Hi all!! This post is way overdue. Towards the end of April I went to Key West with my mom and Ben. The main purpose of the trip was to scatter John's ashes. It was a place that he loved going to, and he and my mom had been there together twice. We stayed on the main street (Duval Street) in a bed and breakfast called Duval House. As far as food goes, we ate breakfast at the hotel everyday because it was included. There's a great crepe restaurant that we went to for lunch twice. The first time I had a Nutella crepe, and the second time I had a strawberry cream cheese crepe. One night for dinner we went to a restaurant called Blue Heaven, but I don't remember what I had. One night we ate on the boardwalk, but I don't remember the name of it or what I had (there's definitely an advantage to writing blog posts shortly after things happen as opposed to waiting). We tried to see the sunset because my mom said they were supposed to be really good, but we didn't see a good one. On the boardwalk they have all kinds of performers. There was one guy who was working with trained cats and having them jump through hoops and stuff. There was one man who was doing stuff with fire, and two men who were throwing hats and catching them on their heads.
One day we went to the Key West Aquarium, which is really nothing special. Another day we went to the Key West Butterfly Conservatory, which was really cool. One day we went to Hemingway's house, which was also pretty cool. Hemingway had a lot of cats, which still roam the house. Also, Ben had just read The Old Man and The Sea so it was interesting to see all the paintings and stuff from that around the house.
The first full day that we were there, we went to Taylor State Park, which has a beach, so that we could scatter John's ashes. A kind of funny but sad thing that happened was that we would throw the ashes, and because it was a windy day, they would come right back to us, as if John did not want to leave us. I know that that's where he would have wanted to be, though.
In other news, I spent a day at the mall with Jess a couple months ago, and spent my Delia's gift card and then some (I bought a pretty blue tank shirt, white capris, and a sweater, among other things). There's this really cute store in Millburn that we also went to. It's called Un De Find. I bought a grey long sweater. We went for sushi (which I really like now, despite having never really tried it before Ben's birthday last year when we went to a hibachi steakhouse in Millburn that also has sushi) in downtown Maplewood, and then met my mom and Ben to see the movie Oceans, which was really good.
Fast forwarding a bit to present day, Ben graduated from high school on tuesday. All I can think of to say is I can't believe it.
That's all for now. I start my job at the preschool camp on tuesday, but I will try to write again soon.
--Emily
