Key West Sunset and Tour

Here we are, finally back again. After scouting out the nearby area on Wednesday, we picked out a couple of things we wanted to do yesterday and today and managed to get most of them in. We had booked a sunset cruise for Thursday and a snorkeling trip on the same boat for today - you'll see the photos of the sunset cruise later in this post, but unfortunately the weather didn't look too good out on the reef for today, so the snorkeling got cancelled. We'll see if it looks any better for Saturday and see what happens.

After breakfast we headed off down Whitehead St. toward the historical attractions. Our first stop was in the Truman Annex, which is now mostly private residences and condos, but started life as part of the original submarine base in Key West. President Truman's 'Little White House' is the main attraction here. Over his time in office, he spent almost 6 months here and used it as a substitute White House. In fact, it was here that he made some of the most important decisions of his presidency, like the order to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although he was the most associated with the Little White House, he wasn't the only president to have stayed here, although the last one was Bill Clinton. Now it is completely given over as a museum, almost completely dedicated to the time Truman spent here.

The whole area is very pretty. The homes are almost all made of wood and painted pastel colours - this sets off very nicely the tropical gardens all around them.

One of the most photographed signs. Route 1
goes from this point in Key West all the
way to Kennebunkport, Maine.

Our next stop was the Hemingway House, a few blocks down the street. The house was actually built by one Asa Tift who made his money as a shipwreck salvager in the 1800s. When he died the house had no owner and was left to decay for about 50 years. At that point, Ernest Hemingway's second wife's uncle 'bought' the property by paying $8,000 in back taxes and gave it to them. They had to put quite a bit into upgrading the place but you can see from the photos that they did a really nice job, considering it was the 1930s.

 

The main house

The pool - the largest one on the key. In the back, the
'cabana' with Hemingway's studio on the upper level

The studio, complete with his typewriter and favourite chair. His
routine was to get up at 6:00 and work until he had written either
700 words or for 5 hours, whichever came first. Then he'd have lunch
and head off to his favourite bar in town.

Another view of the house from the side lawn
which is now set up for weddings. A beautiful
spot, but maybe not the luckiest - after all, Hemingway
was married 4 times, and none of his wives left him
a widower.

Hemingway wrote about 70% of his work here, including 'To Have and Have Not', 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' and 'The Sun Also Rises'. He also performed some distinguished military service, as an ambulance driver in WW I and as a reporter in WW II. Along with posters from the movies that were made from his books, there is a display of his own military artefacts in the house.

Of course, no mention of Hemingway House is complete without some attention given to the famous cats. The Hemingways got a cat named Snowball from a sea captain. Sailors were generally a very superstitious lot, and somehow believed that a six-toed cat was an extremely lucky critter to have around. Snowball, of course, had six toes on her front paws and became the ancestor of many of the cats now roaming the property. The cats are apparently not all too friendly, but we have to say we didn't run into that at all. Maybe they just know cat people when they see them. Here are a few photos of the feline inhabitants at Hemingway's:

You may have to look a little more carefully to
find the cat -- Miss Hurricane Camille
is curled up on the pillow. She didn't even
twitch an ear when the group came through the bedroom.

Duke Ellington - he's the uncle to a lot of the cats currently
in residence. You can easily see his six toes.

Does this guy look familiar? He could be Franklin's
brother, but his name is Humphrey Bogart. No six
toes, though.
 

Once we got done at Hemingway House and walked back to the hotel, we had a couple of hours to relax and get ready for our sunset cruise. There were a few options of course, since the sunset is one of the big attractions in Key West, but we didn't want to get on the bigger party boats. The hotel offers a trip on a 60' sailboat that is berthed right on the waterfront. It turned out that we didn't have to worry about a big crowd - there were only 4 of us booked to go out. And it was a really nice trip. The only sailboats we've been on have been 80' catamarans, so this was a different adventure. But enough talking, here are the pictures:

The view from our balcony over the hotel 'beach' and the sailboat
for our sunset cruise

For dinner we tried another of the restaurants at the marina, also serving really delicious fresh fish. We've thought about it, and have determined that other than one dinner for each of us on the first weekend, we've been eating fish or seafood of some kind every day. No wonder our clothes still seem to fit as well now as they did when we arrived!

This morning, since our afternoon snorkeling trip was cancelled, we decided to ride the Conch Train around town, checking out some of the areas we hadn't visited yet. Even though we have the car, it doesn't make sense to take it out to drive only a few minutes, and then not know where to park it.

The Conch Train took us all around the Old Town of Key West, the original settlement. The 'new town' is actually built on material dredged from the sea to create the harbour, and increased the total key size from 1x2 miles to 2x4 miles. There are lovely old houses everywhere you look in town, and that's because the law says if you buy a house, you can't just demolish it and build something new, you MUST restore the original outside view.

The restoration can take some effort since the original houses were built by shipbuilders in the same way they built ships - without nails, so the structure could bend to withstand storms and high winds. Not only do the same methods have to be used (which can be a good thing in hurricane season) but the outside embellishments need to be the same as well. And when you see some of the intricate gingerbread carving on the railings and around the porch tops, you can see that bringing these houses back up to snuff can be quite costly.

