Now where was I in the US trip that seemed to happen an eternity ago?
We'd just come down the Turnpike heading towards Key West in the Florida Keys.
Did I mention it was the beginning of Spring break? If we'd left our trip 24 hours longer we would have been sitting in a 3 hour traffic jam.
The uni students (I'm assuming that's how old they were, they looked so young) were already pouring in.
We stopped at the Tourist Info Centre and they found us some very nice accommodation. It was close to town and in a lovely old house.
It was nice and warm down in Key West, this room was very refreshing.
The view out of our door to the very very nice pool. We went for a swim after dinner, it was almost a bath like temperature in the pool.
The next morning they served a very nice breakfast out here (fruit platters, scone/biscuits + cooked food, cereal and other nice yummy things) and we could sit outside our room and enjoy.
This is looking into where we were staying. If you walked through the gate we were second room under the veranda.
Most of the houses round the middle of Key West had these luscious gardens. It gave the place a wonderful feel.
The house next door.
It was like plantation meets the beach.
It all exuded money and wealth.
I loved the architecture.
We were less than a block from the main street.
Check out these cookies. They look fairly normal - they were slightly larger than a standard dinner plate. No kidding! There was probably a block of chocolate in each one.
We didn't buy one. We could have lived on one cookie for a week and we were in search of Key Lime Pie - I wanted mine with meringue on top, it was hard to find and quite frankly a little disappointing when we did.
For some reason I thought it would be like lemon meringue pie, but it's more like a thickened condensed milk + lime type of pie.
This is a plaza like area down the end of the main street. The sun sets right out the end of this point, later that night we found out that the plaza fills up with all the tourists and market stalls.
Looking back across to some of the town's tourist attractions.
I don't quite know how to describe this little area of town. It's literally a bunch of heads, or busts, of people who contributed to Key West and surrounding areas.
A lot of the people were completely unfamiliar to us - which is to be expected, but some names were famous.
I don't know her name, but it was a nice bust.
This is Harry S. Truman.
He is credited with "The Little White House" in Key West. He brought 'parliament' (Dan tells me it's not called Parliament) down to Key West and several Presidents since have used The Little White House for business.
I don't know who he is either.
And yet more heads.
The nautical theme is big through town. (Can't imagine why....) They have a Pirate museum and a Treasure Museum. We had a look through the latter and actually got to touch Spanish gallon and gold bars recovered from the ocean floor.
We didn't climb this. In fact we didn't go into this. The shipwreck museum. Would have been a nice view!
Lots of canons round town too.
A man made from sponge.
The waters round Florida Keys are no longer harvested for their wildlife, most of it is imported from The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia or somewhere round there. (I should write these things down and not assume I'll remember them.)
Tables full of sponges and shelves full of souvenirs. (We got a great Pirate Head money box for James.)
This interesting statue of Neptune was outside an art gallery/theatre building.
It doesn't look it, but he was HUGE.
Nothing special about this tree, just interesting as we walked through this very affluent area of town.
More nice houses.
These houses were all on the way to the Little White House so you can imagine how much money is involved with them.
Finally we made it to the gates of The Little White House.
In our naivety and with the lack of anything saying otherwise, we assumed that building there was The Little White House.
I know, you're all saying 'but it's not white'... well we didn't think it actually had to be white and this building looked all nice and stately.
Turns out it was a real estate office.
It had nice gardens though.
See, don't you think it looks all public servant-y? (Actually it looked like a replica of something out of a Jane Austen movie)
Oh right.. here's The Little White House and it is indeed white.
If you click on this you might be able to read the story behind the Little White House.
It's really not terribly exciting is it?
We didn't go in, it was late in the afternoon, in fact they might have been closed, and American politics is not my thing. Even Dan didn't really want to go in.
This is not The White house, but A White house directly across the road. Nice. I could live in this one even with the hoards of tourists and reckless kids yahooing round Key West.
When we can afford it *cough* Dan's going to buy it as a holiday home for me. Obviously if we can afford this house we can afford the first class tickets to get here.
This is a look down that street.
Back into the main area of town.
And like every good tourist town there is the freak show of animals right in the middle.
This one had iguanas and snakes to name a few.
This building (on the main street) is the Women's Club.
Initially I thought of it as a sufferogette type building, but then we wondered if it meant more like "Gentlemen's Club where they go to look at women". Now in most places you might not assume this, but strip joints, shops where you can buy 'living dolls' and various adult toy shops are rampant in this little town. Some of them are carefully hidden inside this beautiful architecture and only visible through advertising, some are right there on the street. Amazing and amusing all at once.
