We started the day with a breakfast buffet at the hotel, and then it was time to pay for the trip. In other words, we had to submit to a timeshare sales presentation. We had been through this once before, when we went to Puerto Vallarta. And it wasn't too bad. The woman told us right up front that after we heard what she had to say, if we didn't want to buy, that would be the end of it. And I believed her - I'm sure that would have been the end of it, except... we bought.
Are we NUTS?? Well, maybe...
Of course, we had gone in bound and determined not to buy. But this woman was good. She made it sound like a great deal. And as timeshare prices go, we did get a very good deal. So will it be worth it in the long run? Time alone will tell. All I can say at this time is that it would definitely NOT be worth it for people who don't travel much. But for people who like to travel as much as Terry and I do, it just might work out. Ask me a few years from now whether it was worth it.
After we finished up the paperwork and got out of there, we hit the road for Key West (w) . Again, let's turn to Google Maps to see where we went:
As you can see, Key West is the last and westernmost of the Florida Keys (w) , a chain of offshore islands extending out from the tip of Florida. And there's a highway, the Overseas Highway (w) , that hops from island to island along the entire chain. Those of you who've read my other trip logs know how much I like to drive to "the end of the road," so you can imagine that I've wanted to take this drive for years.
Here are some pictures I took along the way. This one shows the highway, with water on both sides and one of the keys in the distance:
This one also shows the highway, but off to the right, you can just see a remnant of the earlier Overseas Railroad (w) , which predates the highway. Parts of this disused railway are now open to pedestrians and fishermen (fisherpersons?), but parts are inaccessible due to parts of it being missing.
Key West has a very laid back, party time kind of image, and one evidence of that is the number of stores selling T-shirts and sandals. I saw this sign several times along the drive, and was amused by the tag line on the bottom:
There were also lots of dive shops (scuba dive, that is) and shell shops. I also saw lots of pelicans, including a whole flock of them sitting on the old railway. I also saw signs warning me to watch out for key deer (w) , which I later learned are an endangered species of deer that only live on the Keys. I never saw any, though.
We drove across one key after another, and as we went, I jotted down their names. Here's the list:
...and there may be others that I've overlooked. Some of these were big (Key Largo, in particular, is very large), and some were quite small (I think we crossed Shark Key in about 30 seconds). And along the way, I often saw very small keys - or as I called them, "keylets" - off to either side of the highway. I think most of these were uninhabited:
And so we finally arrived on Key West... just a few minutes too late. We had previously booked a trolley tour of the island, and the last tour of the day leaves at 4:30. Well, we had spent so long doing the paperwork for the timeshare that we didn't make it in time for the tour. It was close - we actually hit the island at about 4:10. But the traffic on the island was so heavy - it was New Year's Eve, after all - that we couldn't make it to the trolley stop in time.
However, the tour is one of those that goes in a circular route, and you can hop off and on at any time. So we found one of the tour stops, waited till it came around, and hopped on. We missed about half of the tour, but you take what you can get.
Here's a map of Key West:
Notice at the northwest corner of the island, there's the notation "Sloppy Joe's Bar." This is the approximate location of where we joined the tour. It circled around the island, and let us off just a few blocks from where we got on.
Here are some pictures of things we saw on the tour (in no particular order):
Ernest Hemingway's house
(w)
Harry S Truman's house
(w)
Kelly McGillis and Calvin Klein also have homes there, but I didn't get any pictures of those.
Old City Hall
St. Pauls Church
Key West Lighthouse
(w)
Sloppy Joe's Bar
(w)
After the tour, we went for dinner to a restaurant recommended by the tour guide: El Meson de Pepe, a Cuban restaurant:
...where we had a wonderful dinner, and were entertained by a Cuban band:
I was amused by this sign - a relic of earlier times:
This brings me to add something about the loneliness of the Cuban people who live in Florida. There was a man on the bus tour who was from somewhere near Fort Lauderdale, I believe, who came to the U.S. when he was sixteen, in around 1965. I had encountered this when I worked as an interpreter... we had a bailiff who was in a similar situation. People come (according to the bus driver) as close as they can get to Havana, and cry sometimes. They hear about loved ones they have lost at home (somehow) and grieve for them. I told the man how much I had enjoyed studying under Cuban porofessors as a foreign language major at the University of Redlands, and how much respect I have for the Cuban people. He was touched by this. He recommended another Cuban restaurant that he thought was excellent, but too far to walk (and we didn't know the area, etc.).
By the time we left the restaurant, the atmosphere in the area was decidedly energetic - kind of like New Orleans at Mardi Gras. We contemplated staying till midnight and ringing in the New Year along with the other partiers, but we decided against it. As we got back in our car, I noticed the police presence:
You can only see four police cars in that picture, but there were a few more further up the street.
One thing that I regret about this quick visit is that I didn't have the time to drive out the southwest corner of the island, where there's a monument that purports to be the southernmost point in the continental US. That really would have been the end of the road. I guess I'll have to go back sometime...
And so we drove back to the mainland. As the New Year approached, we still weren't back to the hotel, so we pulled off the freeway and found a place to park, so we could kiss at midnight... although I had to wake Terry up to do it. All along the way - while going through the Keys, and as we drove up the mainland back to Fort Lauderdale - I saw fireworks going off all around us. I've never seen fireworks at New Year's here in California. Maybe it's an East Coast thing. Or maybe just a Florida thing. Or maybe I've just never noticed it...