Well honestly this was probably the strangest vacation Mark and I have ever taken. We left, before dawn, from Austin on Thanksgiving day and flew into Atlanta, there we had a three hour layover and found out there were two flights to Ft. Lauderdale before ours. We askd and they said we couldn't get on an earlier flight that we had to wait for our luggage. Oh well, we killed the time. So, we get to Ft. Lauderdale and promptly hear our names called over the loudspeaker, guess what, our luggage got there before we did. Stupid airlines. So, we get our bags and our rental car and head off for the 90 minute drive to Key Largo.
We are really excited about this trip, we rented a nice houseboat for the 9 days we're there, we get there and we are utterly disappointed. The website pictures made this place look and soundgreat, as if we could just swim right off our boat and see manatee and stuff. Yeah right! The place was at least 50 years old and had been added on to and not kept up well, it smelled a little funny and there were soft spots in the floor, the kitchen was inadequately supplied, the bathroom sink was dirty, the back of the couch was broken, it just went on and on, we seriously considered forefiting our deposit and staying somewhere else. Avoid it at all costs!! Here's their website so you know who to avoid:
http://www.keylargohouseboat.com/ In fact, I would avoid Key Largo all together for accomidations. It was just really rundown and depressing and didn't seem overly tourist friendly. We liked Islamorada a whole lot better and got a recommendation from a local that we should stay at The Chesapeake Resort in Islamorada, here's their website:
http://www.chesapeake-resort.com/ Anyhow, true to form, Mark picked dinner the first night and it was just a terrible experience, I'd avoid Rib Daddy's at all costs. The service was terrible and the food was worse. The rest of vacation I picked the restaurants and we were much happier. Our favorites were The Fish House:
http://www.fishhouse.com/ I highly recommend the yellow tail snapper either matacumbe style or hemingway style. Take my word for it, it'sa bit pricey but WELL worth it. We also enjoyed Hobo's Cafe:
http://hoboscafe.net/Hobos_Cafe/Welcome.html They had decent seafood and a lot of americana type fair. They had this loaded baked potato soup that made me VERY happy when I was sick :) We also frequented Tower of Pizza, excellent pizza and fun atmosphere, always busy which is an excellent sign. Another place we went and enjoyed was Mrs. Mac's Kitchen:
http://www.mrsmacskitchen.com/ They had this key lime freeze thing that was divine. Finally we found this very interesting litlte Ice Cream/Coffee/Waffle shop called the Blue Cow Creamery, now they don't have a website but they do have free wi-fi and I found a fun little news story on them:
http://www.mrsmacskitchen.com/ They have the best Dulce le Leche ice cream I've ever had in my life. You should check it out. Finally a unique experience we had was the Green Turtle Inn in Islamorada:
http://www.greenturtlekeys.com/ We went there for dinner on my birthday, they had the most excellent prime rib! Okay, enough about food :)
The whole reason we went on vacation was to go snorkeling and use all that snorkeling equipment we spent so much money on. We had the best experience with Sundiver:
http://www.snorkelingisfun.com/ We went out w/ them twice and both times it was great. We really enjoyed the captain and the crew on the boat, they even gave us food recommendations. They even turned us away one day because they were honest enough to tell us that the conditions weren't great, not many businesses would do something like that. We also went once at Pennekamp State Park, We didn't care for th reef they took us to and really felt like we were treated like four year olds, this is what they call a cattle boat because they cram as many people as they can onto the boat, they also make you snorkel with a buddy which is somewhat annoying because you're always running into each other and it's not like you can talk! Anyhow, by far and away the most fun we had was sailing on the Morningstar w/ Captain Rick. He took us to some small mostly unspolied reefs and we really enjoyed the sail when mother nature was cooperating and giving us wind. This particular charter was $65.00/person plus tax, but WELL worth it, the others ran about $35.00/person plus tax. Here's his website:
http://www.morningstarcharters.com/ Tell him we said "Hi!" hehe. Finally the other time we went "snorkeling" was when we went to The Theater of The Sea and went swimming w/ the rays. This was really neat, my only complaint was it didn't last long enough! We got to feed the rays squid and then we got to swim with them. One of them tried to eat Mark's leg, it was pretty funny :)
We had one pretty major mishap wile in the Keys, Mark lost his wallet. We were on our way out to go snorkeling the first Saturday we were there and Mark and I stopped to pay the man for the boat. Well, while Mark was signing the receipt he laid his waller on top of the rental car. He didn't have pockets as he was in his swim trunks, well he left the wallet on top of the car. Thankfully we didn't go that far before we stopped to pay for the snorkeling. We ended up walking/driving up and down US 1 looking for the wallet. As luck or fluke, or whatever would have it, I started finding cash, then receipts, and then even two of Mark's credit cards. We ended up finding all the cash, we'd just counted it the night before, two of the three credit cards, and most all of the receipts. What we didn't find was Mark's atm/credit card, his drivers license, or the actual wallet. Totally bizarre. Thanks to the Eccles, we ended up financing the rest of vacation w/ my check card, they really saved our vacation for us :)
Our last day in the Keys we headed down to Key West, now originally we planned this so we could go to the pirate festival but we figured out that it was going to be cheesy so didn't go. We did however enjoy the drive down and did a little souvenir shopping and had lunch at a highly overrated place called the Hog's Head Saloon. We stayed and took a most excellent sunset cruise on the Liberty Clipper:
http://www.libertyfleet.com/ This was a really neat boat that we are actually considering vacationing on in 2010. Mark helped put up the sails, we fired on other pirate ships, we had drinks and appetizers, saw he most amazing sunset which included the green spark!
The trip home was uneventful, in spite of Mark having no photo ID. Overall the trip was great! Mark will eventually upload pictures to our website
www.markanderinn.com/gallery and when he does I'll upload my favorites to facebook.
Next vacation is planned for the the end of June beginnng of July 2009. We're planning on going to Cloud 9 to see my parents and Mark's family as well :)
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