hemingway house photo diary

b2ap3_thumbnail_hemingway-six-toed-cat-2.JPG

it's no secret that Key West is the nicest road trip you can take from Miami, it's a totally authentic, totally bizarro place that is an incredibly scenic three-hour drive away. We've done a lot in Key West - taken a very memorable ghost tour, thrown back beers on a porch, shopped for soy basil candles and taken down more than one Bloody Mary and more than a dozen oysters. And then we went back and did some more, like, ate donuts, slept in the Truman Annex and picked up conch salad.

I'll fill you in on what I was up to this time in a follow-up post, but I finally got around to visiting something that I've always wanted to see - The Hemingway House. Ernest Hemingway's Key West manse has been turned into a museum in a characteristically Key West way, it was donated by an owner of the house who was annoyed of the constant stream of nosey visitors and just wanted to live a quiet life in America's southernmost city. The house is part museum, with original furniture that was brought over from Paris (including a birthing chair that is apparently, just one of the many from Hemingway's collection) and a set of glasses (see below) that I seriously considered stealing, and it's part zoo. Actually, for licensing reasons, it's officially a zoo and the home to fifty-three cats (three new born kittens!), about half of which are six toed cats that descend from the superstitious Hemingway's six toed felines who were believed to be good luck.

If you go, take the tour. It's free and totally worth it and really the only way to get bang for your buck out of your visit.

Be on the look out for a full update on my most recent trip, which was truly unlike any of the others.