After the Everglades adventure we stopped for a little something to eat and continued our journey to the southernmost point on the continental US: Key West.

[THE EVERGLADES * KEY WEST * LOCK & LOAD]

It was quite a long drive, but very beautiful. I had heard that that drive was the most beautiful part, but I have to disagree. The drive WAS beautiful, but Key West itself was my favourite part. Good company, excellent food (if you ever go there, try Alonzo’s), warm weather and roosters roaming the street. We stayed at the Douglas House in Amelia Street, also to be recommended if you ever want to go, very nice place. I kind of wish we’d had two days there instead of one, but a planned return can fix that 🙂

Key West is full of weird and fun stuff, all the while being more chill than Miami itself. You can’t imagine the amount of tshirt-shops and “Psychic Reading”-signs. There’s also the little family of rooster/hen/2 chicks that was wandering the streets at any odd hour (you could hear the rooster do a cock-a-doodle-doo every now and then. Yeah yeah, I know, there’s probably more than just the one, but I only saw that one little hen family so that’s what I’m going with. It’s a better story this way anyway ;-)) This was another night passed eating excellent food and treading pavement, we enjoyed Mallory Square (and the gorgeous sunset!) and some window shopping/actual shopping (Eystein saw t-shirts… I knew right then we were doomed. I was right). We also spotted Darth Vader, playing a brightly blue-lit banjo… Yeah… I still regret not giving him some change so I could’ve taken a picture of him.

After we checked out the next morning we checked out (harr the punz!) the Southernmost Point and Hemingway’s Home. There was a line to the cone that marks the Southernmost Point, but Eystein went all pro and got us a selfie on the side of it while groups where changing places for their photo ops 🙂 (We also saw for ourselves just how much they’re milking this “southernmost” thing, with the Southernmost Hotel, Southernmost Cafe and Southernmost House etc etc). Hemingway’s home was pretty impressive. I can see how he got a lot of writing done there, in the peace and quiet of his own (quite luxurious) studio. They even had a pool, so you know someone with money made that place happen. Also, loads of cats living in the lush gardens surrounding the house. They even had their own cat houses around the property, very cute.

We realised after fetching the car that we weren’t able to make all the stops we had originally planned so we opted out of doing Lock & Load this day and decided we should skip the outlets alltogether (they were mostly on Eystein’s list anyway, as he’s the shopaholic on this trip. Yeah, really!). Instead we went on a safari to find the elusive Miami Office of Accenture. This proved to be more difficult than anticipated. Mostly because I anticipated we’d drive to the address and see a logo somewhere on the corporate buildings. Accenture Miami has apparently opted out of having their logo on the building, probably to make it more interesting and “Easter Eggish” for us, clever bastards… But we got there, we found them, and Eystein was able to get his picture taken at their office. It’s his “travel gnome”-thing, getting a pic at every Accenture office he can get in the vicinity of (this guy is too cute, I can’t even), and I was happy to help. I like his approach to “collecting trips” – it’s pretty much a more personal version of my Christmas Baubles.

Post-Accenture we handed the car back in and went for steaks at “Baires”, Argentinian steak house. Eystein ordered a champagne bottle with cooler and we enjoyed some bubblies until the bottle was empty and the waiter came and took it away, cooler and all. I remember laughing out loud when Eystein scowled and mumbled “don’t steal our status symbol…”

We stayed there quite a while enjoying food and drinks before getting a taxi back to the hostel. My stay in Miami has generally meant quite a lot of excellent food and drinks… I approve.