Christmas in Key West

It's a wrap! 

We had a fantastic Christmas in Key West.....here's all the details

We flew with United from Dublin to Newark and then on to Key west. I rate this flight highly.  It took us about 13 hours (close to the fastest it can be done with connections etc) total to get to Key West with excellent crews on both flights along with really nice new planes.  One item I noticed was that there was no blinds on the windows in the plane. Instead there was a button below the window which allowed you dim the light and stop you seeing out (the cabin crew presumably could also control them and could open all the windows for landing). All very fancy indeed!

Below you can read all about where we stayed, where we ate out and what we got up to:

The Saint - A Marriott Autograph Hotel
What can I say about The Saint that you may not have seen in any of the reviews if you google it. Excellent staff, top notch bedroom, superb location just off Duval on Eaton, awesome bar with a brilliant happy hour along with the roof top bar Halo where we enjoyed some really nice cocktails and good entertainment. 
But my favourite thing was to chill by the pool with a glass of bubbles!
If you are looking for a cool hip hotel in Key West - look no further than The Saint.

 

 

Trolley Tour
It rained and rained for the first two days in Key West so we took in a few different things that we may not have done if the weather was better. One of the things we did was the trolley tour with Amy.  It was a bit of fun and our ticket then gave us free entry in to the Rum Distillery which was a great day out.

Amy and I were twinning in our Christmas reindeer jumpers - we had a lot of people remark on them ("Nice sweater") and then ask the usual "Are you twins?!"

"A beautiful day in the neighborhood" at the Tropic Cinema
Happy to have got to see this film as it may not come to Ireland due to it being all about "Mr Rogers" a very unique and brilliant man known by all of a particular age in the USA but perhaps not so widely known in Ireland.  Going to the Tropic Movie Theatre was a rainy day activity and I loved it!

Papa's Pilar Rum Distillery by the Hemingway Rum Company
A fun little tour with a taste of rum afterwards - sure why not?!

Sarabeths
Sunday nights mean fried chicken in Sarabeths!!  I had the Mahi Mahi which was very good too. We had a really lovely quiet night here and I had a nice glass of malbec with dinner.

Christmas Dinner in The Saint with Key Lime Martini's in Martins afterwards....

We had an awesome table in The Saint for Christmas dinner and really enjoyed the set menu with some great wine and company!

We followed up with an after dinner cocktail in Martins - altogether a lot of fun.

Fishing on the Gulfstream
Look at the haul!
We had a super day on the water with Amy's other half Patrick and caught enough for Amy and Patrick to put some fish in their freezer for a fish dinner or two.
It was a little choppy at times so I had a little moment down the back of the boat at one point, but I got through it and went straight back fishing afterwards!

Santiago's Bodega
This is a spot that we ALWAYS go to in Key West. The food is always excellent and it was no different this time.....the service was a little disinterested on this visit and I missed seeing some of the old staff that used to work in Santiago's.

First Flight 
Amy and I dropped in to what will always be Kelly's to us(!) on Whitehead Street. Home of the first Pan Am office in the USA it is also home to fresh lime margaritas and great food bites at the bar.  We love it - and it was also good to have a natter and great catch up with Amy.

Sunset on the Ingham
Oh my what a stunning sunset on our last night in KW. It was also a lot of fun meeting up with friends on the Ingham Coast Guard ship - great to see them all and hopefully see them again very soon.

Origami
Our last night was spent in Origami which is our favourite sushi restaurant in Key West.  We got a spot at the bar and didn't even look at the menu and instead we just asked the chef to make us some different selections and keep them coming!  Such a great night and really excellent sushi.  

Phew!  I think I've got it all in there!

Another great trip to Key West and I can't wait to return hopefully very soon.

Happy New Year - here's to 2020!

With the impending new year I got to thinking about past new year celebrations along with past memories.  For 2020, I am planning a more simple life and because of that I thought back to times in my life when I didn't have as much as I do now and was living a very different life.

One old memory is when I was travelling around Australia on a year out, 21 years ago.  We spent 6 months in Sydney where Ciaran worked in an architectural practise in the city and I worked at a few odd jobs here and there.  After this time, we bought a camper van and set off travelling around Australia and did farm work along the way to make a bit of money to carry on with our travels.  One place that we visited was Kununurra in Western Australia where we got work packing sweet corn and melon in a production plant. We had got the job by going to a garage on a Monday morning and managers from local farms and factories would go along and pick people out of the group to work for them.  Once you were picked you would be taken on a bus every day to the farm.  It was the case that if you were picked on the first day, you were then employed by the farm until you quit or they didn't need you and let you go.  

