Spring Break 2010, Part Two, Day One!

After a long weekend away and a couple of days of rest, we packed up again for Part Two of our vacation to spend a few gloriously relaxing days in one of my absolutely favorite places…Key West!

Key West and I go waaayyy back!  As a kid, three or four times a year my mom would throw us in the car and head down the chain of Keys to Key West for long weekends.  And years ago, in another lifetime before kids, as a CPA I used to head down to Key West annually for usually three-month periods to perform audits down there.   I was always first in line with my hand raised and frantically waving “PICK ME” every year when it was time to do our annual Keys audits!

And even though I was working down there, far away from the crazy hustle and bustle, stiff suits and heels, and hour-long commutes of Miami, it still felt like I was on vacation!

Key West has a totally different atmosphere.  Packed chock full of some seriously really weird people coupled with a “5’ o’clock somewhere” mentality….I think the locals are always on vacation too! 

And while I know Key West like the back of my hand…I came to a startling realization that other than a brief afternoon stop on a cruise and a many scout camping trips in the middle Keys, my kids had never really experienced Key West.  I felt I was sorely depriving them of this experience and decided to fix that this Spring Break.

I had made “reservations” a few weeks ago at my friend Irene’s Inn, better known to her as her tiny two-bedroom condo which suits a single person just fine.   Of course we descended on her in a five-person frenzy…kids included!  She was very gracious about it though…and didn’t even get grumpy with us!  I made sure we brought our own food, fixed all meals for ourselves and for her, and didn’t stay long enough to wear out our welcome..so we only stayed two nights.

Since I had received my produce box on Tuesday and really had not had a chance to use much of it, we packed most of it into coolers and brought it down with us. 

I also quickly threw together some wraps to eat on the way down so we wouldn’t have to stop…hummus, cukes, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions (all from the produce box) in a Flat-Out multigrain wrap.  So filling.  So YUM! 

This was rounded out with unpictured organic apples, bananas, Stacy’s Pita Chips, and this Publix fruit and nut granola bar.  I think everybody ate their way down to Key West!The drive down was its usual stunning sight.  I love the bridges!  With the Gulf of Mexico on one side and the Atlantic on the other there is water, water everywhere!

I have always had particular fascination with the seven-mile bridge…literally seven miles over water.   As a kid I always made sure my mom would wake me up when we got to it and never wanted to miss it!  Now in my 40s I still eagerly look out for it!

To the right you will see the old, two-lane, scary, dilapidated bridge we used when I was a kid…it is now a fishing bridge.

 

Key West in all of its weirdness didn’t disappoint!  As we turned down the street towards Irene’s house, we were greeted by this giant Easter Bunny waving at everybody passing by! By the time we got to Irene’s it was later than I expected and I wanted to make sure we got to see the Sunset Celebration down at Mallory Square. 

Tourists gather on the pier to watch both the sun setting in all its spectacular glory…along with a whole bunch of street people performing different kinds of street theater…mostly juggling fire on ladders and other high things, along with some other stuff sprinkled in. 

Friday night we saw….

This Silver Guy who stands like a statue:

This guy who has someone in the audience tie him up in a strait jacket and then wrap him in chains…and he unhooks his joints, bends his body in painful, odd-looking positions, and gets out! Then we found a Silver Girl..also standing like a statue!  Next was a juggler guy on a bicycle balanced on a pole! In the background was a guy who walked a tightrope and juggled fire: A guy who was sort of a combo one-man band and Goodwill store.  You had to see this to believe it:

A guy who just played the guitar and sang!  Yep…no fire…no juggling…no trash..ummm..no teeth!  But he did sing and play really well!!!

A different guy who had someone put him in a strait jacket and wrap him tightly in chains!  Incredibly he got out in less than 2 minutes…

And then went on to juggle fire and breath out flames too!  That is not fire on the back of his head though….that is the sun getting ready to set and reflecting off of him! 

Which brings us to the main event of the evening (no, not the street performers…nature’s stunning show!)

   

Beautiful!!!

Afterwards we saw two more shows before heading home for dinner!

This very very young (19? 20?) boy actually did a great job!  He was humorous, fun to watch…and had some amazing strength and balance…sorry for the dark pictures.   The sun had set and we couldn’t use flash or he might be flash blinded!

Balancing the ladder:Handstand on the ladder:

Juggling fire!  See in the second picture where he catches the flaming juggling baton thingie  (do those have a name?) on his face!

