Key West Day

Our only full day in Key West started out with a nice little breakfast at the hotel. They had a decent spread, with items from waffles to hard boiled eggs to cereal, in the little lobby area. You could sit at a few little tables inside or take your food outside to various tables around the pool area. We each grabbed a couple things and juice, then hopped back into the room quick to prepare for our day. Kacie had found a cool pier and a botanical garden to check out about a mile and half away. We figured we could walk down Duval to the southern most point, which is a total tourist trap, it’s not the southern most point, and then cut over to the garden.

We started off on a mission and made it to the point pretty quickly. But it was hot, even for Key West, and the sun was brutal. I looked on my phone and it said the UV was dangerous. So we tried to stick to the shade of trees as we continued on. It was a sweaty ordeal. And truthfully, I was impressed we both kept going. We got to the pier pretty quickly and from there, you have a good view of the water’s edge up and down the east coast of Key West, along with some pretty cool Navy radar domes. We chilled there, figuratively, for a bit checking it out until we moved on. The garden was only a bit further up the coast. We didn’t stop sweating though whether we were moving or not at that point, probably way before.

We got to the garden, which was at one point a civil war fort. There was a nice volunteer at the entrance that gives you a little backstory of the building and the garden, along with her little pitch for donations. They don’t charge you to get in, which is uncommon in Florida, but do rely on donations to keep it going. It didn’t look like they were hard up though, it was a pretty nice place. You started out from inside the fort, where they had various flowers and plants on display, and then went out into the open and various garden displays. It had a nice layout wrapping around the remaining fort structures, featuring a fountain, multiple sitting areas and a waterfall.

It was still crazy hot and humid as we wondered around, but there were definitely a few good spots to stop and cool down around the garden. There were a lot of lizards to watch as well. These little bastards are pretty funny sometimes.

Once we got our fill of plants, Kacie would’ve went home with a few if she could, we planned our route back to Duval and the hotel. It was shower time after the trek. We started back on a more direct route this time, cutting off the tourist crap on the perimeter and walked through a more residential area to get back to Duval. Neither of us were thrilled with our predicament of how far away we were and how hot it was, but again, we hiked away in the heat.

Once we were back on Duval, we decided to just get back to the hotel. That didn’t last long however, because we saw an ice cream shop that had key lime soft serve. It was served on a cone, but was more icy that creamy… and it was perfect. I think it was kind of a shock to our overheated systems, but after a few bites, it was like heaven. I would recommend it to anyone regardless, tasty and refreshing.

That’s all it seemed to take to bring our spirits back up, although we still wanted to get back and get a shower. But, then we saw a little pizza shop a little further up the street. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we stopped and each got a slice and a drink. We ate it at one of the sidewalk tables and sat there for a minute taking everything in. It wasn’t the best pizza I’ve had, not by far, but was delicious at the time. After that we finally made it the rest of the way to the room and got showered up. It was great to wash off and sit in the AC for a minute.

Now that we had cooled down, we had to figure out what our next move would be. We knew we wanted to hit Mallory Square for sunset, get something to eat for real, and get drinks. We accomplished them all. Having never been to Mallory Square before, we decided to head there first and check it out, before it got packed full of people. The day before we had seen people wandering around with liquor slushies in sippy cups. It was still hot as hell out, so we wanted them. They were pretty easy to find about halfway between the room and Sloppy Joe’s. I got some kind of grape deal and Kacie got some kind of Pina colada one. They were frozen and great to sip on as we walked up to the square. As we got there we could see that there were no cruise ships around, so nothing in the way of the sunset. It was still about an hour and a half before sunset, so although our original plan was to eat after sunset, we decided that we could probably get something in before. But, we had no idea where. I had originally though Margaritaville, which wasn’t far from the room and neither of us had ever been there before. However, everyone said the food sucked. So that was out. We thought maybe Sloppy Joe’s again, since that seems to be our spot, but we wanted something new. We ended up waling up and down the street for longer than we probably needed to, looking at menus and trying to kill our slushies.

We finally ended up at an Irish place a few blocks from the square, called Irish Kevin’s. We each got a mojito and some food. Burger for me, tacos for Kacie. I wasn’t that crowded so we got our food pretty quickly. They had a guy and a guitar playing, but he was no Cat 5…

After finishing up our food and mojitos, we headed back to the square. We were cutting it pretty close to sunset by then and the crowds had already formed. But even though we got there right before sunset, we got a spot along the coast to watch it go down. How magical, kind of. There was a cloud right on the horizon to block out the actual sun set, but it was still pretty cool. There are various street performers that also congregate in the square for sunset, one of which was singing away 10 or 15 feet from us as we watched the sky.

Then after the sun was down and people were dispersing, a lot of us gravitated over to a guy named Reid-diculous. So I assume his given name was Reid. Apparently he has performed in 26 countries, but liked performing in Key West since he was from here. And maybe he was just saying that, who knows. He did some crazy balancing while flinging whips around and catching knives and axes. He did this with a couple volunteers from the crowd placing things around to balance on and throwing sharp objects at him. At one point I even gave him a crisp high five and told him good luck. It must have worked since he didn’t fall. His thing was to bring people together to have a laugh, watch some stunts, and stay off of their phones for a few minutes. He did do that. And then held out a big black bag for donations. We hit him up for a couple bucks we had in our pockets, it’s a credit card society…

After all that, we contemplated getting more drinks, but we were pretty spent from the day and headed back to the room for yet another shower, which we again needed. I looked when we got back and it was still 89, even at night. That was enough for one day, tomorrow we’d be heading to Key Largo for the rest of our trip.