037: Marathon Part 2: Family, Christmas and Cats

I’ve always preferred Thanksgiving over Christmas for the former’s emphasis on family vs. the latter’s emphasis on commercialism; so while we cherish our recent Thanksgiving celebration, it was a bit bittersweet as it was the first time since our children were born that we were not with them.    We were therefore determined to make sure that we celebrated Christmas with both Charlotte and Jack, and as a bonus we got Nancy’s sister Patti to join us.

Patti:

On Thursday, December 21, we all went down to Key West for the day.    The first time I went in 1981, we welcomed in 1982 with a pretty wild night of partying.   Jim, of our travel group was gay and I didn’t have any experience of parting with gay people.  After that New Year’s Eve, when asked about my trip, one of my comments was, “Well, “The Gays” really know how to party!”   (Now, before I get cancelled, let me note that it was forty-two years ago and Ellen had yet to kiss Laura Dern on national tv, there was no “Will and Grace,” and saying you liked Bette Midler could get you beat up on the playground.)   This trip was decidedly tamer, but no less fun in its own way:

 

I met Joe Namath at this bar back then:

 

The cruise ships are big!  Jack taking it all in:

At Hemmingway's house, the cats rule, we even saw some of the famous six-toed cats:

\

We had lunch at the Margaritaville Restaurant to honor Jimmy Buffet, and we all drank, of course, the Margarita special.    

The next day we drove up to Miami in a trip planned entirely by Jack.  First stop was the Perez Art Museum.  Continuing the cat theme:

 

I'm not much for the type of art at the Perez, but this was way cool:

We then walked over to a nice place for lunch before driving through the Wynwood area of Miami to do the Art Walk, but it was closed so I guess we did the “Art Drive-By.” Cool area, best covered by web-site than by my poor photography.   https://wynwoodmiami.com/experience/art-walk/

Then we drove up to Miami Beach to take in the South Beach scene.  The weather was not that great, but we did take a beach and surrounding area walk and take in the sights

 

We had dinner at outdoor fancy Italian restaurant, I wasn't that impressed with my meal, but everyone else enjoyed theirs.    

On Saturday, Jack woke up under the weather, and we broke out the Covid test:  result = positive.    Bummer.    He spent the next two days in bed recovering, while the rest of us did various odd sight-seeing locally.     Christmas morning, we got a good sunrise picture, but “red sky in morning, sailors take warning” again reared its ugly head and mid-morning it started raining on and off again until early on Tuesday morning.  

Jack was feeling better, but we canceled our resort-Christmas-dinner reservations and wound-up having dinner pool-side at the hotel, isolating as a group.   It wasn’t the feast we planned on, but we were together and that is all that really counted.  

The next day was full of more sight seeing with Jack back up to strength.  Various pictures from our sight-seeing:

At the sea turtle hospital:

Charlotte at the Mile Seven Grill:

Beach time:

Old Bridge walk:

A highlight of Marathon is Crane Point:

You can have a fish-pedicure!   I have a video as well of little fish nibbling on my feet, but some of you may be squeamish:

Or catch a view:

Or see a baby racoon:

I'll close this section with our final cat theme, from a local coffee place:

All too soon on Wednesday, the 27^th it was time for Jack and Charlotte to leave.  It went WAY to quickly.   Ten days would have been better!   We were “up and at-em” by 5:00 a.m. for me to drive them to the Miami airport.  We left Marathon at 5:30 a.m. and got to the a/p by 7:30 a.m. which was fast, but with Keys’ traffic, you never know.  With much of it just two lanes, it doesn’t take much to snarl traffic.  Case in point, it took me three hours for the return trip!

 

 Dave