Key West Vacation - Part III

That first full day in the Keys was a magical day. We finished walking over to the public beach and spent some time relaxing in the tropical sun. Then we took another long, leisurely walk from the beach over to the Hemmingway museum.

Papa Hemmingway was always one of my literary heroes and even though I had seen this museum (which was essentially, the compound that served as his home for the period of his life that he spent in Key West), it served as an enjoyable few hours in our trip. My son, who had previously only been introduced to Hemmingway’s work by a short reading in his high school of the Old man in the Sea, was also suitably impressed.

While in that section of the island, we also visited the lighthouse that stood sentry over the island a couple of blocks from Papa’s home base. We then went over to the southernmost point in the USA to take pictures next to the statue that commemorated that point.

After returning to our hotel, we rested up some from all the walking. I think the exercise worked towards drying us out to some extent from the previous evening’s reverie. After a brief power nap, we arose looking for food.

I decided that we needed to move down towards Mallory Square so that my son could adequately experience his first Key West Sunset celebration.

We stopped off at my favorite place for conch fritters on the way and equipped with the food as fuel, we headed over to Mallory square.

The celebration was almost in full swing when we got there. There were several street performers. We listened to the “Sourthernmost Bagpiper”, saw a sword-swallowing act and listed to a really great (but ragged looking) Reggae singing performer. The Reggae performer timed his closing song, a stirring rendition of the old Harry Belafonte “Island in the Sun”) to coincide with the actual sunset. It was an awesome experience.

After the sunset, the area on Duval street kicked into full swing. We stopped off at Captain Tony’s for a few drinks. We of course took the opportunity to toast to Papa Hemmingway since this was truly his favorite drinking establishment, even though Sloppy Joe’s now owns the original name.

Our trip coincidentally fell during the annual festival commemorating Ernest Hemmingway’s birthday. There were a number of activities going on that evening that were involved in this occasion. We stopped in at Sloppy Joe’s later that evening to witness part of the Ernest Hemmingway look alike contest.

We did turn in rather early (for Key West traditions) that evening but, we were pretty tired.