Since the clouds that were threatening this morning have now cleared off, along with the two cruise ships that were in today - the Carnival Victory and Oceania Regatta - we will probably stroll back over to Mallory Square to watch the sunset from there before having dinner. Be back tomorrow with more from whatever it is we decide to do.

 

Driving the Florida Keys

Well, here we are in Key West after a two-day sojourn in Islamorada after leaving Ft. Lauderdale. We had been in Key West before, on one-day excursions from cruise ships, but we hadn't ever experienced the drive down the keys. It really is an easy drive down the Florida Turnpike to Homestead and then down US1 (the Trans-Ocean Highway) all the way down to Mile 0, almost at the western end of Key West.

Even though it wasn't a long drive, we decided to break it at Islamorada, south of Key Largo, for a couple of days. In his research, Larry had found a small place called Ocean House. It was rather difficult to find, given that there are hardly any road signs other than mileage markers, and on top of that, the resort was on the Old Highway, not the new one...After a couple of wrong turns, we got there, and were very impressed with what we found:

The guest rooms - we were in the Ocean Dawn Suite
on the lower left end

Ocean House was completely renovated recently and looks it. Lorelelei, the manager, Adrian and all of the staff couldn't have been more friendly and helpful. Of course, it helped that the only scheduled guests were us and one other couple in the 8 rooms.It was the perfect place to spend a couple of days doing practically nothing, and that's just what we did. Monica took a kayak out a couple of times but much of our time was spent around the pool. Here are a few more photos from the area:

Inside of our room from both sides - quite comfy.

 

The view from a kayak - beach and 'beachfront' areas
near the water, with the pool behind them

This covered cabana was a nice place to get out of the
sun but still be near the pool

On Tuesday we had lunch 'delivered' to our cabana tent by the pool.
Other than to take a dip in the pool and whirlpool we
spent almost all day out there.

After 2 days of doing practically nothing, we got in the car and drove for another 2 hours to get to Key West. We're staying at the Hyatt Key West Resort just near Mallory Square, where everyone goes for the sunsets. We've only been here since about 2:00 this afternoon, but we've already walked the length of Duval St., visited the Southernmost Point marker and walked all the way back to the hotel on Whitehead St (passing Hemingway House and the Truman Annex which we will check out in the next day or so) - managing to get in our 10,000 Fitbit steps.

Driving along US1, the Overseas Highway

Looking towards the west from our balcony. The sun's just a little
too far over for us to see the sunset - the next hotel
is in the way.

Boats anchored in front of a small island right across from us

A couple of the old houses in town

For dinner we checked out Alfonso's, one of the local restaurants no more than a five-minute walk from the hotel, bordering one of the larger marinas in the area.

There are lots of things we'd like to do in the next few days - we'll bring you up to date on them in the next post.

Florida - Fort Lauderdale

Surprise! We're away again, although without any exotic cruise destinations on the agenda; just a drive from Fort Lauderdale to Key West. And we must say it has been a bit strange so far to have flown to Florida and not anticipate boarding a ship. But, just to keep in the spirit of things, here's one of the ships we watched sail out, the Royal Princess:

Right now we're just hoping that the weather improves as we head further south. We arrived on Friday to a nice enough day, but very windy. Fortunately our beachfront balcony has given us good protection from the wind, otherwise it would have been impossible to sit outside. For these first thee days, we've been at the Lago Mar Resort, where we stayed with Monica's mother and Renate last year. We had a first-floor room with a walk-out patio last year and it was great - this year with the wind we're not sure it would have been used as much so we're just as happy to be a couple of floor up. Our balcony also offered better protection from the rain that we've been having off and on through the weekend.

And of course it was Thanksgiving weekend - that means lots of families getting together for the holiday. And in this case, also lots of kids. Not a real issue, but it made for a noisier Friday and Saturday afternoon and evening. Although we didn't get into the pool, we did manage a couple of walks along the beach. See the difference in the weather?

This is supposed to be a relaxing vacation, no all-day tours, no needing to be up at 6:00 for a 7:00 departure for anything (unlike our other trips this year) and so far we've managed to fill the time with visits to a couple of shopping malls - NO, not on Black Friday! We're not that crazy, although we seemed to have timed our visit to Sawgrass Mills perfectly on Saturday. We arrived while there were still parking spots in abundance, and we left just as it was starting to get busy with people having nothing else to do since it was raining again. So we can strike one or two more things off our Christmas shopping list.

For anyone who is following our Lifestyle Change blog at http://howwegothealthier.blogspot.ca, we're seeing how well we can keep up our Fitbit logs while we're away. For those not familiar with what we're doing, we're using our Fitbit trackers to log our steps and exercise, and the accompanying food log to cover calories consumed, trying to eat smarter and more carefully. Right!! It's hard enough doing that with the food we cook, never mind when eating your meals in restaurants every day. It is a bit of a challenge, but so far, so good. Monica's even got some ideas for recipes she's going to incorporate into the blog when we get home.