Anyway, on our bicycle cab ride back up main street the friendly guy gave us a run down on some of the buildings we were passing and some of the comings and goings of Key West and it turns out this building really is a Women's Club (for things like meetings, patchwork, knitting clubs, rights for women to vote etc etc)
And now we get to one of Key West's biggest souveneir generator - the chickens and roosters.
We discovered this by looking in a said souveneir shop and reading the tag attached to the chickens. (Wish we hadn't forgotten the Lonely Planet Guide but I'm not even sure it's in there.)
Turns out in the early days of settlement they used to have a lot of Cockeral Fighting. This was eventually outlawed and the fowls were set free to wonder the streets.
Legend has it that these birds you see in the photo are descendents of the first fighting birds. They are ferral and not particularly friendly... not that roosters are particularly friendly at the best of times, but the story warns you to beware of them when there is a papa, mama and little baby chicks. Common sense would tell you to stay away from them then too!
Their bikes are such a different shape to ours. Bikes like this are everywhere. In Key West it would be the easiest way to get around - especially for this house as it's at one end of Main Street. But we saw bikes like this in Miami too.
Love all the letter boxes on the wall there too.
Same house, guessing, due to the number of letter boxes, it has been turned into flats.
Different house, but absolutely stunning. Unfortunately the light doesn't show it off to it's best.
This house is down the southern end of Main Street and at one time probably had a lovely view of the ocean, the southern most point of Mainland USA ( and I use that term loosely seeing as how many bridges we came over)
I don't know what appealed to us both about this house, but we both loved it.
This house (or now exclusive hotel) is the most southern house on the USA mainland.
Again, the architecture is just stunning.
Peeking through the big front gates.
Still down the southern end of town.
Another nice house. I think this is what we thought we'd see more of in Miami. Don't know why... too much tv maybe?
Those funky bikes again.
If you're going to visit Key West I suggest hiring one, or hiring and electric car. Yes, they have these little electric cars, a bit like golf buggies, everywhere. Much easier to get round. Other wise, like us, you'll end up walking up and down Main Street about 6 times (ok, we didn't go all the way to the end each time, but main street is at least a mile and a half long).
We'd just come down the Turnpike heading towards Key West in the Florida Keys.
Did I mention it was the beginning of Spring break? If we'd left our trip 24 hours longer we would have been sitting in a 3 hour traffic jam.
The uni students (I'm assuming that's how old they were, they looked so young) were already pouring in.
We stopped at the Tourist Info Centre and they found us some very nice accommodation. It was close to town and in a lovely old house.
It was nice and warm down in Key West, this room was very refreshing.
The view out of our door to the very very nice pool. We went for a swim after dinner, it was almost a bath like temperature in the pool.The next morning they served a very nice breakfast out here (fruit platters, scone/biscuits + cooked food, cereal and other nice yummy things) and we could sit outside our room and enjoy.
This is looking into where we were staying. If you walked through the gate we were second room under the veranda.Most of the houses round the middle of Key West had these luscious gardens. It gave the place a wonderful feel.
The house next door.
It was like plantation meets the beach.
It all exuded money and wealth.
I loved the architecture.
We were less than a block from the main street.Check out these cookies. They look fairly normal - they were slightly larger than a standard dinner plate. No kidding! There was probably a block of chocolate in each one.
We didn't buy one. We could have lived on one cookie for a week and we were in search of Key Lime Pie - I wanted mine with meringue on top, it was hard to find and quite frankly a little disappointing when we did.For some reason I thought it would be like lemon meringue pie, but it's more like a thickened condensed milk + lime type of pie.
This is a plaza like area down the end of the main street. The sun sets right out the end of this point, later that night we found out that the plaza fills up with all the tourists and market stalls.
Looking back across to some of the town's tourist attractions.
I don't quite know how to describe this little area of town. It's literally a bunch of heads, or busts, of people who contributed to Key West and surrounding areas.A lot of the people were completely unfamiliar to us - which is to be expected, but some names were famous.
I don't know her name, but it was a nice bust.
This is Harry S. Truman.He is credited with "The Little White House" in Key West. He brought 'parliament' (Dan tells me it's not called Parliament) down to Key West and several Presidents since have used The Little White House for business.
I don't know who he is either.
And yet more heads.
