But the timing couldn't have come better - I left Indiana on Friday and it was snowing!I actually arrived in Florida in around 3pm, so Eric still had some work to do before the weekend could really begin. But this really didn't bother me one bit - I was just thrilled to have some warm sunshine on my face! I was just loving the mid-70's accompanied by a warm breeze. I was home! You can take the girl out of Florida, but you can never take the Florida out of the girl!
Friday we had a nice dinner to wind down the week. Kept it simple and went out to a restaurant on the water.. well, the intercoastal, anyway. It was perfect, actually. Good food and the view of water... one more way to ground me and bring me home.
After dinner, we went for a drive through South Beach, just to take in the scene. I love the neon and architecture, and at night it looks completely different than the day. How can you not love that atmosphere?Saturday morning, I got some sun time by the hotel pool - just want I needed. It felt so wonderful to have the sunshine on my skin. I even got warm enough to jump in the pool to cool off. In January. Love that! Saturday afternoon consisted of a little shopping at the Town Center at Boca Raton, just for fun. And of course, a quick run to Ikea. We didn't dare wear ourselves out, though... we had a night in South Beach ahead of us.
We weren't heading to South Beach for the party scene... we were heading there for the foodie scene. And some more shopping, since it's there and all. There are some really cool shops there, unique to the area and the US, in some cases. But our main destination was SushiSAMBA! I'm sure you've read about this place before on my blog - this is one of Eric's and my favorite restaurants! We usually go to the one in Chicago when we go up there (we even took Darian last summer), but the first one we went to was this one in South Beach. You have to love a sushi restaurant that has a DJ in house after 10pm. And just as our past experiences, it was awesome! Again, the whole night was perfect. This little weekend was turning into a full on vacation for me very quickly!
Sunday = Funday. I grew up in Florida. In high school, I only made it as far south as Fiesta Key (just south of Islamorada)... but that was it. And I can honestly say, I felt like I was missing something as a Floridian. It took me about 20 years after my first trip to the Florida Keys to finally make it all the way to mile marker zero... the southernmost point... Key West! Yep... Sunday we took a drive down the Keys.We left pretty early - the sun was just coming up. But since we were just doing a day trip, we wanted to make the most of the day and get as much in without feeling rushed. It worked out well, too, because we had very little traffic until we were about half-way into the trip. And even then, it only picked up because we started making stops along the keys. First was a Publix on Marathon Key to grab some more snacks and drinks. We didn't grab as many as we thought before we left (the downfall of leaving early when you're still half asleep!). But from there, it was just fun stops.
Our next stop was Bahia Honda State Park. This was a cool stop, especially for an engineer, since there was a historic bridge to view. The Key's have quite a history. As a brief summary, I'll just say the railroad came before the road, and then the road just went where the railroad was... until modern day highway design came through was built. This left the old bridges to be demolished or turned into fishing piers. Well, the particular bridge that connected Bahia Honda Key to Spanish Harbor Key was a narrow truss bridge instead of deck bridge - this was the only bridge in the Keys like this. So while they were able to simply put a road deck on the old rail bridges elsewhere, the trusses posed a dilemma here. 
So, they went up and over the trusses, which made for a higher bridge deck and they had to build approaches. At this point, if you're not an engineer, you bored, so I'll stop. We actually got a personal history lesson from one of the park employees, which definitely added to our experience there. I wouldn't have know half of this without that little sidebar. I thought it was cool, at least.Our next stop was just a bit further down - Deer Key. Well, Deer Key is know for, you guessed it, the Key Deer. Crazy, I know. Everyone knows you shouldn't feed wild animals because you don't want wild animals to become dependent on human handouts (or get 'bad food' not meant for animal consumption). They have it well posted here, as well. But a little birdie told us that the Key Deer like lemon drops, which I found odd. But I like lemon drops, and I bought some anyway, figuring I'd eat them up. So Eric and I are driving around Deer key (we were told NOT to go to the visitors center/viewing area - it's better to go deeper in the Key on your own). The first deer we saw was standing next to the side of the road... next to a parking lot for storage units. Kind of funny, actually. We kept driving and were about to give up and start driving back to the main road. That's when we saw one dart across the road. By the time we got to where we saw it cross, it was far back in the woods. So we keep going. We then saw another one, just eating at the edge of the woods by the road.
I made Eric stop so I could take a picture. I figured it would run, so I tried to snap a few quickly and then tried to get closer. Well, to my surprise, this deer was quite friendly! He came running towards me!! I was actually sucking on a lemon drop at the time... did he smell it??? He came right up to me - I probably could of reached out a petted him. Instead, I took the lemon drop out of my mouth and tossed it in his direction. He snatched that thing up like it was the last thing to eat on earth! And chewed it up - I heard the crunching! It was so weird! I snapped a few more pictures and then went back to the car. Eric laughed because he saw the deer coming towards me and then he didn't see me (I squatted down to take some pictures) and he thought I got attacked by the deer. It was a cool little experience. But we were now back on the road!
Finally... we get to Key West! It's a busy little little key! We drive down towards Duval Street (since that's where everything is) and find a parking spot on one of the side streets. Time to explore.
Since we were near the south end of Duval Street, we decide to go over the the infamous Southermost Point buoy/marker. I knew there'd be a line for pictures with it. But it was a little long to wait in, even for me. So we jumped over to the side where you could get just as good of a picture. After snapping a few pictures(and checking in on Foursquare), we started to walk up Duval Street.Even in the middle of the day, I could see how this would be an absolute party scene at night. It was bar after bar after bar. With some t-shirt shops scattered in between. And then you'd come across some nicer cafes/bistro and art galleries. It definitely had an appeal to a wide range of ages. We walked the entire length of Duval Street, taking in some sights off of Mallory Square on the north end, before stopping for some lunch at one of the cafes we saw - Eric had this awesome lobster grilled cheese sandwich and I had a Key West version of fish tacos. They were both pretty good, but I think Eric's was a little better. We strolled back down Duval Street, trying to catch a few more notable sights before heading back north to the mainland.
Caught a glimpse of Ernest Hemingway's house (would've loved to do the tour - maybe next time) and drove through some of the historic neighborhoods before leaving. There's something about the 'traditional' Florida house with the metal roof that is just cool.By 4pm, we were back on the road for the four hour trip back to Boca Raton. But what a perfect day trip this turned out to be. It couldn't have been better if I planned it out by the minute. Which actually would've made it worse because then there would've been the pressure of a schedule...
I had a 6:15am flight out of Fort Lauderdale this morning. So early... alarms should not go off that early (3:30am). Not sure how I managed to get home, still go to work for a bit, and still awake now. I think I'm typing this in a sleep mode. Oh, well. The weekend was well worth it.
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