The trolley allows you to get on and off at various sites on the tour. One of the places in Key West I wanted to see was the house that Ernest Hemingway lived in before he went to Cuba.
One of the first things you notice in this Bahamian-style tropical house is that there are NO ceiling fans! Hemingway's second wife was into "high-fashion" and she thought that ceiling fans were tacky! The guide commented that it was sort of hard to believe that this chandelier was supposed to be "classier..."
Hemingway did his actual writing on the second floor of this little bungalow behind the main house --
The room he wrote in is just as he left it. Note the small typewriter on the table --
Outside in the courtyard was one of the forty-four! six-toed cats that inhabit the house and grounds. These cats are descendants of the cats that the Hemingways owned and have the run of the place. There were even two of them sleeping on the bed upstairs.
The gardens of the house were like a lush tropical paradise. A few of them were actually labeled, including this one, a "Christmas Palm."
The fruit on it was these interesting seeds --
Also in the garden was this rather interesting cat watering fountain. The pot is a large olive oil jar while the base is actually a urinal that Hemingway rescued when one of his favorite bars was remodeled. Evidently his wife was appalled, so had the pot added and the base tiled to make it "more respectable."
After the tour, we were allowed to go back into the main house and take pictures. I was intrigued by the living room with its multiple screened doors to the outdoors. This made for a nice breeze through the room -- even with the "fancy" chandeliers instead of fans...
We saw many of these sorts of peddlers' carts around the city as we rode the trolley around. This one was selling all kinds of nice, but very expensive, hats --
While this one had all kinds of sea shells, from the size of conch shells on down --
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