Key West

After we returned to Miami on Freedom of the Seas on 12/16, we proceeded to take a drive down the the Keys. Had done extensive research on the diving opportunities in the Keys and had planned to dive at Islamorada on the first day and then at Looe Key on the second day. Unfortunately all diving was cancelled because of the strong winds. :(
So instead we visited the scuba diving museum in ISlamorada -it was quite interesting to see the evolution of diving.
We had lunch at the Islamorada fish company. Stone crabs were in season and we had conch salad ( not so good) & 2 lbs of stone crab claws with honey mustad dipping aioli ( yummy!).
Then proceeded to drive down to Key West, arriving just at sundown.
Had some mojitos and conch fritters & listened to live music at a local joint. Conch fritters basically are corn dogs, etc instead of a hot dog there is conch pieces and instead of being long it is a ball. Not bad! I prefer cracked conch which I had at the Islamorada fish company on the way back to Miami - which is basically deep fried batter conch steaks.
Monday morning we visited the Hemingway house and took a tour. There were about 50 cats living there, all decendents of Hemingway's polydactyl cat Snowball. I'd say about 25% of then were polydactyls.
For lunch, we had a sloppy joe at Sloppy Joe's (touristy and overpriced but quite tasty) & some oysters and buffalo wings somewhere else. Took a walk along the harborfront. At sunset went to join in the sunset festivities at Mallory square, specifically to look for the guy with the cat doing tricks. But unfortunately cat guy was off on vacation. Had dinner at Schooner's- my grouper fish sandwich was fishy and the conch chowder had no conch! Thumbs down.
Drove back to Miami the next day after visit the ecotourist office in Key West.

I think I would like to return to the Florida Keys one day to go diving but I would want to get my advanced open water certification first as the dive operators are very strcit about not taking you to any dive site more that 60 ft. Most of the wrecks are deeper than that. Definitely want to dive Looe Key reef one day. WIll return in the summer as that is the best time in terms of weather and visibility for diving.