The nautical theme is big through town. (Can't imagine why....) They have a Pirate museum and a Treasure Museum. We had a look through the latter and actually got to touch Spanish gallon and gold bars recovered from the ocean floor.
We didn't climb this. In fact we didn't go into this. The shipwreck museum. Would have been a nice view!
Lots of canons round town too.
A man made from sponge.
The waters round Florida Keys are no longer harvested for their wildlife, most of it is imported from The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia or somewhere round there. (I should write these things down and not assume I'll remember them.)
Tables full of sponges and shelves full of souvenirs. (We got a great Pirate Head money box for James.)
This interesting statue of Neptune was outside an art gallery/theatre building.It doesn't look it, but he was HUGE.
Nothing special about this tree, just interesting as we walked through this very affluent area of town.
More nice houses.
These houses were all on the way to the Little White House so you can imagine how much money is involved with them.Finally we made it to the gates of The Little White House.
In our naivety and with the lack of anything saying otherwise, we assumed that building there was The Little White House.I know, you're all saying 'but it's not white'... well we didn't think it actually had to be white and this building looked all nice and stately.
Turns out it was a real estate office.It had nice gardens though.
See, don't you think it looks all public servant-y? (Actually it looked like a replica of something out of a Jane Austen movie)
Oh right.. here's The Little White House and it is indeed white.
If you click on this you might be able to read the story behind the Little White House.
It's really not terribly exciting is it?We didn't go in, it was late in the afternoon, in fact they might have been closed, and American politics is not my thing. Even Dan didn't really want to go in.
This is not The White house, but A White house directly across the road. Nice. I could live in this one even with the hoards of tourists and reckless kids yahooing round Key West.When we can afford it *cough* Dan's going to buy it as a holiday home for me. Obviously if we can afford this house we can afford the first class tickets to get here.
This is a look down that street.
Back into the main area of town.
And like every good tourist town there is the freak show of animals right in the middle.This one had iguanas and snakes to name a few.
This building (on the main street) is the Women's Club.Initially I thought of it as a sufferogette type building, but then we wondered if it meant more like "Gentlemen's Club where they go to look at women". Now in most places you might not assume this, but strip joints, shops where you can buy 'living dolls' and various adult toy shops are rampant in this little town. Some of them are carefully hidden inside this beautiful architecture and only visible through advertising, some are right there on the street. Amazing and amusing all at once.
Anyway, on our bicycle cab ride back up main street the friendly guy gave us a run down on some of the buildings we were passing and some of the comings and goings of Key West and it turns out this building really is a Women's Club (for things like meetings, patchwork, knitting clubs, rights for women to vote etc etc)
And now we get to one of Key West's biggest souveneir generator - the chickens and roosters.We discovered this by looking in a said souveneir shop and reading the tag attached to the chickens. (Wish we hadn't forgotten the Lonely Planet Guide but I'm not even sure it's in there.)
Turns out in the early days of settlement they used to have a lot of Cockeral Fighting. This was eventually outlawed and the fowls were set free to wonder the streets.
Legend has it that these birds you see in the photo are descendents of the first fighting birds. They are ferral and not particularly friendly... not that roosters are particularly friendly at the best of times, but the story warns you to beware of them when there is a papa, mama and little baby chicks. Common sense would tell you to stay away from them then too!
Their bikes are such a different shape to ours. Bikes like this are everywhere. In Key West it would be the easiest way to get around - especially for this house as it's at one end of Main Street. But we saw bikes like this in Miami too.Love all the letter boxes on the wall there too.
Same house, guessing, due to the number of letter boxes, it has been turned into flats.
Different house, but absolutely stunning. Unfortunately the light doesn't show it off to it's best.
This house is down the southern end of Main Street and at one time probably had a lovely view of the ocean, the southern most point of Mainland USA ( and I use that term loosely seeing as how many bridges we came over)
I don't know what appealed to us both about this house, but we both loved it.
This house (or now exclusive hotel) is the most southern house on the USA mainland.Again, the architecture is just stunning.
Peeking through the big front gates.
Still down the southern end of town.
Another nice house. I think this is what we thought we'd see more of in Miami. Don't know why... too much tv maybe?
Those funky bikes again.
If you're going to visit Key West I suggest hiring one, or hiring and electric car. Yes, they have these little electric cars, a bit like golf buggies, everywhere. Much easier to get round. Other wise, like us, you'll end up walking up and down Main Street about 6 times (ok, we didn't go all the way to the end each time, but main street is at least a mile and a half long).
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