Key West Weekend

Two weeks ago we had a three day weekend, so being in the cold Chicago weather we decided to make the most of it with a weekend trip to Key West, Florida.

It's been a while since we've posted anything, and I'm not fully in the mood for typing a lot so we are just going to dump a ton of photos on here and maybe make a few comments - enjoy...

Friday night we flew in and met our Friends Heather and Mike in Miami Beach for some drinking and relaxing with live music, no photos of that night, but then bright and early Saturday morning we were up and in a rented convertible for the drive down to Key West.

A quick stop in Key Largo for lunch.
End of US1 - Key West, Florida
First night in Key West - enjoying some nice wine

The first night was nice and relaxing, just the way a holiday should be, and the next morning we were up at out to wander at a nice leisurely pace...

The sign for the house at the southernmost tip of the continental United States.

Ah, the lower corner of the States...

... and the line of people waiting to pose next to it. We didn't.

Amazingly, no line for a photo of the southernmost fireplug.

For our final night in Key West, we signed up for the local booze cruise, a nice trip out to watch the sunset while drinking margaritas and enjoying a decent band. It was worth it...

After the cruise we wandered to an outstanding tapas restaurant for dinner and then to a chocolate restaurant called 'Better than Sex' for desert, where even the wine glasses are dipped in chocolate for you to enjoy. I'm not sure that it really lived up to it's name, but it was pretty good...

Overall it was an excellent weekend trip, however our Monday morning drive back started like this -

That was a call back to the airlines after they canceled our afternoon flight out of Miami to Chicago. I spent at least an hour of our drive back on the phone trying to have the four of us rerouted so that we could get back. Apparently the snow in Chicago and the rain in Florida were conspiring to try and keep us there, or at least force us to fly back on a flight connecting elsewhere and therefore adding hours to our return time... We finally were able to book ourselves onto a flight out of nearby Ft. Lauderdale.

Aftermath of the rains we saw on the drive back.

The storms during our drive were pretty bad, punctuated with spots of sunshine, but at least we managed to book a return flight. We arrived at the airport only about 4 hours early, no reason to go out since there were torrential rains at this point, and our flight was only delayed a little over 2 hours. We hunkered down in the airport bar and kept ourselves busy playing cards, by the time we finally arrived back into the cold of Chicago it was just after 01:00...

Manatee mailbox holders, a south Florida special that we couldn't convince our friends to purchase.