In Key West Dec 1

In Key West Dec 1 - Feb 27

- February 19, 2024

This blog entry chronicles our lives for 3 months in Key West. We are planning on heading North to the Bahamas on Feb 27, and then back to Annapolis, with several multi-day stops along the way.

I'll keep the prose to a minimum and focus on the images of Key West. The TL;DR is that we had an amazing time, had some great visitors, made new friends, and played a lot of pickleball. I even managed to get a lot of work done and had a couple of depositions over zoom from the boat. Hoping for many more Winters like this.

Anyone who has known me a long time knows that my favorite dessert is key lime pie. In Key West, it seems every restaurant has that for dessert. Here is the one from Blue Heaven. The best looking one (the best tasting one was at Moon Dog Cafe.)

Kermit's has a few locations. Their KLP is very good. They also sell a frozen one with chocolate on a stick. Something to look forward to as I did not try it yet.

We spent Hanukah here on the boat. It was a small lighting ceremony, with just the two of us on the first night.

There was no Avi St, but we did find Ann St downtown.

Sloppy Joe's is a popular bar downtown. We were told to avoid the food there, so we did.

Evening sunset at Perry marina, our home in Key West.

You would not believe the line people wait in to take a picture here. We came on a chilly, wet day, and did not have to wait long at all. People in line took the picture for the people ahead of them, which is how we got both me and Ann in the shot.

We made latkes and bought jelly donuts for Hanukah. (we being Ann)

Had our 29th wedding Anniversary in Key West on Dec 18, 2023. We went to a dessert place called Better Than Sex (it wasn't).

Actually dessert was the day before, and on our anniversary we had a really nice dinner.

There are a ton of pelicans in Key West. Especially at our marina.

Some really nice sailing schooners are based at our marina.

President Truman used to Winter in Key West. We visited his house. That is not really him. It's a wax statue. He died in 1972.

I had to take a picture of this tree. So cool.

I don't know what this is, but it moves, and there were several in the water at our marina.

Ann and I played in a couple of pickleball tournaments. Here were all the participants in the first one. We did not do great, but it was a lot of fun. We played in a charity tournament later on and won first place! More on that later.

That's Sunset Key behind us, and the bow of a cruise ship on the left.

The North side of Key West.

We flew to Houston and watched Michigan win the National Championship!

The Delany's visited us from Ft. Myers.

Pickleball with Eileen and Mike Delaney.

Empty Nest around sunrise in our 3 month slip in Key West.

The famous "Mile 0" sign. Where the road North in Florida starts.

Tamara visited us for a week before heading to Amsterdam for her semester abroad.

There is a store in town with dozens of flavors of homemade baklava. This one is chocolate/pistachio. Mmmm. It did taste as good as this looks.

After the fishermen cut their fish up, the pelicans come out looking for scraps.

At one of the La Trattoria restaurants with Tamara. (there is another one in town)

Tamara's boyfriend, Ethan, joined us for a couple of days. We did kayaking and then a sunset cruise.

This is us dressing for 68 degrees on the water after a couple of months in Florida. Sun is setting behind us.

Sunset sail is the best for seeing great colors in the sky.

I have to brag that we won the charity pickleball tourney. I foreshadowed this earlier.

The butterfly preserve is one of the well-known tourist attractions on the island. Justifiably so.

They should really call it the butterfly and flamingo preserve.

These guys are former broadway stars from Jersey Boys. Ann and I brought the average age way down at this concert but still enjoyed it.

We took Empty Nest to the Dry Tortugas, or more accurately, Empty Nest took us. Here we are facing Fort Jefferson.

It took us over 7 hours to get there. The sea plane takes much less than an hour. I prefer the slow and steady way.

Fort Jefferson is pretty cool. But I'm not sure exactly what it was supposed to protect. It's in the middle of nowhere.

Gimel enjoyed walking around the fort and wondered when we would feed him next.

Empty Nest in the very clear blue water. Was so pretty here. A little rough at night, but at least our stabilizer stopped working. Should be fixed by tomorrow. Took a while to get parts.

Sunset at Dry Tortugas. One of my all time favorite pictures. Hard to believe this was taken on a phone.

Key West has a famous donut place with lines out the door. I got the Key Lime one, of course. It was ridiculous. I'm still fantasizing about it weeks later.

We took the Key West Express ferry and visited Mike and Eileen in Ft. Myers for a few days. Enjoyed their superbowl party and their awesome pickleball friends. We played until our fingers bled. Was the Winter of '24. Those were the best days of our lives.