We came to Key West for its sunshine and its scribes: Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and our lately-discovered Judy Blume. We found a mecca for the thirsty and the barefoot, a stomach-gurgling range of food, a rainbow of cultures and personalities, and a contagious loss of scheduling.  It’s not that we stopped planning for places to visit, but they were not hectic plans: we saw Hemingway, and Williams and Blume days apart, and only found Blume’s bookstore, ” Books and Books,” by a referral from a trolley tour driver. Earlier we met the father of the docent of the Tennessee Williams museum, because he told us his father would be marketing pottery that evening at a celebration at the Custom House.  The father was transparently proud of his boy, who had recently acquired the job. Seemed like a small town.

Pelican Diving for Fish

Like these authors,

we found the weather, the sunsets, the rampant roosters and chickens, and the kamikazi pelicans all delightful.

Each day we spent more time wandering the streets on foot, sipping on Margaritas at Jimmy Buffet’s at one end of Duval and returning for the pork and duck at Banana Cafe at the other end of the street.

We witnessed multiple sunsets around Mallory Square with hundreds of our closest acquaintances, and we began to hang out at small shops on the wharf for ice cream and Americano coffee.  We felt that we belonged in these places, even though there were many too loud and too crowded for our comfort. The point is that there are places for everyone’s comfort and digestion even if you are not disposed to take off your clothes at the Garden of Eden or drink under the influence of amped up instruments in certain tight places.

We did not take a sunset cruise or lie out on the beach. We did not go snorkeling or take a glass bottom boat to get up close to sea life. We did ride the stair well of the Court House Museum and followed the tale of Old Man and the Sea  through Guy Harvey sketches over three flights.  And that would show the kind of adventure we followed here. Every day happiness and fair weather. We are grateful for every day–all eight of them.  We head home content to face the less friendly weather of St. Louis.