I am reporting live from Key West, where I'm on a Thanksgiving vacation. You know, the traditional all-American island, tropical, step-over-the-drunks-in-the-street, Key West vacation.
This is a nice vacation for a middle-aged woman, her husband, daughter and mother-in-law. As it turns out, you don't have to drink yourself blind when you're in Key West. Good to know. Plus, there is pumpkin pie here this week.
Despite the fact that we're in a one-of-a-kind location - really, Key West is as much like a foreign country as New Orleans and has as many signature restaurants, bars and town weirdos - we are spending this vacation the way we spend every vacation, no matter where we are: by eating and walking around.
We eat like professional restaurant critics when we're on vacation. Big, huge breakfasts, bigger lunches, snacks and drinks, happy hours, and then big, multi-course dinners with fluffy, chocolaty desserts and more drinks. We order way too much food, but we don't take doggie bags because when are we going to eat it? The next meal is just around the corner.
There's no time to eat leftovers, because in between the meals we are walking around. Regardless of where we vacation - Europe, Florida, New England, New York City, South Carolina, New York City - we walk around. Forget renting scooters or taking taxis or riding subways or biking, we grab our cameras, jackets and see everything by foot.
"Did you go to that thingI told you about?" "You have to do the blah blah blah." Yeah, we usually don't do those things. We ask for recommendations and we sometimes go to restaurants that our friends have raved about, but other than that, we do stuff that we can walk to and somehow just arrive at.
When we arrived at Key West, it was pouring down rain, the streets were flooded and the shop owners were all sweeping out water and putting up sandbags. The weather has been not-so-great for snorkeling and kayaking, two things we hoped to do while we were here. But we're unfazed, because regardless of the weather, we can always walk around and we can eat.
Tonight we're going on a sunset cruise on a schooner. We picked the one with wine (and we're hoping there are snacks). After that we'll go to dinner and then maybe stop for a drink.
All of our friends and family pigged out yesterday for Thanksgiving, but for us, it was just another vacation day.Labels: dog walking, eating on vacation, Florida keys, Key West, restaurant, thanksgiving, vacation
