We loved Key West!  We both enjoyed some amazing weather and endured some insane wind during our stay.  We spent 4 nights at Galleon Marina.  It was right in town, 2 blocks to Mallory Square and Duvall street, an easy walk to many great restaurants, the Hemingway House and anything else we wanted to see.

 

I remember in high school when we went to the Bahamas once for a couple of days and I came home, got my film developed, and then noticed that all my pictures were just of water and looked the same.  Since then I have made a point to not just take a bunch of pictures of water for no reason.  But I get why I did it then…it’s amazing. The beauty here is unprecedented.  The color of the water.  The blue of the sky.  All of it.

While in Key West we rode out a crazy storm.  Nothing like a blizzard in Chicago with the same strength of winds blowing wind and ice in our faces with below zero temps.  But winds like we have never seen before on the boat.  We were safe in our slip but had more lines on the boat than we ever have before.  And lots of fenders.  The marina was great with helping and checking on all boats multiple times a day during the two days of insane wind.  We watched two boats break loose in the anchorage just outside of our marina.  We spent much of the day listening to the radio and the coast guard’s response.  They were very busy.  There was a huge coast guard station right next to our marina as well.

 

 

Once the weather calmed yesterday we took the dinghy out to explore the anchorage.  There are a number of derelict boats there and were quite the sight to see.  The “street art” in the water was pretty cool.  And then we also found a bunch of half sunken boats and objects…some had been there awhile and others possibly a casualty from the storm.  It was an experience!

We visited the Mel Fisher Maritime museum Sunday and learned all about the sunken Atocha and his work in recovering the treasure.  Monday we went to the Ernest Hemingway House and museum.  It was educational to tour the grounds and house and the girls loved the cats.  They blogged about that yesterday so I won’t repeat!

Last night we walked into Mallory Square for sunset.

We planted ourselves right next to a street performer in the square who promptly asked Molly to be his assistant.  She had to throw two swords and a torch (not yet lit!) up to him.  She was a little hesitant at first but did a great job and had fun. She then got to go back in again to time him escaping from a straight jacket.  We may have had a lighter week in school this week but there’s always some interesting education out there.

Today we left Key West and are currently traveling up the keys to Marathon.  What a gorgeous trip.  Crab pots EVERYWHERE!  We just passed under Seven Mile Bridge and got some cool pictures of the old Seven Mile Bridge that it still mostly standing.  We’re headed into Marathon for a few days.  We will see the Wilson family again and plan to take the girls to the Turtle rescue hospital there and do a few other fun things before we head north again.