The Key to Holiday Fun

Some issues during the night when the party next door came back at 01:00 and started screeching with laughter etc with no regard to anyone else.  It continued so long that Les was forced to hammer on the door to get them to pipe down!  Great to have a lie in but getting seriously fed up with muffins for breakfast. With this hotel you can advise when you would like your room serviced (within reason) and as we planned to return to the room for lunch, we selected a suitable time in the morning and left for a walk to the beach.

This proved to be just too hot, and not terribly interesting, and we turned back to the hotel, caught the bus into town and spent an hour or so exploring on the shady side of the streets.  The bus driver was a right character and was chatting so much he forgot to drop a couple off at the beach so we had to go round the block but nobody is in a hurry around here!  It really is a charming and characterful place.  There are numerous activities such as fishing charters, sunset cruises with or without a meal, glass bottom boat tours, ski boat etc.  The water is ideal being flat calm.  The shops are numerous and quaint - some of the usual tack but mostly good quality jewellery etc.  We also discovered that the Keys are known for their sandals - we know them as jandals or flip flops.  These seem to be mostly leather made and held in high regard.

While checking out restaurants for dinner tonight, we were appalled to see several menus offering dolphin. We eventually learned that this is the American name for a fish, also known as mahi mahi in Hawaii. Sighs of relief all round.

The sight of four apparent miscreants sitting handcuffed on the kerb was intriguing, as they dripped in the searing sunshine, while the police waited for another car to cart them away. We heard that a lot of shady characters come down here from Miami, with various substances they should not have.

We treated ourselves to a couple of cheap beers to take back to the hotel room, plus a piece of allegedly authentic key lime pie which was far better than the version we tried yesterday.  Stella also found a great channel on the TV which seemed to show cute kittens so had to be dragged away to the shop again to buy some items for the next two days' lunches.  Never has a shopping trip taken so long for so little!  We ended up buying a whole loaf which would be cheaper than the prepared rolls (saving some $18 on that purchase alone!).

We spent an hour or so at the pool - lovely area to sit out, towels provided and the water was very warm.  We then changed and caught the bus into town to take more photos, find a place with Happy Hour and decide where we would go for dinner.  We found a place offering cut price beers - 2 for $5.50!!  Then we hurried to the Sunset Pier area where Stella took many photos and a budding photographer also took one of us together which we can email him for.  He was trying out his kit I think.  We then decided on a place to eat serving grilled lobster and enjoyed a few oysters to start (although not as good as those recently sampled from West Mersea!).  The bread served with it was delicious - very dark and slightly fruity, honey and whole wheat.  We asked for a salad with the lobster which was huge and very fresh.  Satisfied we caught the bus back to the hotel - luckily they were anticipating the crowd who were waiting and had 2 buses available.