Then he switched ladders to a free-standing kind of ladder (I don’t know the technical name!) with no leaning thing!  He climbed on this up into the air!  And then juggled flaming batons on top!  INCREDIBLE!

The last show had a guy and girl.  They did quite a few things…among them he juggled flaming baton thingies..then breathed the flame and blew out fire!  Can you see the fire in his mouth?  This was seriously impressive in person!!!               Then his girl climbed into this box and he put knives through it.  It is after dark so it was hard to photograph…but if you look closely you can see her arm coming out on the left to show us she is okay…after all the knives are pushed down and coming out the bottom.

Everybody was invited to go up and see how she was contorted inside the box…but we realized our meter was up and so made a beeline back to our parking space before we got a ticket!FabPreteen was seriously disappointed!  I promised her she could look in the box when we went back the next night…but they weren’t there!!!  Of course I didn’t hear the end of it. 

If you have a preteenage daughter you probably understand.

After a quick stop at Publix for some extra dinner supplies (FabHubs was going to make pizza) we went back to Irene’s for dinner.

Somehow with all my gabbing I forgot to take a picture of the gorgeous (and absolutely delicious) pizza FabHubs made for me!  Yes he makes his crusts from scratch…and topped it with my favorites…ricotta, mozzarella, onion, pineapple, mushrooms, red pepper, and maybe more veggies but I cannot remember!  Kids had cheese. 

I never thought I could break everybody from the pepperoni habit but they seem perfectly happy without it!  I am pleased!!!

I was starving…I had not had anything since the hummus wrap and granola bar on the way down (I can’t afford the snacking calories the rest of the family can!) so while FabHubs made dinner I made a nice salad for myself.  I was in the mood for something crunchy on top, so stealing an idea from Pursuing Balance Meredith, I topped it with some crunchy, fruity granola, along with some balsamic!  It was perfect! Next was bedtime!  Kids were packed onto the floor and couch.  Good thing they are campers and used to being in sleeping bags on little mats in tents…they adapted perfectly.

FabPreteen got the couch of course!  She is not as adaptive as the boys are!  After tucking everybody in…FabHubs and I went off to bed ourselves, pretty exhausted and ready to recharge for another day of sightseeing…

Check out more of our Spring Break 2010  Sites and Eats:

Spring Break Part One, St. Augustine

Spring Break Part One, St. Augustine continues

Spring Break Home Again Intermission

 

Spring Break 2010, We Rest!

Well we sort of rest, if you can count unloading the car, unloading the suitcases, and loading and unloading the washing machine repeatedly over the next two days!

Factor in the last of the transcription for the week, a produce delivery, and a Passover Seder, and we have two days of rest and relaxation (HUH?) before embarking on the second leg of our spring break down to Key West.

The produce delivery was its usual gorgeous bounty!

Asparagus, red chard, raspberries, bananas, apples, pineapple, broccoli, strawberries, chives, avocados, mangos, purple potatoes, romaine, yellow tomatoes…and more!  Am I a lucky girl or what!

I also ordered some organic horseradish root to take to the Seder!

When we got to my sisters, she was frying up some beet and sweet potato chips and had the beet greens ready to feed to the garbage can.

I did a quick interception (they look amazingly like the red chard!)

And cooked them up for a quick dinner last night, along with some black beans and rice.

   I was NOT in the mood to cook at all and so I resorted to the healthy person’s quick meal…the canned black bean.

Topped with some cheddar cheese, light sour cream and fresh chopped organic parsley alongside my sauteed beet greens (didn’t I say something about not feeling like cooking?  Yeah Right) it was a relatively quick but delicious meal.

Now we are reloaded back into the car for the drive down to Key West…more to report tomorrow!

Check out more of our Spring Break 2010  Sites and Eats:

Spring Break Part One, St. Augustine

Spring Break Part One, St. Augustine continues

Spring Break, Key West Day One

Spring Break 2010, Part One Continues…..

Sunday morning we had another full day planned.

We started off with a hearty breakfast.  Somehow over the last few weeks we ended up with over 10 pounds of organic russet taters and needed to start making a dent in them.   FabHubs packed them so we could use them…and use them he did!  He made these ridiculously massive (but delicious) potato pancakes!  We had those with the organic eggs I order alongside my weekly produce delivery.

