Key West

I don't think anyone acts right in Key West--and this is one of the few pic of us there, because most of them show us looking like fools. that, and I cannot reliably report what we were doing in each photo, because Honest to God, I do not remember. And I am pretty sure that is for the best.
On our second day there--when we intended to return to Key Largo, we thought we might should get some culture. At least that way, we would be more likely to have stories we could remember. To that end, we went to the Little White House. Truman spent a lot of time here, but so have a lot of presidents.

This house is just off of Duval Street, which is where most of the action is. It was all decorated up for Halloween, but its larger claim to fame is as the house where the original Chucky lived. I learned all about it on the Ghost walk I pirated, which scared Amy. THAT is not what should have scared her about this experience.
This is Ernest Hemingway's house--stop 2 on our get cultured tour. I really wanted to go here, but mostly just to say I did, and it turned out to be really interesting.
This is his bedroom. Only this cat hangs out there--perched up on the pillow. Evidently, he is the boss of the upstairs, and only allows one other specific cat to ever come up there. Now that is power. All of the 60 cats on the property are descended from his actual cats--and many of them are those six-toed freak cats. Evidently he got off on that sort of thing, so lots of these cats have more than their fair share of toes.
This is Hemingway's office, where he did most of his writing. Back in the day, there was a catwalk from the second floor of his house to this office, which is on the second floor of the guest house. That is gone now.
The grounds really are gorgeous, and it is cool how the cats mosey around and somehow manage to ignore all the people.
This is the Episcopal Church on the corner of Duval--it is haunted too, supposedly. I just thought it was pretty.
This is Amy, doing God knows what on the phone, God knows where. Actually, I think that might have been the front porch of the place we stayed. More on that later
I do not know where this is. But I can tell you from what I am wearing that this was taken on night two--the night we were not supposed to be still in Key West. We learned so much about Hemingway and his drinking holes that we had to go have a reenactment--and at each turn, we would learn that even though certain bars were supposed to have been the one, they were not really--that one next door was, or some such garbage, so then we had to go there. Somewhere along the way, we ran into 2 for 1 beers, and the rest of the day was shot clear to hell.

This did not help. This is a Big League Chew. Pretty, isn't it? We had it at the Lazy Gecko. It is cranberry juice and Three Olives bubble gum flavor vodka. I am not a real fan of cranberry juice or vodka for that matter, but now howdy was it good. We shared it, which was good because it was pretty sweet. This was also the scene of me angering a real jackaass of a gay man. I mean really angering him. No matter how much I tried, I could not fix it. That was interesting. He looked like Mr Clean and he was mad even though I did not even tell him that.
Some people.
This is a naked bar--at least on the third floor. And for real, there are signs that say "No Public Sexual Activity". Who ever would have thunk I would ever be in a place with a need for a sign like that? Not me. Certainly not at my age. I never saw any naked people though.
Sloppy Joe's is the most famous bar in Key West. It was a nice place, great music even in the middle of the day. There were all kinds of people in there, families, older people, groups of younger people, kids etc..that made it kind of fun to people watch. The cruise ships were in but it was about 70 degrees and windy as hell, so they did not have anything else to do. This is supposedly where Hemingway hung out--but it is not the location he hung out in. That was really around the corner, at Capt Tony's--also haunted. See how some girls can get a little liquored up in the daytime, just trying to have a legitimate cultural experience?
This was truly one of the best things about Key West. We stayed at Simonton Court, on Simonoton Street just off Duval. It aint cheap, but we got a good deal at the last minute, and even though I am very much not a bed and breakfast kind of girl, I loved it. Too bad we were so busy, we did not get to spend too much time in it.
This is the main house of Simonton Court. It has 4 or 6 rooms in it, I think, and they serve breakfast on the court in front of it. The whole place was a cigar factory back in the day--this Mansion, as they call it, was the owners house. There are a couple other houses they call cottages, and a townehouse, and an "inn" and a manor house, which is what we got.
I do not remember the last time I was "shown" to my room. This is the foot path from the front of the property to each of the other accomodations. There are also four pools---one is a black bottom pool, one that used to be the cistern for the factory, and two other little ones. Each place has their own pool
This was part of our room. The curtains hid the sliding doors that walked out directly to our pool.
This was our little pool. Too cold to get in it, which I bet does not happen very often.
All in all, Key West was awesome. I am not sure it is worth$3.8 million for a place to rehab like this one, but it was great. I cannot wait to take Barry there. I thought it would be just debauchery and hedonism, and there is that--like New Orleans sort of. But cleaner. There is so much more though. We never even sat foot on a beach, we were so busy.

Now hopefully that angry Mr Clean dude will not see me when we go back