Wednesday, February 8 - We arrive in Key West!

Wednesday, February 8 - Key West

When we got up, our beach had disappeared!  The magic of shallow water and high tides.

Between the two heatings of my egg burrito, the microwave stopped working.  We don't have an oven, the microwave/convection oven was supposed to take its place, so its pretty important.  Another trip to WalMart at the next shopping town, I guess.

Key West was calling, so we headed west.  That seems so weird, it seems we should be heading south.  Anyway, we called marinas and finally found one that had a slip available, Key West Bight Marina, right downtown.  It's always hard to find a slip in Key West in the winter, most marinas stay booked up.  We felt lucky.

As we approached town, we begin to see boats anchored everywhere!  Mostly sailboats, a few derelicts, but SO many boats.  And they were quite a distance from land so had long dinghy rides when they needed to go in.

We toured Key West from the water before we pulled into the marina.  We saw another "stealth" ship (first one was in Mobile),

pretty homes on an island with no road, more anchored boats across the bay, Mallory Square, and Key West waterfront.

I was almost lunchtime when we got docked and checked in, and we chose The Brewery at the end of our dock.  The food was OK, but the pretzels with beer cheese dip were wonderful!

This marina is owned by the city, and is basically a dock with laundry and shower facilities in the public restroom building close by.  Nothing fancy but it is in a great location, and since we were only planning to be there a couple of nights, we thought it would be worth the money.  It had been hard to find the marina because the "bight" (a curve in a coastline, usually shallow) was full, and I mean full, of docks in no apparent order, and none of them had signs.  AND, our cruise book said to look for the large Chevron Oil sign at the end of the dock.  The sign is now Marathon Oil, they changed it last month.  We finally called and they saw us and gave directions.

To work off the pretzels, we explored Key West by bike.  What a quirky, wonderful place!  Narrow streets, gorgeous foliage, wonderful houses, bars tucked in every available space, people everywhere.  We visited two very small public beaches, Mallory Square, Duvall Street and sights in between. Riding here is a little nerve-wracking.  There are a few bike lanes, but they end without warning.  Thank goodness there was not much car traffic, and there are so many bikes  we could go with the flow.  The sidewalks are narrow with overarching plants and trees so it was hard to ride on them.  I was glad to let Danny lead while I took in the sights.

Remember I said the Bight was FULL of docks?  A lot of them were for commercial vessels - dinner cruises, sunset sailing, para-sailing, kayaking, etc.  That night we watched a light parade as they all came back in.  Quite a show!