Although 352 miles isn't that much for us to drive in a day, today was a little tiring. We awoke too early to get ready, so we could get on the road. Then the minivan we were renting from Enterprise ended up being an SUV with almost no storage space at all--and with six people in the car, we actually needed some storage space. Somehow, we managed to squeeze three suitcases, three laptops, five or six cameras, and a number of other bags into the car, and stick Tim in the back seat surrounded by all of it.
Mr Mike began the driving and made it at least half-way across the state. We traded somewhere along the length of Alligator Alley, and I drove the rest of the way to Key West, which was fine. Driving is a meaningless activity to me, neither painful nor fun. But the driving took a while. We had to cross the state, turn south and drive past Miami, and then hop on the Keys, that string of islands held together with the highway US 1. It's more than one hundred miles from the beginning of Key Largo to the end of Key West. (These two keys have Key as their first name but are separated by dozens of other keys, all of which appear to have Key as a last name.)
We ate a hearty lunch of fancy fish sandwiches at one of the early keys, so I thought we'd never eat again. A couple of hours later, after enjoying the sights of driving through the Keys, we arrived at our hotel, which turned out to be quite nice. It does have a sour smell to it, which I find is common in southern Florida. It's some kind of unavoidable mildew that is sharp almost like urine but is something like the smell of a carpet drying out from being soaked with dirty water. This smell isn't overwhelming at all (and my nose doesn't register it anymore), but it's here, waiting.
Key West is a little looser than other places. The streets downtown were filled with drunk people, many carrying open glasses of alcohol. Cats are everywhere, the polydactylic ones supposed descended from the cats at Ernest Hemingway's house. And chickens are everywhere, though I've no idea why. This hotel appears to have both an official cat (who spends all of its time lounging under a bush) and an official hen, who currently has two chicks.
A real problem we had was that, after an hour wasted trying to establish a wireless Internet connection, we gave up and had to ask to change our rooms. Now, our rooms are poolside, and we are the closest rooms to the breakfast buffet, both of which are perks, but the best perk is that we can actually read our email and post our vacation.
After solving the Internet crisis, we drove into Key West, parking near Mallory Square so that we could see the crowds watching the performers at sunset, and so we could observe the tradition of watching the sunset from Key West's boardwalk. We were there too short a time, but the sunset was worth the trouble, and the performers were reasonably entertaining. I was disappointed in not seeing the famous performer who hands out phoney (truly phoney) banknotes and mixes humor with something akin to political commentary.
One of the famous signs we saw today was the post showing the distances other places are from Key West. Erin was happy to see New York City included.
We ended up eating at a good restaurant, Red Fish Blue Fish, which served us enormous portions of food. Not one of us finished a meal. But we also began with appetizers (a rarity for us): gator bites and conch fritters. It's been a while since I've had alligator, and I didn't remember at all that it cooked up white. It doesn't taste quite like any other meat, but maybe a little like pork. We had to have conch, since we're in the Conch Republic, but it was good to have them in fritters, which were essentially large soft hush puppies, with tiny chewy bits of conch. I eat anything, but I've never had a good serving of conch, and I've tried many times to find one.
And what is the Conch Republic? It is the free nation of the Florida Keys, but you can learn all about it by going to its official site. Don't forget to read the history of the nation!
volveremos a las tortugas
