Before I begin, I should explain my expectations for this trip….

 

My expectations:

1. LOTS of time in the water snorkeling
2. Warm weather
3. Seafood

…..So if any of you follow me on Instagram, you know that I promised a blog post about our trip to Key West.  We should probably start back in the beginning at the planning stage, which was *very* brief.  Ben came home from work and said, “Hey, what do you think about going to Key West in January?”  I said, “That sounds awesome!” (Warm weather, water, seafood…   Yes!)

There you go, that was the planning stage.

Fastforward.

It’s January and I was packing up everything to go on our trip.  I should probably let you know that we were planning to do this a little different than most people. We were going to tent camp, with an air mattress. 

Our plan was to make this trip as inexpensive as possible. We have a companion pass with Southwest, so when I fly, Ben flies free. (Get the credit card, it’s awesome!) (If you want to get a card, email me and I’ll send you my link).  We also reserved a nice midsize SUV to fit all of our luggage, aka, lodging for a great price.

Ok. Back to it then. I packed up our tent, air mattress, sheets, towels, pillows, blankets, lantern, car adapter, snorkel gear, shampoo, conditioner, clothes…you get the idea. It’s the morning of (and we choose cheap flights, which means that we often fly at odd hours, like 5:45am) and my sister came to pick us up.  We had to take my parents van due to our large amount of luggage (remember… tent, air mattress, etc).  We got in the car a little late, and then about 7 minutes after we left the house Ben said, “Crap, I forgot my phone.”

^^^This is classic Ben. 

I shouldn’t even be surprised (and I’m laughing while I type about it).  In all reality, I should actually factor in time for us to forget things and need to turn around. So we turned around, grabbed the phone, and arrived at the airport about 40 minutes before our flight was supposed to off.

I had no idea that when you arrive within an hour of your departure time the crazy “late check-in” alarm goes off at your baggage check station.  So it did, and the Southwest employee stoically said, “I have to let you know that this luggage might not arrive on time because you are late.” Well, double crap. Remember friends, our luggage is also our lodging.

Fly……

Arrive in Ft Lauderdale.

We headed to baggage claim and waited anxiously, with LOTS of prayers. IT WAS THERE! Yay! and it was fourth out.  We got all checked in with Alamo, denied the extra insurance because we always pay with Discover, and headed to pick up our mid-size.  Super sweet Alamo employee asked us if we wanted a sporty car instead, like a convertible.  Ugg, I wish, too much luggage though. Then he tried to give us a gigantic suburban. No, dude, money conscious people here.  We just wanted a large enough car to fit our stuff, but small enough for good gas mileage. 2018 Rav4 it is.

As we started our drive to Key West I went to put my contacts in.  Triple crap! I grabbed my old prescription. (face palm)  We tried a local eye doctor’s office, no luck.  They suggested Walmart (one of my least favorite places). I called my Eye Doctor to send over my prescription info to Walmart.  Well, it was incorrect.  Waited for them to correct it and then fax it over again. Everyone was super kind and understanding. Now, I hate Walmart a little less.

And, we’re off…

The 3.5 hour drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Key West was beautiful! You have to be aware that it will be slow traffic, but as long as you have the right mindset, it’s awesome. The water was a stunning turquoise blue. We stopped at Brutus Seafood for lunch and had a ton of peel-n-eat shrimp. We ordered 1/2 a pound, pretty sure the guy gave us much more.  (Yum! 10/10 would recommend).

I should probably mention that our vacations are normally turned into foodcations. 

Boyd’s Campground

We arrived at Boyd’s to check-in and got to pick out which campsite we wanted for the 5 days.  (Do we want waterside, electric, or primitive?) Us: cheapest please!! Primitive it is.  As we set up our tent we noticed how hard the rock/sand/ground is.  I called up to the front office after struggling to push our stakes in more than an inch, and they said, “Ya, that happens often, we have special stakes up front to purchase and we can loan you a hammer.” Ok, thanks.

We got all set up with our {little} campsite and car-adapter electricity for the air mattress.  Time for some relaxation!

Friday. 

That morning we posted up at a local coffee shop for Ben to work: Coffee Plantation

We ended up LOVING it!  It’s run by this super sweet couple, Theo and Diane, who also paint and have their art up all around the comfy space.  Needless to say, I had to purchase a painting by the end of our trip. {My menu order (each visit) was a regular latte and the quiche of the day, Ben had a blueberry muffin with a vanilla latte.}

We then called to reserve our snorkeling trip, only time available was Saturday morning.

For lunch we grabbed some Conch Fritters and Calamari from BO’s Fish Wagon, which sounds just as outdoorsy as it it. Luckily the rain didn’t bother us too much while we ate. Ben and I agreed that this was some of the best calamari that we’ve had. (10/10 would recommend).

We then wanted to check out Duval Street.  For those of you that don’t know, Duval is basically the main strip in Key West (tons of bars, restaurants, and touristy clothing/jewlery). We kind of likened it to Nashville, with a little hint of New Orleans (but we’ve never been there lol). We bopped down to the southernmost point for a photo op. Then headed back up to take in the bars.  We stopped at Willie T’s for a mojito with a sugar cane stick and then followed that up with a “Sloppy Rita” at  Sloppy Joe’s .  This last joint was a frequent hangout for Ernest Hemingway.

We met up with Ben’s second cousins, Forest and Joanie, for dinner at the Half Shell Raw Bar and had oysters, duh!, and our first KEY LIME PIE. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to list every single thing we ate and drank, just the best). After dinner, we strolled over to Forest and Joanie’s rental house. It was adorable, and beautifully decorated! They visit Key West every year during January and know all the great spots!