Salad of mixed greens with grilled pineapple, from
Aquario at the hotel

Surf & Turf at Trulucks's. Do you think they had a
run on broccoli? It was delicious, anyway.

On Sunday evening, we had dinner with Susan at Truluck's, a very nice seafood restaurant not too far away from the hotel and Susan's place. We had a great time and are hoping we can get together with her again when we're back from Key West.

Well, now it's Monday morning. Not particularly bright outside, but also without a breath of wind on the beach. Time to pack up and head down to Islamorada where we'll be spending the next two days. We should be there in the early afternoon, so expect some more interesting photos on the next post.

San Francisco Explorations

The last three days of the trip were spent in San Francisco. We have been there a few times before, but Norm and Barb have only been there for one day with us and the boys around 2005 during a Las Vegas long weekend - but that's another story.

We left the ship and caught two taxis to the hotel. The taxis in southern California are for the most part rather small, even the SUVs, since energy conservation and pollution control are obviously very important to all residents. We even noticed that there is preferred parking in some places for hybrid or electric vehicles! So we couldn't fit 4 people and 4 suitcases into any one of the taxis or vans we saw. Our routes were rather roundabout due to construction all over the place, even in front of the hotel, but we managed to get there.

After check-in, a quick stop at the concierge desk armed us with city maps and information on where we could buy passes for the municipal transit system. And then we were off! The 'F' Streetcar Line is really amazing. It is the main tourist line, along with the cable car system. The streetcars run along the Embarcadero from Fisherman's Wharf, then goes up Market Street to Union Square. The other neat thing about the line is that they have bought streetcars from all over the world to use - even from the TTC! We saw one of the old 'Red Rocket' cars, but never had an opportunity to ride on one.

We took the streetcar to Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf, checked out the Pier and headed over to the wharf to find something for lunch. We ended up at Alioto's, one of the oldest restaurants in the area, having been on the wharf since 1926.

 

The view from Alioto's at Fisherman's Wharf

 

 

 

The Hyde Street turnaround. Just a block away from
Ghirardelli Square

 

 

And after lunch we decided to walk around to the cable car track to see if we could get aboard the Hyde Street car to Union Square. And, after a half hour or so waiting, we finally boarded and took the car all the way to the end. It was quite a trip, and a lot of fun. And since our hotel was down at the end of Market Street, we decided to walk back...Of course, on the way we passed one of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shops and had to go in for 'dessert'.

 

Friday evening was rather low-key, and then we discovered that our planned trip to Alcatraz was a bust because of the US Federal Government shutdown. We had forgotten that the island is actually a federal park, and was closed to visitors. Once we determined that the tour company would credit back our credit card for the tickets, we decided to do a harbour tour instead and still see some of the prison. Here are some of the photos from that tour:

The sea lion rafts at Pier 39. Always a big hit with the tourists

 

 The fireboat in the harbour didn't have any other reason to
be spouting but it accompanied us all the way out to the bridge.
That's Sausalito in the background.

The Golden Gate Bridge and the south side building. The north
side doesn't have that extra little span and has a much smaller building.

Some fishing boats off the cliffs near the north side
of the bridge.

Alcatraz Island, the prison of last resort. They say that even
the bodies of dead prisoners were taken off the island
in chains.

 

Do you think this warning was clear enough?

The Ferry Building from the water side. Our hotel is the
one in the bottom right corner with the tiered balconies.

The Atrium of the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero.

 

Our view of the old span of the Oakland Bay Bridge at night.
The lights move constantly; it is the largest light sculpture
in the world.

Saturday evening we went to see the long-running musical 'Beach Blanket Babylon'. This is a spoof of current celebrities, mainly politicians and singers, and is quite funny and current. Especially the wig parts of the outfits, all highly exaggerated. Unfortunately we couldn't take any photos but you can see more about it if you Google the name.

Sunday, we (Larry and Monica) went back to Neptune's Palace for our traditional Dungeness Crab lunch. Need we say much more?

 

And for dinner, we met up to finally get to the oyster bar at the Ferry Building and then headed for the BART rapid transit system to get out to the O.co Stadium in Oakland for the NFL game between the Raiders and the San Diego Chargers. It was certainly different, but not as manic as we had been led to believe. Maybe that was because the game wasn't being televised, or maybe because it was originally a 1:00 game that got moved to 8:30. We found out why when they showed a time-lapse video of the conversion from a baseball stadium to a football stadium, that must take about 14 hours to complete - and you have to remember that the Oakland Athletics are in the playoffs this year and played on Saturday evening.

 

 

All in all, a very interesting experience! And having returned to the hotel just before midnight, we had to be prepared for a 9:15 pickup for the airport.

The last photo of the trip, taken from the plane:

The Oakland Bay Bridge in the foreground, Golden Gate
in the back, and the City by the Bay waiting for
our return.

 

It was a great trip; we saw much more of California that we had ever done before, and discovered that it is a wonderful place to visit for the scenery, the food, the wine and the very friendly people. Thanks to everyone we met along the way for being so welcoming, and thanks to you for following along. Hope you enjoyed!