"Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude"

Some cool architectural features in houses in Key West

That Jimmy Buffet song perfectly sums up the Key West experience. We decided to check out Key West a day early...during the day...nightlife is a whole different story, that is coming tomorrow night. Eldy likes to check out locations, sort of scout them out ahead of time...whewee! Key West is expensive for places to stay....that's why we picked Marathon, to try and save a little instead of choosing an RV resort at the southernmost point of the U.S. It's expensive to park there for the day, $4.00 an hour...but the restaurant prices did not seem too bad at all. (F.Y.I.-- Having had two glasses of wine this evening, this blog is going to be a short one today...I'm having to backspace too much to fix mistakes!)

A museum in Key West, can't remember which one, lol!

We went on the Conch Tour train today to get a history of Key West. Nice tour, $29.00 a person, and you learn all about the old Key West. But don't count too much on taking photos, the tour moves too fast and is extremely bumpy, you are bouncing around the streets of Key West the whole time...We saw incredibly beautiful old Victorian style houses, gorgeous foliage, mahogany trees, kapok trees (the tree used to formerly make life saving vests) and plants and trees I've never heard of--one was called the powder puff tree.  Key West has really struggled through several industry changes--rescuing ship wrecks from the sea, cigar manufacturing, sponge diving, and now tourism....we learned about why every house has a tin roof--to prevent fires from jumping from roof to roof...why porches have blue ceilings on them--to make the wasps and flies head "skyward"...the many different styles of gingerbread on the houses--everything from pineapples, the symbol of hospitality, to shamrocks, to ship's wheels, to real gingerbread men, depending on whom the house was being built for....(Gingerbread refers to fences and trim on the houses that have cutouts symetrically spaced along the railings, trim, etc.) We got a glimpse of many murals painted throughout the town, many of the sides of buildings, others in bars...here's one in a bar....

We saw the southern most point in the continental U.S--a bunch of people were hanging out there...here they are....see anybody you know?

Then we ate lunch at Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffet's starting place, as I understand. And of course, we had the Cheeseburger in Paradise!

Margaritaville, Key West

My sister told me about chickens and roosters walking the streets in and out of the stores, we saw them!  Saw a guy making hats...saw an advertisement near a bar wall of painted on bikinis on women...they were totally naked but with the painted on swim suits and assorted designs on their bodies, they looked like they were wearing real clothing! Sorry, no photos on that one....We saw this hat maker working hard on weaving some hats for waiting customers. (I'm repeating myself. Just checking to see if you were paying attention.) We're heading back tomorrow to Key West to experience a dinner cruise..I have  not seen a dolphin in the three days we've been here. I hope we see some off the coast of Key West on this cruise--cruise is dinner, dancing and the sunset.....If you don't see a blog post for Friday night, we're still in Key West, experiencing the night life and getting some interesting photos, hopefully!   Bye for now.....