We needed to call it an early night because of our 9am snorkel trip.

Saturday. 

For those of you that don’t know me, I’m an avid coffee drinker.  We got up around 7 to prep for our trip and then headed out to get some coffee before snorkeling…. Bam!  Not 30 seconds out of our campground and our rental car was hit on the driver’s side rear tire.  This poor guy was driving from his early morning fishing job to his second job and just wasn’t paying attention, whipped a U-turn in the middle of the 30mph road, and hit us.  We called all the people and waited on hold collectively for about 2 hours with Alamo.  I called our campground to see if they could bring a golf cart to pick us up before they towed our rental away.  See, we had all of our luggage in the vehicle, perks of living in a tent. They were super supportive and brought everything back for us.  Took a Lyft to pick up a new, larger, rental vehicle, and got worried it wouldn’t fit in the campsite. It did. Perfect.

Since we missed our snorkel trip, we decided to try out Blue Heaven for brunch. MUST GO! I had a BLT Benny (bacon, LOBSTER, and tomato eggs benedict). Sounds too good to be true, right?! It was amazing!

We decided to put on our swimsuits to hangout out at a pool.  Got to the pool, and realized that on Saturdays the pool is transformed into a giant bachelor/bachelorette party. Should have listened to our Uber driver lol! Not prepared for this, we took a detour to a brewery to grab a beer and a glass of Woodford. By glass, I meant small bourbon neat. Nope, the bartender had a different idea.  What he handed me was more like a glass of wine. He disagreed with my statement and said it was only a single. Ben thought it would be funny to order another one. (I’m cracking up right now). So we went back to that dang pool party and did some great people watching, liquid encouragement.

 

I don’t think I’m going to give you a play by play of the rest of our trip, because well, high expectations (mostly centered around water activities and warmer weather) weren’t met, but we still made the best of our time off together. 

We weren’t able to snorkel after we missed our trip because the wind was too strong the rest of that week.  There was a small craft advisory so all the tours were cancelled. Also, the average temp was 65. Which doesn’t seem bad, but the wind encouraged us to wear jeans and long sleeves every day.

Strong winds = not so great tent camping. (I’m sure you can imagine) But, I’m so glad we bought those super duty steaks to hold our tent down!!

The remainder of our trip consisted of Coffee Plantation in the morning, walking Key West during the day, and stopping for drinks and food in the evening.

On Sunday we met up with Joanie’s sister Jana and their mother Nancy. They took a ferry in from Ft. Meyers to visit everyone.

Some of the places we stopped were:

–Hemingway House (Yes, the six-toed cats are fabulous!!)

–Fort Zachary Taylor State Park (great beach and some interesting history)

–Mallory Square (Go! It’s super cool. This is where everyone gathers to watch the sunset, including some local performers. Our favorite was Reidiculous Reid. )

Our last day. 

Monday was our last full day there. I would say it was probably my favorite day of the trip. We had learned the lay of the land, figured out what we liked and wanted to spend time doing, and really relaxed.  We started out with some large cuban coffees at El Mocho.  We had grown to love their cafe con leche (ewww…so my autocorrect just tried to make leche into leech).

We took our coffees and breakfast sammies to the beach and (parked) by the water so Ben could finish up work in the car. Yes, we sat in our car, hotspot turned on, with the windows rolled down at the beach in Florida. But, I was able to read a ton during this trip! It was awesome! After he wrapped up, we took our stroll around Fort Zachary Taylor State Park.  We did get to walk in the water, but brrrrrrr.

We then decided to go purchase some art from the local artists I had found earlier during our trip.  The first was a print of a Blue Heaven painting from 7 Artists & Friends with some bikes and chickens (there were tons of chickens free roaming all over the key).  The second was from Theo and Diane, and yes, the painting had chickens in it as well 🙂

We hit up happy hour for half-priced oysters and $5 margs at Pepe’s Cafe. One of the tables (3 people) collectively ordered about 6 dozen oysters while we sat there. (I don’t know if I should be jealous of them, or a little concerned.)

We left Pepe’s to head over and watch our last sunset at Mallory Square. Reid was just finishing up his show, so we perched up on the pier to get a great viewing spot.  Afterwards, went to Kermit’s for more….KEY LIME PIE, lol. It was a smaller piece and we didn’t have a full dinner (see how I’m justifying this..) so we headed back over to Blue Heaven to try their pie out. We loved that place so much that we had to go back. Their pie had a mountain of meringue on top.

—Did you know that there is a big debate about whether key lime pie is supposed to be topped with whipped cream or meringue? Personally, Ben and I decided that whipped cream is definitely better.

As we settled in for our last night in the tent we chatted about which pie was the best. Of course, we had to agree to disagree, anyone else do this in their relationships??

1. Blue Heaven (filling was BOMB, but we didn’t love the meringue)
2. Kermit’s (a little more sour, this was Ben’s favorite)
3. Half-Shell
4. Turtle Crawl

But….on our way out of the Key’s we had to make one last Key Lime Pie stop in Key Largo. 

1. Mrs. Mac’s Kitchen was great. The filling was super yummy and it had whipped cream topping. Perfection!

Before our stop at Mrs. Mac’s we had our last seafood lunch at Marker 88. This Islamadora restaurant was located on the water and we were given the table closest to the beach.  Delicious lobster tail, shrimp and mahi, but probably the most expensive meal we had the whole trip.

Our trip back was fairly uneventful.

^^All things considered, I guess that’s good.

We landed in Indy with some lovely biting cold winds and freezing temperatures. Brrrr. But we were soo happy to be home with our dogs!!!