Key West

There is some weather problems here in Key West, lots of wind, and threats of thunderstorms. Everyone on boats is hunkering down and hanging around waiting for a window of time to set sail again. Some of my sailing mates are still a little seasick so we have decided to go into Key West by car for the day. Went over a 7 mile bridge where they filmed True Lies on. The ocean shimmering continually changing, beautiful blues and green colours. Key West has the most intricate architecture. Balconies everywhere which would never be allowed with the building codes in Canada. green palm trees and luscious exotic plant. Had a lovely fish lunch at an outside restaurant/bar on the southernmost point of the US. Sun burnt tourists swimming on the beach. Huge cruise ships going by.

We had a great couple of days at Key West going to the Ernest Hemingway house and seeing where he wrote a lot of his novels, shopping, drinking beer, eating fish, and totally enjoying the local culture. Kind of looks like Mackinac Island with more character. There is an amazing number of HUGE YACHTS!! Key West drips of money. But it is not growing on the trees.

We had an amazing seafood feast at a restaurant at the marina overlooking those yachts with a wonderful musician setting the mood. James and I found a great little bar called the Hogs Breath where they had a fantastic blues band from Chicago playing. People dancing outside and a guy showed up with a huge parrot on his shoulder. He put the parrot down on a railing and the bloody bird starting dancing to the music. Too much. Got it on video. Talked to him later and he said he had gotten the bird when it was a baby 14 years ago and it had bonded with him but is not very friendly with many other people. Got a photo of him sitting on James though.

A couple of days in Key West was plenty for me. It looks like it is March break every day there. Party central. People were drinking first thing in the morning. I heard one young guy mention that he was so embarrassed because he passed out and woke up on his dock. Lucky he didn`t roll over too much. A lovely breakfast at another outside restaurant obviously owned by a gay guy. In the bathroom there were photos of the most eligible bachelor and it was a drag queen. They were going to be having a puppy shower later on in the day that my mates were invited to but alas, we must move on.