Cruise day 4: Key West

When we woke up on this morning, the ship was still at sea. After breakfast West and I headed out to watch our approach to Key West. West wanted to see them tie the ship to the dock. It was a surprisingly smooth and easy process.
Key West was full of unusually wacky stuff. Like random flocks of chickens and roosters roaming the street. Our first stop was my first choice, a pirate museum. Which actually ended up being kind of dorky, but I found great entertainment in it just the same. It had a no picture inside rule, which I didn't follow. I'm just completely amazed that pirates aren't pretend!
One of two original, surviving "Jolly Rogers".
So, my fellow "Pirates" fans (the movie, not the lifestyle, or the school mascot), remember Gibbs? He's a real person! Or was before he got caught and sentenced to death for piracy.
Newspaper clipping:
Key West had some funny statues placed all around it. Most of them were around the Art Museum, but not all:Side note, I was making West take all these pictures by signaling mutely to him while he was on phone call after phone call fixing things with his work. Key West is Florida, which meant cell phone service. I just kept myself amused by setting up pictures of myself and handing West the camera, who took the picture with out skipping a beat in his conversation ha ha. I regret not buying one of these... OK, not really.
We signed up for a crazy boat ride that promised sharp turns and tricks to leave us completely soaked. On our way over to the boat, in the van, we were informed of the many fun places and things Key West offers. There was the Garden of Eden, a clothing optional pub with a clothing optional restaurant. Key West has a clothing optional festival in October, and offers clothing optional deep sea fishing (were we seeing a pattern yet?). They were pushing for a clothing optional beach, and though she didn't support it, she has a feeling it's going to pass. There were three lovely sharks chillin in the dock where we got on the boat. Don't fall out! (Of course if you DID fall out, despite the sharks, it was shallow for quite a ways out and we were told not to panic, just stand up and he'd come back and get us). Our boat driver was quite the teller of extremely corny jokes. It turned out that our boat driver and our van driver where a couple who had been together for 8 years. She claimed the wedding date was set for 2050, so they had plenty of time. I've since stolen that. :)
After cleaning up from the drenching boat ride, we hit the sites again. West thinks I should get this dress for some reason...
Yeah, this place totally has the coolest statues. Hilarious!
Next stop: Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum:

Ernest Hemingway's typewriter. Ernest Hemingway had a house (with his famous six toed cats) in Key West so they had a lot of his stuff. I didn't get to see Hemingway's house, we ran out of time. Which disappoints me. I'm huge into classic literature. Guess it's a good reason to go back.

Grabbing a quick drink while we walked around. Give me something slushy please!!! This was a type of outside restaurant and had a sign that said "you'll be glad you got the crabs from us".

And of course we had to get the typical tourist picture. We made this poor guy bike our tired and hot bums back to the ship. Though he's not really poor, that ride was expensive! Another place we didn't stop at that would have been cool. But we did get to see it at least. Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville.
After we got back on the ship it was time to figure out tips and pack (I had to sit on my suitcase), and coordinate with the others what we were going to do in the morning to leave the dock and get to the airport. West and I, at this point, still had no idea what we were going to do on Friday as we got of the ship at eight in the morning and our flight didn't leave until six in the evening. We figured we would just figure it out when we got there.