The Lee Family: Kid-Free Key West

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Kid-Free Key West

After dropping the girls off with Grandma and Grandpa at the farm, CK and I headed to Key West. First, he told me he planned to stop at a special place for lunch on the way down. We flew to Chalet Suzanne, which is this amazing little place in the middle of nowhere! It was a destination restaurant serving fine food that many stopped at while traveling before the interstates were put in and it has an interesting history and has been in the same family for over 80 years. The restaurant is very eccentric and interesting but has also seen better times. Our waitress was very friendly and obviously trying as hard as she could to do a great job. Other than one other couple, we were the only people there for lunch which was a little sad since it's a really great place! They are known for their Romaine Soup, which is a spinach and mushroom-based soup that was sent on the Apollo space flights to the moon! I must confess it sounded odd, but had to try it. It was absolutely incredible and one of the most delicious soups I've ever had! After lunch, we walked around a bit before continuing to Key West. The hotel/restaurant has a grass strip, where CK landed and it was a little precarious flying out since the grass seemed to be a little too tall and there was some sort of hazard at the far end of the runway. But, we made it out safely and landed in Key West before we knew it!

The few days in Key West seemed to fly by and we had a great time walking around, visiting the "Southern Most Point of the U.S." and eating a lot of key lime pie. We ended up going to one of favorite restaurants, Blue Heaven several times and enjoyed a slice of their amazing key lime pie each time. We ended up taking an entire key lime pie back to CK's parents and it survived the trip perfectly! One night we went to Latitudes to eat dinner while watching the sunset. Latitudes is on a private island so we took a water taxi out to the restaurant and ended up having a great table inside. The food was great and watching the sunset was really magical! We ate at Pepe's and CK told me stories of his past visits to the restaurant while he worked for Senator Connie Mack. One our last full day in Key West, we returned to our hotel pool after lunch with the plan of relaxing, reading and swimming, however, it ended up raining pretty solidly for the entire afternoon. After about an hour CK gave up and returned to our room, but I stayed under the umbrella and enjoyed the rain falling all around me. Although it was very wet, it stayed warm so it was still very relaxing. We had such a fun time and the girls had a great time hanging out on the farm with their Grandma and Grandpa. Most evenings when we called to talk, they were too busy eating ice cream to talk! We were pretty sure we could have stayed gone for months and wouldn't have been missed.

On our way!!