Our previous post left off with us pulling into Key West and checking into the Douglas House B&B. The Douglas House is one of many New Orleans style B&B lining Duval Street, the main attraction of the city's Old District. Our room sat right on the street, had a wooden porch and a ceiling fan and felt like a scene from one of those movies about the South, where everyone is covered in a thin layer of sweat which they keep wiping off from time to time with a white handkerchief. After checking in we decided to "hit the town" and walk down Duval Street. The street was definitely full of attractions, from cafes and restaurants to drag shows and gay clubs. Another curious business which seemed to thrive on Duval street were little cigar kiosks that offered hand-made Cuban cigars. We passed the first one suspiciously, but stopped at the next one and bought a couple of cigars...just in case.
With cigars in our hands and a smile on our face we headed down the street to the "Nine One Five" restaurant that was recommended by the Douglas House's receptionist. The place was packed and the host suggested we try the upstairs Tapas bar which was "...European Style" according to him. After a couple of confused looks we decided to take a chance and went up to find a beautiful seat right on the balcony overlooking the street. It felt great to finally be able to eat outside and on a balcony nevertheless! The food was terrific, an assortment of homemade breads, olives and other snacks. "European", by the way, just means "small" in American (which is "regular" by any other country's standards...).
The next morning we had a quick breakfast at the hotel and stepped out to explore the Old District. We came by Hemingway's House and the old lighthouse and snapped a few pics of the Southernmost place in the USA. Around noon we got in the car and started heading back towards the mainland through the Everglades National Park.
The Everglades is just about the coolest park we'd ever been to! As we pulled into the Royal Palm parking lot a gigantic flock of vultures circulated above and a sign on the side of the road read "Vultures can/may cause damage to your car..." We carefully stepped out out of the car so as to not piss off the vultures and risk having them take revenge on our poor little rental car. The Royal Palm offers two very different trails: Anhinga and Gumbo Limbo. We decided to start with the Anhinga trail. Being suspicious by nature, we started walking with no anticipation or expectation. How wrong we were. Somewhere about a third of the way into the trail, we overheard some people talking about seeing crocodiles further down the trail. We looked at each other, raised a questioning eyebrow and said what the hell, let's go see what they're talking about. A few minutes later we were standing in front of the biggest (and probably the only) crocodile we've ever seen! It was just laying there, on the grass, right beside the trail, too tired to move, motionless, letting us tourist push our cameras right in his face. Unbelievable. We feel it's better to not say anymore and let the pictures do all the talking...As it was getting dark, we quickly went through the Gumbo Limbo Trail, which did not have any crocodiles and therefore was not as exciting as the Anhinga Trail, but nevertheless, was full of Gumbo Limbo trees (obvious, hu?) which are also nicknamed the "sunburned tree", the "tourist tree", or the "naked Indian tree". And here's a trivia question: what color is the Gumbo Limbo's bark?
We drove back to Miami and checked into a hotel. Finding anything to eat that night was an impossible mission, given it was X-mas night and everything closed early. We found ourselves pulling into a gas station and picking up some junk food which an Indian cashier later laser scanned through a bullet-proof glass booth...nevermind, long story. Back at the hotel, we remembered a similar situation last X-mas eve when we were stuck in a little shit-hole town in Vermont looking for a place to eat and finding this little Chinese place that was extremely busy that night (possibly a town with a large Jewish community?). Anyway, off to bed and onto a new morning in Miami...
See our pictures on flickr
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