Toes in the sand...

A couple weeks ago my wife and I had the privilege of visiting South Florida, and seeing some good friends of ours. Chris and Brandie are renting a nice little bungalow just outside of Ft. Lauderdale while they get re-acclimated to the area and look for a place to call their own.

These are our good friends who had moved to West Michigan for three years to be with his family and opened two franchise sandwich shops. Things did not work out, and they were sort of left holding the bag, so they moved back to where they belonged, close to family and out of the cold (lucky for us we get to visit!).

Here is part I of our week long visit:

It was so good to catch up with our friends and see a part of the state we had never been to, south and east. Man was it beautiful! The trip started with Brandie giving us a tour of the famous highway A1A, A.K.A. Beach Front Avenue (this is a line in one of Kristy's favorite rap songs from Vanilla Ice called "Ice Ice Baby"--That block was dead Yo, so I continued to a1a beachfront ave. We sang that the rest of the week).

We almost died twice in traffic, but were saved by Brandies expert South FL driving skills. People are crazy down there! We also noticed that there were no parking spots to be had, so we hit up one of Chris's favorite spots called Ricky's and had some wings and a cold beverage.

That night we got to see the restaurant that Chris manages called Anthony's Coal Fire Pizza. I highly recommend it! Great wings and pizza with a high class atmosphere at a budget friendly price.
http://www.anthonyscoalfiredpizza.com/
After he got home we went to a bar called Big Dawgs where the girls had something that resembled nachos...blech.

The next day we were up early and off to see the Keys. Man what a beautiful place. The ride down was long, but entertaining as we started in with our usual catching of each other in verbal gaffes (the most infamous and perhaps the one that started our obsession with teasing each other for gaffes was the first one ever two years ago. It was Brandie and it involved Bill Parcels, but it is not fit to print here). Chris was the first one caught. As he excitedly chronicled the history of the Key's he began to tell us how at least 50 presidents had visited. There was a moment of silence, then Kristy nailed him, "Uh, Chris, isn't Obama the 44th president?" The rest of the trip was filled with, "This is nice, and I’ll bet all 50 presidents enjoyed it!"

The houses were amazing, the atmosphere laid back, the water the most gorgeous colors of blues and greens I have ever seen (that includes Cancun, Jamaica, North Carolina and other parts of Florida). Our first stop was at Kokomo, as the Beach Boys would tell you, "In the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo. That's where we wanna go, to get away from it all."

It was "Bartenders Bash", a sort of spring break for the service industry people who were working serving drinks to the spring breakers a couple weeks before. There were painted on bathing suits, beads, sun and sand. What a way to unwind. The free beer stopped flowing early, so we "Kept on pursuing to the next stop", Key West!

What can I say about Key West? Well, Chris put it this way; it's like New Orleans without the smell. I have never been to NOLA, so I will defer to Chris, but man is this a great place. Duval St was the place to be. All of the bars had an open air feel, there was music being played by guys with guitars, the drinks were flowing, and the sun was shining. We had conch fritters and peel-n-eat shrimp at our first stop, Sloppy Joe's. Mmmmm delish!

As we were leaving I still had a beer in my hand. Not knowing the rules I thought I would head for the door and see what would happen. Sure enough, somebody stopped me. As I started to hand my beer over the man at the door stuck out a plastic cup. "Here is a cup to take your beer to go!" What? I think I love this place!

We wandered around, drinking beer, swapping stories, smoking cigars, and just having a blast. When we strolled into Rick's Cafe there was a man on stage with an acoustic guitar, and I headed straight for him. I negotiated my way on stage, but he would not let me play his guitar (he said it was a $9k instrument, so I don't blame him). I settled for singing while he played Jimmy Buffets Margaritaville, a classic favorite of my friends. When I was done he pointed out the live webcam feed and some viewers online were leaving flattering messages about my singing. Felt pretty good.

There we met a local named Andy. He was born in Key West, covered in hair and full of stories. He was a ladies’ man who told us about his most recent wife while hitting on the bar tender. What a guy.


We had a fantastic dinner out on the deck at Fogerty's. I had the freshest grouper I have ever tasted (ok, it was the first taste of grouper, but it was fresh!) and Chris insisted we try the key lime pie. That's good pie!

Later we stumbled into the Lazy Gecko where people were watching hockey and another guy was playing guitar. Almost immediately my friends informed him that I play guitar, and it was not long before I was on the stool in front of the mic. Someone shouted a request for House of the Rising Sun, so I started playing Margaritavile. At the end of a long day of drinking I could not remember anything else, so that was the end of my brief career as a performer in Key West.

The next morning we got a tip for a great little place to have breakfast. It was a little shack that had been around since the turn of the century, and yes, I bet all 50 presidents had breakfast there. The decor was eclectic, the food greasy spoon, and it was fantastic! We had mimosas to go with our omelets and corned beef hash.
After breakfast we hit the southernmost point of the continental U.S. for a photo op, did some shopping, and hit the road back home. What a great time.

Our begrudging departure from the Key's next...