have to share from Tarot readers to a guy who makes airplanes out of Coke cans. Everything from fire eaters to a guy in his 50's who does cartwheels and flips over audience members and garbage cans... on cement, a guy who balances a unicycle on his nose 'so he can earn college money', and a dirty pirate who howls 'ahoy matey' way too many times. There is a one man band (I bet the last time you saw that was on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour) who stood around clacking and jangling away for an hour, and a black guy who had on black clothes and black makeup and sat in the center of the pier on a bench behind a bunch of palm fronds- he would occasionally call out that he was the original bush man and scare the crap out of people who couldn't see him until he spoke behind his 'bushes'.

But this was the real focus of being there: Gorgeous sunsets that are watched by hundreds of people and then applauded, like this was the best show ever seen in spit of it happening every night.

I wish my little camera picked up the actual red of the sun, it was amazing. had fun, got some questions answered and we saw everything we needed to see. Whew. But, per the newspaper article above, my long ride back over that endless causeway was taken up by knitting rather than using any razors. I promise.