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| Sunday, November 23, 2003 Got back from our Florida Keys trip on Saturday night. We arrived in Chicago a bit later than expected but that seemed to be our fate for this trip. Let’s start from day 1, shall we? Monday (11/17) – Our flight was scheduled to leave at 7:50 am so I asked Danny to get to my place between 5:30 to 6:00 am. We’re good until we get to the El platform. Waiting… waiting… waiting… We were there for an eternity before an express train breezed by us. Grrr… I mentally drafted a message to the CTA but, lucky for them, the next train arrived in a couple minutes. I’m annoyed at the world and poor Danny is trying to calm me down. What a beginning. We get on the train and I tell myself that I’m happy. I’m not at work. I’m off to fun and sun. I am happy. Darn it! We got to our gate and there’s a slew of people so we sit at another gate. Then we hear the announcement that our flight is delayed because of the fog. We decided to hang out at a sports bar. Danny got chili fries and I got iced tea. An hour passes so I decide to run over to the gate to see what’s going on. There’s going to be even more of a delay. Our plane was forced to land in Fort Wayne, Indiana, since it was running out of fuel. Lovely. I am still happy. We finally board our plane at 11 am but I don’t think we were in the air until 11:45 am. We left O’Hare one hour after we were supposed to arrive at Ft. Lauderdale. The whole point in taking a morning flight was ruined. We wanted to arrive in Florida so that we wouldn’t drive through the Keys at night and we end up arriving in the middle of the evening rush hour. According to every map/directions we’ve seen, Highway 1 is the way to go. No one ever mentioned that it’s a local road. Local road and traffic makes for a very grouchy Eliza and therefore a very edgy Danny. I silently promise myself that I will never ever leave home again without getting turn-by-turn directions from MapBlast. Ok, enough complaining. We eventually left the mainland and found ourselves in pitch black crossing bridges and imagining a big, big ocean surrounding us. But the coolest part is that I had a strong signal on my new cell phone! Go Nokia!! We had a late dinner at the Islamorada Fish Co. where I would highly recommend the medium size Florida stone crab claws. To die for yummy. I got a mahi dish with an interesting relish but the fish itself wasn’t cooked well. Those mile markers are very handy. The top of the Keys is 120-something and Key West is 0 so we kept ourselves awake by counting down. We finally got the Curry Mansion at 11 pm and our adventure didn’t slow down. We found the envelope in the mailbox with our key and the note that said our room was in the building across the street. Okay. So we lugged our baggage across the street. The key didn’t work in any of the locks and I couldn’t jimmy open the patio door. I really should’ve learned how to pick locks. Anyway, we’re both tired and I’m on the verge of getting snappy so we decided to call the “emergency” number. The guy asked for our room number and told us that we were at the wrong building. Alrighty then. We finally get into our room and I’m awake again. I always like checking out hotel rooms. Duval Street is still kicking and we’re tempted to go out but it was a long day so we called it a night. Tuesday (11/18) – We breakfasted with the other guests by the swimming pool. The breakfast area doubles as the happy hour area and is quite charming. There’s this huge tree with orchids attached to it and the tables are shaded by umbrellas lined with little white lights. The morning was spent doing the ultra touristy stuff (everything in Key West is touristy). Went to the Southernmost Point and saw the Southernmost House. The next stop was the Ernest Hemingway House where we saw the six-toed kitties. It was pretty neat to see everything and hear the stories. I read that some of the stories are fabricated but it’s entertaining none the less. I was expecting to see tons of cats and got precisely that. They were all over the place! I didn’t expect to see a rooster which was hanging out in the corner of the garden. Strange. We stopped by at the lighthouse which gave us a nice view of entire city. We saw more chickens in the yard but this time there were a few hens along with roosters. It was a little past noon when we decided to go to Fort Zachary Taylor beach. We needed to eat lunch so we were originally heading off for Cuban food but I got hit with a wave of tiredness so we went to Margaritaville on Duval. The margaritas were made for newbies so they were really sweet. =( The food was good though. I had a conch sandwich that was pretty good. Danny got a mahi dish that looked alright too. After lunch, Danny mentioned that he’s never had sandals to wear at a beach so we went to the Kino sandal factory. We both found a pair that we liked. The leather feels really nice. The walk to the beach was brutal for me. I was unbelievably tired and my legs felt like they were made of jelly. Quite unusual since my legs are the last things to get tired. Well, we finally made it to the beach and I conked out for a couple hours. It was exactly what I needed because on the way back I was back to my usual pace. We did make it for some of the Sunset Celebration festivities. A cruise ship was docked so there were tons of people around. The performers are amusing. I couldn’t decide if the cat man is a little kooky or if he knew how to work a crowd. There were tons of vendors and this is where I bought a hand-painted bottle for my peanut oil. It wasn’t the unique experience it’s hyped up to be but it was entertaining so it was a good way to spend a sunset. Half Shell was our dinner spot. They had amazingly good raw oysters and clams. To die for yummy. The red conch chowder was a loser though. We decided that we were too tired to go bar hopping so we just lounged in the swimming pool at the B&B. |