Friday & Saturday Nights and Fantasy Fest 2009 is really rockin’ out there. All kinds of creative costumes in the street, everyone’s having a great time. The American Gladiators were some of my favorites…it looks like some body builders really chose the right costumes. I love Fantasy Fest!
Dolphins in front of Key West
They move fast so it’s hard to get a good picture. Every time we drove up to them they’d dive and disappear only to emerge later way far away. Here’s the closet we could get.
Dolphins Playing Just South of Key West
Here it is, the Key West Seafood Festival of 2009. Held every year, the Key West Seafood Festival takes place in Bayview Park and brings out all the locals. There are local art booths with ocean-inspired items to buy, and booths for learning about the environment the seafood comes from. It’s a chance to eat good seafood, plus a deep fried oreo or two or some cotton candy.
The Key West Seafood Festival also hires a good band, which plays rock classics in the gazebo. You can bring your lawn chairs and plunk down on the expansive lawn or sit at tables and devour seafood under a tent while you watch the band and the crowd. It’s lots of fun for kids too, with the bounce house, the touch tank, and cotton candy. The Key West Seafood Festival is a good place to get some uniquely crafted gifts, some excellent local seafood, and good times all around, with a little learning mixed in, thanks to the folks at Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and Florida Department of Fish & Wildlife.
Saturday Night, there are even more bikes out on Duval Street. Â Some of the bikes parked in front of Sloppy Joe’s on Duval Street are worth upwards of $100,000. Â Some of the paint jobs alone are $20,000! Â Here’s a gallery of some of the most impressive, from the Alligator Bike (again) to the Hulk Bike the stunning matte black and red paint job. Â
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It’s only Monday but everyone is ready for Hurricane Ike. It’s supposed to hit Key West Tuesday, but Key West is all boarded up and most tourists are gone. Just locals hanging out, kite boarding or sitting at a bar. People are walking around the docks, looking for something to do. There’s a news crew but who knows what they could be saying, except that Key West is ready for Ike. It’s gusting 36 knots out there and still a whole day before the worst is supposed to hit us.
If you’re staying in Key West or any of the other Keys for a week or more, you might want to consider a vacation rental home. Renting a home for a week, a month or a season becomes cost effective when you have a family or group. There’s actually a useful website that lists vacation rentals. The listings on the site are put up by the owners themselves, with links to their property website if there is one. You pay the rental fees and pay no third-party fees for booking, which is good. They usefully list amenities available in a clean right hand menu for each property, making it so easy to find the perfect Florida vacation rentals. At time of writing, there were seven vacation rentals in the Keys section, all with pools. One of these was in the Key West area.
The section for Orlando vacation rentals easily had the most listings. And every single property had a swimming pool, although in some places you had to share the pool. With the website’s clear design and simply layout, it’s easy to scroll down the list of vacation rentals in your vacation area and find what you need. The listings are descending order of bedrooms, so for Orlando, you get the bigger houses with six bedrooms, at the top of the list.
Encyclopedia Britannica likes Key West chickens,
and my pictures too. Used with permission.
