Day 9 - Key West to Key Largo

I started this morning by sitting on the stoop reading for a while while waiting for sleepy maclaren to get ready. It was quite lovely sitting in the early morning sunshine overlooking the pool.  Our first stop of the day was Blue Heaven which is a very popular breakfast spot with chickens wandering about and lots of outdoor seating. We arrived at 9am and there was already a 30 minute wait for a table.  We were lucky and scored some stools at the beach hut style bar while we were waiting.  We ordered some coffees but everyone else was already drinking, mostly breakfast alcohol like bloody marys and mimosas (bucks fizz) but some people were on other things.  Watching the bartender make bloody mary after bloody mary was quite hypnotic and he was certainly being very generous with his pours.

We eventually got seated and k had 2 pancakes and bacon and I had eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast. The exciting thing was you could have normal bread or banana bread, obviously I had the banana bread and it was amazing.

After breakfast we got back on the 1 but headed north this time, retracing our steps from yesterday.   I can't emphasise enough how beautiful a drive it was up the keys today with blue blue skys.  We stopped at few times but our first detour was on big pine key to spot some key deer which only grow 80cm high! We managed to spot some in people's gardens so our first mission of the day was a success. Then we hopped over to the tiny adjoining no name key as k is a bit obsessed by its lack of name.  We stopped into the famous No Name Pub and ordered some drinks and sat outside. The insides of the pub is covered, and I mean covered, in dollar bills that people have attached over the years.

We pushed on and stopped to look at the old bahia honda bridge and took millions of photos all very nice and then suddenly we saw mere feet away a massive iguana basking in the sun! It was crazy, basically like jurassic park.

Our next stop was lunch at the Cracked Conch Cafe on Marathon. K had the biggest turkey club sandwich I've ever seen and I had chilli. The weird thing in America is that chilli is usually in the soup section and comes in a bowl with no rice or anything, they ask if you want a packet of crackers with it, it's weird. This particular wee bowl of chilli came looking like french onion soup with a cheesy crust. It was nice but nothing special. It was a pleasant wee stop though.

Then we went to this tshirt shop that had been advertised by the road for about 50 miles, turned out it was nothing special. K did buy a nice tshirt though.

We were driving along minding our own business when we suddenly saw some white, white sand. We pulled in immediately to what turned out to be Anne Beach Park and had a wee walk and a wee paddle. There was a lovely wee decked walk along the beach which we sauntered along, we even saw some fish jumping out of the water.

Soon we arrived at Robbie's Marina where you can pay to feed the tarpon (giant fish) off the pier. We got our bucket of wee fish to feed to the big fish and headed over. It was easier said than done though as the pelicans gathered round trying to intercept the fish. It was a cool experience and it was good to see the pelicans up close too.

We were going to go to the wild bird rehabilitation centre but it had closed by the time we got there.

We eventually got to the hotel and checked in and it's very lovely.  We've got a bit balcony with views down the canal. The African Queen boat from the film is moored outside too.

We went out for dinner to a place near the hotel called Hobo's Cafe. We waited a wee bit for a table but then scored a nice outside one.  We both got burgers, mine was a standard cheeseburger but k got the sloppy burger which had mushrooms, coleslaw, onion rings and mini chips on it. Unsurprisingly, she couldn't eat her waffle fries. We managed to share a wee slice of key lime pie for pudding which was nice but not the best I've had.

After that we had a browse round publix looking at all the fun products that Americans have.  We came back to the hotel and because we are wild we did some laundry,  crazy innit.