Key West

So when I said the hotel was a little noisy, I don't think i quite imagined it would sound a bit like a nightclub outside up until 1am. 🤯 I managed to sleep on and off until the music stopped, but poor Heath struggled. He's sensitive to noise at night. I felt terrible for picking the hotel, but he did get to sleep after the music finished, and we got up late so he could sleep in. He said it wasn't too bad in the end.

So, with a late start, we didn't actually leave the room till almost 11, but that was fine, still plenty of time in the day.

We started out visiting the Hemingway House, where Ernest Hemingway lived with his second wife. The house and grounds were lovely. It's not a massive house and fairly normal. Certainly not fancy or expensively decorated. The guide was funny and told lots of stories of Hemingway and his four favourite things that he did to excess. Writing, fishing, women, and drinking. Quite a hedonistic lifestyle, especially as he wasn't especially famous. Lucky, wife number 2 had a rich daddy (the founder of Pfizer).

The house and grounds are full of cats, 59 currently and apparently 70 when Hemingway lived there. That's a lot of cat food. Seems like they have the run of the place, too, with Betty Gable, the cat curled up on the bed in the master bedroom.

It was an interesting tour, and it was especially interesting to see a painting of Hemingway by an American painter who was the grandfather of someone we know back home. So that was very cool to see.

After the bohemian literary visit, we strolled down the street to the next famous house on my list, Truman's Little White House. We did stop to day hello to Herbie, the dog, who was on a lunch break in the shade from his kissing booth. Adorable. We also passed the Mile marker 0 for the US 1 highway. The birthplace for US traffic jams, I guess. At least judging on the traffic here in Key West.

Anyway, the next famous house was much more serious looking and neatly kept than the Hemingway House, but not overly surprising considering several Presidents and foreign signatories have stayed there, most famously Truman spending 11 winters running the USD government from there.

It was neat seeing the secret service desks around the building and seeing a presidential bed and work desk.

It was another super interesting visit, especially as you heard and saw more about someone who is probably remembered most for deciding to drop the atom bomb, but actually did a hug amount of good for civil rights including desegragating the military.

After the tour, we got a light bite of conch fritters and clam strips, along with a homemade key limeade for me. Yum.

We took our time to walk over to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park so we could go and look at the Civil War era fort, which was still in use up until the Cuban missile crisis, after which a new base was built next door. It looked like there had been a reenactment, so tents pitched in the courtyard and some people in old fashioned clothes. Mostly, they were packing up. Ot was funny cos on the way out of the park, we saw a group of 4 men dressed up in the old times clothes and with old fashioned rifles going into the park. Heath joked that there was going to be a huge inquisition as to why they were arriving late to the battle. 🤣

The parkinsonism has beaches and nature trails, so we took a walk and found the multidimensional signpost. It was slightly sad to see London on there, and knowing we were doing the 4565 mile journey the next day to go home (but also relieved and happy to know we were going home to Kairi).

We then explored the backstreet of Litle Bahama and Old town, and had a look at the lighthouse that is in land, but used to be by the ocean until the military dredged for the boats access and filled in to make more land on Key West.

Tired and hot, we headed back to the hotel for a lie down in the aircon, before eventually peosing ourselves put again to go and get dinner. Some super fresh Thai food. It was topped off by a visit to a cute ice cream shop called Wicked Licks. Heath decided to order a large cup- 4 scoops!!!! Even i thought it was a bit full for that, and went medium with 3 scoops. Still, he ate it all and was quicker than me. They had a cool slogan of "if you don't lock it, someone else will" and themed it around dogs. They had a shirt for sale and pics of dogs licking out of their cups. Cute.

We wandered the street eating ice cream and enjoying the warm evening before retiring to the hotel to relax on the balcony and head to bed. At least tonight, a Sunday night, the music was quieter.Read more