Florida Keys Vacation

Wes and I decided to go on vacation in the FL Keys for a week. We spent the first couple of days in Key West and had a variety of food from very bad to very good. The very bad food was weird-tasting, rubbery shrimp at Margaritaville and a burned club sandwich. The good food was at Pisces restaurant and it was fantastic. If I ever go back to KW, I will definitely be visiting Pisces. We also spent a day going out to Tortuga National Park. I was a long boat ride and of course I get seasick, so I had to take Dramamine. I was therefore a bit sleepy all day. It was a pretty cool park. Huge! There was an island just over the water that was swarming with birds and very noisy. We visited Ernest Hemingway’s home, which was not that extraordinary, but there were about 50 cats living on the premises. I was relieved to see that in some cases having many cats does not necessarily mean you are a crazy cat person :) The weirdest thing about Key West was the roosters everywhere and they were continually crowing all morning and evening.
We spent the remainder of the time in the middle of the Keys at Conch Key Cottages. I wouldn’t recommend this place, not because the facilities weren’t very nice, but because there wasn’t much to do and we had to drive 10-20 mi to do anything. We did go to Theater of the Sea, which is like Seaworld only in miniature and more "save the world" oriented. We saw a dolphin show which was very cool. They also had about 10 rescue turtles, some of which seemed to be doing just fine and others were sadly permanent wards of the facility because of their defects or damage. V. Sad.

The one perk of staying at the conch Key Cottages was the upside down jellyfish. I had never seen them before, but the entire bottom of the "beach" was covered with them. I had to visit them several times a day to see what they were up to. :) Some woman was there the first day poking at them with a stick, trying to flip them back over to save them.

We spent the last day at Fort Lauderdale beach on the N end away from all the Spring Breakers. I managed to mostly not get burned. There were a few weirdly shaped and random spots were I missed with the sunblock, but on the whole I managed to maintain my porcelain, ghostly complexion. So over all the vacation was a success.