Key West

So a thousand days ago – Memorial Day, to be exact – when I last posted, I said I was going to Key West for a few days for vacation. Well I went and it was good. There was plenty of drama on the drive home that I will not rehash, but the trip itself was fun. The weather was not as amazing as we would have hoped, since a tropical storm decided it wanted to join us on the trip. However, we’re getting wet anyway, so come on rain. The sun actually fully came out for a while the last day we were there, with little sightings of it throughout the trip. It actually probably made the temperatures much more bearable.

The first day we just kind of bummed around before hitting the beach and pool, because we drove 12 hours overnight to get there. I don’t sleep well in cars and only got about 2 hours of sleep, so that night we went to bed early. Here’s the view from our hotel:

We stayed at the Ibis Bay Resort. When we got there and saw the outside we were kind of like, wow – what were we thinking. However, once we checked in and got in our room, it was great! We paid for a courtyard room, and had the view above. It was spacious. We had a washer and dryer. No complaints. These were some of our friends:

The second day we went to a different beach to check it out and camped out there for the day – it was nice, except the rocks were bad. We ended up leaving to go and get some water shoes. They made ALL of the difference in the world. Thank you water shoes that I forgot in the rental car, you will be missed. It was fun to sit on the rocks, which we did for a while after the water decided it wanted to calm down a bit. John did some seashell hunting – he had some good finds, especially some awesome rocks. There weren’t a lot of seashells there.

The third day we decided to go to the beach for a little bit, a different, free one. It was nicer, but had A LOT of seaweed. But it actually had sand and was pretty. After a few hours of swimming there, we decided to go to Duval Street to check out the tourist shops. Can’t go on vacation without souvenirs. We also had lunch at an amazing Cuban restaurant. Honestly, John and I wanted to go somewhere else, but they were closed so we went back and joined them. It was worth it. This little guy and his ladies came by:

The fourth and last full day there, we went to a beach on a different island. It was the best by far. It was the most like what you see in the pictures. The water was beautiful everywhere, and would have most likely been even more beautiful if the sun were out. We spent most of the day there and then headed back to the hotel to get ready and both couples did their own thing. We went to dinner at a place we really wanted to go the whole time. It was fabulous. This is what we had:

At mile 0

Truth be told – these are just pictures I had on my phone. I have more on my camera that I have not even uploaded to my computer – I really need to do that.

It was definitely a fun trip.