Key West Night One & Day Two

WED PM

Duval Street, it's all attitude and was so much more relaxing for me than a certain New Orleans street. I walked up and down and took it all in, the people, the shops, the street musicians [who seemed to multiply after the sun went down]; even the smell of cigar smoke from the shops and men playing a role didn’t bother me that much.

I had a wonderful supper at Conch Republic Seafood; stir-fry shrimp and scallops with Asian vegetables and a Passion Fruit sweet & sour glaze served in a pineapple quarter with rice. Plus a cold Coors and a glass of Riesling wine. Followed by desert of Key Lime pie, what else, and a beautiful sunset.

THU

Today was tourist day. I first went to local Cemetery to see Battleship USS Maine plot and memorial that was offered by the citizens of Key West to the Navy because Key West was the closest American port to Cuba and accepted by the Navy since the Navy did not have a burial site. Next was Earnest Hemingway’s house and followed that with a tour of the “Little White House” that President Truman used so often. What I like about these tours is the way they have reinstalled the original furnishings or done near perfect copies from photographs; really gives me a sense of how it was when they were using the house. I wanted to take the tour out to Dry Tortugas National Park but after I found out it was an all day tour and cost $135.00 I let that one slide. I did a lot of walking and driving around the downtown historic section.

There are antique stores and then there are antiques in use. There is a payphone on the wall at the park shower, when was the last time you saw a payphone?

Back to the base to rest a bit and cook some hamburgers for supper. It started to sprinkle a bit about 10-minutes after I started the coals at the time I was going to put the burgers on but I went about my plan and the shower passed on, that doesn’t look like what going to happen in the next hour so I guess I will stay home tonight.