We had planned to work for about 6 weeks in this town and were booked in to the caravan park for this time.  So every day we were up about 4.30am and headed to the garage to get on the bus and start work at 6amam.  The work was tough but we got fed by the farm - let's just say we ate a lot of corn and melon!

Did I mention at this time we were fairly broke and we were saving all the money that we made, after we paid for the caravan park and bought dinner for the evening.  Beyond that we didn't spend a whole lot and as far as I can remember we worked 6 days a week.

Everyday when we would arrive at the garage to meet up with the other workers we would see some of them getting breakfast in the garage.  We had already eaten breakfast back at the camp site - we made a big pot of porridge because it was cheap and filling. And although we were not hungry we looked on with envy at the backpackers who bought their breakfast in the garage. What we yearned for most was a cheese and ham toastie and a chocolate milk but it would have blown our budget if we were to buy one every day. One of the mornings we made a plan that on our last day of work we would buy breakfast in the garage to end the block of work on a high.

The six weeks passed quickly, we made great friends on the packing line and had great chats and conversations over lunch with backpackers from all over the world.  And then on our last day we went to the garage and we ate a cheese and ham toastie with a chocolate milk. What bliss!  I can't say it was the best food but the experience was unforgettable. The value we placed on that treat that we worked so hard to experience was immense - so immense that I am blogging about it over 20 years later.  It's the little things that come by with difficulty that provide the best experiences, in comparison to things that come by easy, these days.

For 2020 I want to go back to a simpler time when small things provided the greatest pleasure.

I have a plan in motion......watch this space!

Weekend fun in Dublin

With Storm Atiyah approaching on Sunday, it was good to get out and about on Saturday. After taking Bones for a walk, I got on my bike and cycled to the RDS to visit Gifted Craft Fair. 

                          

I had got two free tickets from a colleague in work and outside the venue I heard a lady with a child ask someone do you have to buy a ticket to go inside. As I was passing by, I offered her my spare one which she happily accepted.

Inside at the fair there was loads to see and I spent a good length of time browsing all of the stands.

I tasted lots of samples of cheese, chutneys and different food items including the Dream Cake by Nostimo Heavenly Food which are based in Mullingar. It was so good and could be described as mousse like but also chocolate fondant like.

                                      

Afterwards I went to Tesco to get some Cranberry sauces - I need to have 75 of them to donate to Basket Brigade next week ('m nearly there - I have 60 jars of sauce).

And later on I took Bones for another walk in the evening and looked at all of the Christmas trees, lights and wreaths on doors in my neighbourhood. What a fun thing to do!

Sunday morning was stormy so I chilled in bed with coffee and a book and a little hairy companion.

Happy December y'all!

It's been a lovely weekend. I was working on Saturday so I didn't want to go out that night. Instead we ordered Indian food from Rasoi in Ranelagh and enjoyed with a nice bottle of wine!

Hey look, I broke out the Christmas napkins and we even took a cheesy wine pic in front of the Christmas tree!

 

It's the 1st of December and it's definitely beginning to feel a lot like Christmas....it's cold and I've presents to wrap and cards to write - this job is waiting for me later today

This little face greeted me when I woke up but I didn't rush out of bed like I normally do on the weekend.

I started my Sunday off with Irish Cream flavour coffee while reading "She Said" (what a book - I'm only about 50 pages in and I am so mad and sad reading it)

Later in the day I got down to the business of writing my Christmas cards. I wrote them while watching my favourite Christmas film "The Holiday" (see here) starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. I've got half my cards written and I don't know how many time's I've made a promise to myself that this is the last year I am writing Christmas cards!!

Flying visit to The Hague

My sister lives in The Hague and I got to visit her for the past few days. It was great to see her and she is a brilliant host - I packed in loads while I was there.

On Thursday I arrived at about 12.30pm and Lydia met me at the airport. We dropped my bags at her apartment and later that day we visited the Maritshuis Museum and got to see Vermeer's "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" - how cool!

I had booked tickets online which was probably unnecessary but very convenient. 

The Girl with the Pearl Earring painting is not that big but I really appreciated it more seeing it in the flesh. For example, I never realised that it is a drop pearl earring in the picture and also that it is massively oversized.

The next day Lydia and I went off on the tram and visited Delft. I really enjoyed this place, it's very quaint and very traditional. We wandered around the streets, climbed to the top of the tower of the church (my legs are still sore 2 days later!!) and we also sampled cheese in the Kaas Winkel. We tasted so many different cheeses and I have to admit I had a little stroop waffel taste too.  All so good.

Lydia had been interested in doing a tour of the Peace Palace for awhile so when she told me there was a tour on the Saturday morning I immediately booked it for her and myself and also our mother once Lydia confirmed that Mam wanted to go on the tour too.

