Key West & Bahamas

Cruising to Key West

Another trip my husband earned was a three day cruise from Miami to Key West and then a day visit to an island owned by Norwegian Cruise Line in the Bahamas. We flew to Miami and stayed one night, just staying around our hotel. It was a modest place, but there was a good restaurant and I tried conch bisque. I think that's when I tried the alligator, also. It was really good. And in the morning, we had huge glasses of fresh Florida orange juice. I may always remember the next morning and how we didn't need a wake up call from the desk. The airport was close by and during the night the flight pattern was in one direction and in the morning they changed it back to their day route I guess, because at 6 a.m. or thereabouts it sounded like a jet plane was about to land on the roof. You never saw two people get out of bed so fast! So, time to get up, I guess. Then off we went to our ship, the "Leeward". This ship was one of their smaller ones, and one of the things I enjoyed was their little casino they had on board. They also had really fun entertainment and we enjoyed the show that they presented in their theater. All these young entertainers looked like they were having a lot of fun.

We went to Key West and just had from about 10 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon to look around. Not a lot of time to see everything, but we tried. We took a little tour on one of these "trains" with several "cars" that get pulled around and this nice lady gave us the 25 cent tour of Key West. We walked down Duvall Street and passed all the bars and stopped in some of the gift shops. We had lunch at Margaritaville, Jimmy Buffet's restaurant. I'm sorry we didn't have more time there as there were more things to see and do than we had time for. Just walking up and down the residential streets in the older part of Key West would have been fun, because of their interesting architecture typical of Key West homes.

http://www.conchtourtrain.com/

http://www.hemingwayhome.com/HTML/main_menu.html

After our Key West visit, the ship headed out and the next morning we were off-shore a small island known as Stirrup Cay. I think it is owned by Norwegian Cruise Line, or leased or something. The ship anchors off shore and the passengers are taken to the island via the small boats and then they have this full-blown beach party. Since this was another company sponsored trip, I'm pretty sure that the company had taken over the whole ship. So the people were having a grand time. There was food and drinks and games and swimming and snorkeling and exploring the small island if you wanted to. There were some Bahamian people who worked the island selling clothes and trinkets. Nobody lived on the island, they just came over for the day. Interesting, I thought.

We had fairly decent weather, but it was cloudy and a bit overcast on the day of the island fun. This photo at the bottom was taken on the far side of the bay/cove/inlet and looking back to the beach party. So, that's all that we've seen of the Bahamas! Better than nothing, I guess.