Key West Vacation

I love being a teacher, and one of the many reasons why is Summer Vacation!! Of course, one of the drawbacks is that you can only go on vacation when everyone and their brother is also on vacation (sadly, no late September Disney trips for us), BUT we always have a super fun time travelling during the summer when we can take our time and do what we want. Remember, last year? The 18 day and 5 states Amazing Western Adventure? Here’s a post about it… And another post about it… Well, this year we decided to tone it down a little bit… We went to Key West for 7 days. It was fantastic and relaxing, just what we needed after a long school year. CAUTION>>> This post will be long and picture heavy :)

So, we had a 7am flight, and that meant we got to Ft. Lauderdale pretty early and we could enjoy the drive down the keys :) We stayed at the Sheraton which is across the street from Smathers Beach! Our first order of business… Check out the (wow it’s warm) ocean!

Then it’s off to Mallory Square for the Sunset Celebration!

Most of our days were spent wandering around Key West, checking out the scene and eating :) No visit is complete without checking out Sloppy Joe’s

We visited a couple of different sights every day… Here’s one of the kitties at the Hemingway House

Another sunset, this one from one of the upper keys (not sure which one we stopped at… there’s so many).

A visit to the Summer White House. Our tour guide Jimmy grew up in Key West and sold the president a newspaper, by walking up to him as he walked down the street… Can you imagine just walking up to a president on the street?? He was a fabulous tour guide as he had so many personal stories!!

Fort Zachary Taylor… We toured the Fort, then went back later that afternoon to go swimming at their beach (but I didn’t bring the camera when we went back…)

Oh… Bahia Honda state park… Beautiful!! We took a day and just went to the beach! Here’s a bunch of pictures from our fun day there…

ummm… Do see that picture above?? If you know me, you know that it is SHOCKING that I went in swimming!! In the ocean (which was darn close to air temperature!!) I’m not a huge fan of swimming (I can do it, I just don’t particularly like to) … but this was great!!!!

Chickens, chickens everywhere… Seriously! The chickens and roosters and chicks are everywhere!! Including one trying to hop up on the table and steal Sean’s french fries at one restaurant (we were eating at a table outside), and another that got startled on the street and almost jumped right into our car!! Good thing Mike’s window was only open 3/4 of the way, the chicken banged into the window and went on his merry way…

Snow Cones at the beach!

and you can’t go to Key West and not see the “Cat Man”… That man is insane!!

Our last couple of days were overcast and windy… Here we were at the boardwalk and they were just looking when a wave hit :) They got soaked :)

And a peek at all of us at the southernmost point…

I “only” took about 500 pictures :) We had so much fun, and it was a relaxing trip… No agenda, the biggest thing we had to decide was where we were going to eat that day :) If you go… You must go to Paseo and get the fabulous corn… And got to the Hogfish bar and grill… YUMMY!!