Sunday
Sunday morning was mother’s day, so we were up bright and early to celebrate with breakfast at Blue Heaven, a popular brunch spot.
Their acclaim is well-deserved, we both really enjoyed breakfast. Jordan had the lobster BLT (basically Eggs Benedict with lobster), and I had the avocado omelette with black bean-ginger sauce.
After breakfast we walked down to the south side of the island, to see some of the sights we missed the day before.
We attempted to stop at the Ernest Hemingway house, but they are cash-only and the cost was $17/per person. We didn’t have that much cash on us and couldn’t find an ATM, so we decided to skip it this trip.
We did stop at the Audubon House. Audubon’s bird studies are beautiful, and the history of the engraving process for these works is really interesting.
After the Audubon house, we headed into the Mel Fisher Maritime museum to learn about sunken treasure.
We even saw the real life version of one of Parker’s favorite Octonauts characters, Calico Jack!
After the museum we walked to the beach for lunch. We ate at Salute! on the Beach, and enjoyed some margaritas to cool off. The Florida sun was blistering hot the entire time we were in Key West, although the temperature was only in the mid-80s. Returning to Texas in the mid-90s felt so much cooler, the distance from the equator makes a huge difference!
We finished lunch and wandered down to the West Martello Tower, home of the Key West Garden Club. A (literally) cool, shady garden tucked away in the old tower, it was another nice reprieve from the heat.
Directly next door was the monument to the African Cemetery at Higg’s Beach. An incredibly sad story, it was nice to see these people being remembered. Hopefully technology will improve in the future so that all of the graves can be found and respected appropriately.
For dinner Sunday night we ate at Hot Tin Roof, the restaurant at Ocean Key Resort & Spa. It’s a little hidden, but the views are amazing and it was quite honestly the most delicious dinner of our trip. I highly recommend making reservations so that you can get a spot with the coveted view.
We split dishes again, starting with crispy brussel sprouts, tuna wonton tacos, and the crispy mojo chicken. To drink I had the Night of the Iguana cocktail, which was spicy and delicious. We finished up with the Cuban bread pudding, which was to die for.
Again we wandered, taking in the sights, before heading back for an early evening. Our flight out was quite early, and we needed some sleep after so many hours in the heat.
We definitely enjoyed our time in Key West, although the bar/party scene was less interesting for us than the history of the island. Dry Tortugas was also pretty incredible.
However, if you’re looking for some hysterically funny reading on the history of Key West, check out the Wikipedia page on the Conch Republic. Read it all the way through, you won’t regret it.
Hope everyone is having a great week, and we’ll be back soon to share our progress on our house!
jordanpluskate 