Family Vacation – Part 5

This has been a long day. We decided that today would be a daytrip to Key West. First time for all us.

We started with a return to the Stuffed Pig for breakfast. Crab cake and eggs today. Still good and more than I could eat. After a quick family photo op with Willy B. Bacon, we headed south on US1. Very pleasant drive down to Key West with some great scenery.

Just as we hit mile marker 5 it started to rain. Didn’t think too much about it at the time. We made our way around the west side of the city to Caroline St. and on to Duval. At this point the pedestrians were extra aggressive due to the rain. Somehow we managed to get ourselves on a dead end alley behind the Westin parking garage. One five-point turn later and we got into a small parking lot to get our bearings.

It was still raining and a bit of a mad house, so we decided to head east to the southernmost point marker. The closer we got, the more it rained. We parked within sight of the marker and tried to wait out the storm. After about 30 minutes, and seeing a trash can float past us in the street. We went back west to get in the parking deck and just do something.

We parked and set off in the light rain. Next door is the art museum where we stopped briefly to come up with some sort of plan. It was time for lunch so we asked a hostess at the museum for a suggestion and she pointed us to the Roof Top Cafe. Excellent choice. We had a tasty, fun lunch. Girls even hsd virgin cocktails By the time we were done the rain had stopped and the urban flood waters had begun to recede. We started walking east on the south side of Duval.

I’ve never been to New Orleans, but Maria the veteran traveller says that Duval St. is an island version of the French Quarter.

We walked, we got hot, we bought a few trinkets. By 7:00 we had made our way back to Mallory Square. That was enough for one day and we decided to leave Key West and head back to Marathon. I may write more about my impression of Key West in another post.

Maria found a restaurant on the south end of Marathon for us. I can’t recall the name at the moment (I’ll update the post later), but it had good reviews. When we walked up, all we could see was a shack, a half dozen picnic tables, a 10-seat bar, and a hostess stand. We waited. And waited. No employees in sight. Waited. Near the end of our patience an apologetic hostess emerged from the shack. It turns out that the shack was hiding a fairly large, air conitioned dining room. I know this because we had to walk through it to get to our crappy table on the dock. Actually it was more of a covered storage area with four tables next to the canal. Kinnamon picked the table and it was her birthday so … As a bonus there was an industrial fan on high sitting six feet behind my chair. What? Speak up, I can’t hear you over the gale. The food was bland too. Finish eating, drive to condo, shower, bed.