Can’t forget the coffee!  We are double-fisted coffee people…Espresso in one hand and French press in the other…camping or not!

The rest of the day was spent shopping in the old part of the city!  My favorite find was some vegan organic deodorant which so far seems to be working really well! 

I didn’t take many pictures of us shopping..too busy browsing!

We had a ghost tour planned for the evening, so we decided, instead of eating dinner out, to eat lunch out and eat our snacks and sandwiches for dinner while we waited for our ghost tour.

I found a great little restaurant on the street we were on…I had some very unhealthy but delicious coconut shrimp.  I ordered the fruit salad alongside and I was very excited about this…but it turned out to be canned!   A big let down.

By the time we reached the end of the street the trolleys had stopped running and so we had a long but scenic walk back.  This is the day my pedometer logged my 6 miles!  Maybe!

We were early for our ghost tour, so we go the cooler out of the car and sat in the parking lot and had our sandwiches, fruits, and snacks while we waited. 

The kids had begged and begged for this ghost tour but I was not really thrilled about it at all.   It took us all around the city after dark…and (gulp) back into the jail at night.  I didn’t mind the city tour, but I was seriously not into the tour back into the old jail.  At night.  This was a place of horror that already creeped me out during the day…at night it took on a whole life of its own!

Thankfully we survived!

We got back to the cabin and while the kids zonked to bed…we had an adult beverage by a campfire!

The next morning was checkout time.  Breakfast was simple this day..cereal and fruit.  I had pictures of these but I can’t seem to find them!

After packing up, we went back to the old town to visit the fort!       After the fort we took a final ride on the trolley to hear about the reset of the historic parts of the city…then back to our car for the long ride home.

Leg one of the trip complete…we will be home for two days and then down to Key West for another few days of sightseeing!

Check out more of our Spring Break 2010  Sites and Eats:

Spring Break Part One, St. Augustine

Spring Break Home Again Intermission

Spring Break, Key West Day One

It’s Spring Break! Part One…

Kids are off of school, FabHubs is on vacation, as are my clients, and we are relaxing, having fun, and doing a little traveling!

The first part of the week I hauled the kids up to St.  Augustine and we had a fun few days seeing lots of OLD sites.

Did you know that St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States?  Established even before Jamestown!

As a family of 5, vacationing can get a little pricy, especially eating out three meals a day!  Besides, I feel healthier when we make most of our own food.

So usually we will stay at a campground and rent a cabin.  We make our breakfasts and lunches (which we carry with us in a cooler, along with snacks and drinks), and some of our dinners.  We eat out at least once or twice while we are gone, and usually en route as well.

We arrived at the campground really really really late Friday night.  Much later than I wanted to…everybody was exhausted and had to make up their bunks!  At least we weren’t setting up tents! O The cabin is a small, two-room cabin with a/c and electricity.  No kitchen, no bathroom.  

We do all of our cooking outdoors in front of the cabin.

Breakfast:  Making lunches to go: Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and unpictured Tofurkey sandwiches on homemade bread brought from home.  We ended up buying more for the rest of our trip.

Our first day in town we saw the St. Augustine History Museum, the Old Jail, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.  

 

I put on my new pedometer to track the steps/miles I walked.  I didn’t calibrate it and it gave me a total of over 6 miles!  I don’t really think I walked that much though.

We bought trolley tickets, but ended up doing a lot of walking…which was fine with me!  I wore my brand new walking shoes for the occasion.

Back “home” that night, after a quick stop at Publix we cooked up dinner.   Caesar salad and spaghetti with tomato sauce for FabHubs, FabStepson, and FabPreteen…whole wheat pasta with shredded veggies and peanut sauce for FabTeen and me!

While FabHubs and FabTeen worked on dinner, I caught up on some work (I had a bunch that needed to be finished and still worked at night) while FabPreteen rested her eyes…

We did take a few shortcuts…

Salad was bagged salad with dressing included:

Peanut sauce was jarred:  (sorry…bad picture!)

FabHubs cooked the pasta:  Assembled and tossed in a Ziplock. I was happy with mine…FabTeen didn’t like the sauce.  You will have to picture everybody else’s, I was a poor dinner photographer.  After this we were zonked and went to bed…we had another full day planned for tomorrow!

Check out more of our Spring Break 2010  Sites and Eats:

Spring Break Part One, St. Augustine continues

Spring Break Home Again Intermission

Spring Break, Key West Day One