The Peace Palace was conceived in the very late 1800's and Andrew Carnegie funded it on the condition that it had a public library.  The building is stunning and the inside is even more incredible than the outside. The Library has outgrown the building and has the largest collection of legal documents and books in the world - there is now a new library building on the grounds.

It was a flying visit - I left to go to the airport at 3pm for the train to Amsterdam Airport for a 5pm flight to Dublin.

I look forward to getting back to Den Haag someday soon!

Put my tree up!

I returned from The Hague yesterday after a really nice visit to see Lydia (blog to follow) and had made a decision that I was going to put my tree up today if I was not too busy.

I know it's fairly early to put up a tree (it's not even December yet) but sure what the heck, I like having a tree up and I want to enjoy it for a while before I take it down.  I also generally don't like to keep it up longer than after 1st of Jan so I might as well get it up early!

So here it is.......only took me about 3 hours and I threw out a few bags of old decorations that I was sick of.  In total I've got 7 sets of lights on the tree and it is rather bright - I love it!!

 Here's a pic of the tree with the lights off

 And this one is the lights on

 Barbie sits atop!

I love this decoration - it's a pic of my twin sister and I when we were very young at Christmas in front of the tree in our Nana's house

Here's the bags of old decorations ready to go to the local charity shop

As you can see I like an eclectic mix of decorations on my tree and I have built up a collection over years.

However, if I was ever to go in a different direction, my dream tree would be the Modern Christmas Tree by Matt Bliss. It's a stunning design - it looks amazing and I think it would probably store away way more easily than my current big green artificial tree. The story of how it was created is brilliant (check it out on the modern tree website) and it is a true piece of art!

Check my past Christmas tree blogs to see the different places that I positioned my tree and how it looked:

2014

2015

2016

2017

In 2018 I didn't put up a tree(!!!) but you can read about Christmas Day here.

And here's a few pics of my favourite decorations this year - I always buy a few new ones each year which is why my collection is now MASSIVE and in all honestly can be a bit overwhelming as I am adding every decoration to the tree.......after about an hour I always have to recruit Ciarán to help in order to not lose the will to stop!

I love the rainbow heart in the top left - the colours complement my eclectic mix of decorations.  However, it is the message that I love the most "Love is Love".  This decoration makes me so happy that I live in Ireland, a place that offers equality to all and respects everyone in their choice of who they love. The decoration also brings me back to the time that I got out and canvassed for the marriage referendum back in 2015 (read about it here). It was my first experience of canvassing and it made me so happy to be part of a huge change in Ireland. It then led me on to canvassing for the later referendum to appeal the 8th amendment. Read here about my feelings when it passed.  
Thank you Lydia for this special decoration.

You can see a turtle in the top right hand corner of the pic. This is also a new decoration for this year and once again I love it because of the memories it sparks. This little ornament brings me right back to my sailing trip in the Caribbean where we experienced swimming with turtles in the wild. We had moored in Tobago Cay and got in to the dinghy to head over to explore the sand bar.  The others went back on the dinghy to the boat but Ciaran and I said we would swim over as it was not far and we had flippers and snorkel gear on. Well the next things is that I saw a star fish on the bottom of the sea floor as I swam along,....and then another one, and then another one.  Then Ciarán, called out "Turtle" and what do you know a turtle swam by!!  So so incredible!

The final decorations - the parrots, flamingos and Margaritaville all remind me of time spent in Key West and where I will be very soon again!!

Tell me about your favourite decoration and what feelings it sparks for you - I read all comments left below :-) 

Friday Funday!

Friday was a fun day and it also followed a fun Thursday night where I met up with my bestie Alice where we toasted our missing gang member Amy of Dublinia blog fame.

After wings in Elephant & Castle we then went on to the Omniplex in Rathmines and watched, as part of the "Bring it Back" series, my favourite film.....yes you guessed it....."A Star is Born" (which I may or may not have seen in the cinema a total of 4 times!).

Alice had never seen the film, and safe to say, she LOVED it!! But I do hope she was able to drive home safely and was not too teary eyed ;-)  

Friday was my day off so my mother called over and helped me clear out my wardrobe. 3 big black bags (these will go to St Vincents shop in Rathmines) later we were ready for brunch!!

I had made a booking at Layla's in The Devlin Hotel which is a short stroll away.

It was my mam's first time in The Devlin and she really liked it. I've been a few times and generally order a steak but on this occasion I ordered mussels - which were amazing!!

And then it was nearly 3pm......wow time flies when you are having fun!  And it was time for me to pick up Bones from the groomer where he had spent the day.

An awesome day in all, and made up for having to work today!