A One Year Anniversary Getaway

As you have already seen from this post you know Coach and I made it through a whole year of marriage! I am so PROUD of this!! I have heard of couples divorcing after only 6 months! You always hear the first year is the hardest, and Coach and I did have our fair share of ups and downs.. but those downs certainly didn't scare us away from each other. We are in this together until death do us part!

I don't remember exactly when but one night I came home from work and Coach informed me not to book any appointments from November 14th-21st. 

Our conversation went a little something like this:

C: "Don't book anything from the 14-21."

A: "Oh really? Why?"

C: "Just don't book anything."

A: "Where are we going?"

C: "Do I really need to answer that?"

A: (Me trying to contain myself) "Do I need my passport?"

C: "No you don't.. and don't jump out of your skin or anything. You look like you're about to."

And I seriously thought I may, because Coach knows me all to well and knows that the beach is my Heaven on Earth. 

We also didn't go anywhere during the summer. We had talked about going on a beach trip somewhere close by but never made it. I guess you could say I have definitely been blessed and a little spoiled by getting to the beach every year, and this year it just took a little longer for me to have my toes in the sand. To say the least, I was just a little excited!

At the time there were two places he had been talking about- one was Costa Rica and another was Key West. There was a reason why I asked did I need my Passport because it had my maiden name on it and it would need to be changed. 

I never asked where we were going and I wanted it to be a surprise so I still wasn't 100% sure where we were going. In the next couple of weeks, we went to the movies with some friends and in the car on the way home it came out where we were going. And I may or may not at some point have looked at the itinerary that was left on the ottoman.

KEY WEST!

I cannot explain to you how excited I was about us having time to ourselves and going somewhere warm! We had an early flight so we could try and have as much of the travel day as we could. Of course, we left the house late, ran into some pretty heavy traffic, and to say the least I was getting just a tad bit worried. I did NOT want to miss our flight. 

We finally got parked, checked our bags, made it thru security, found a breakfast restaurant, sat down and ate, and made our way to our terminal. 

For us to be running so late and get stuck in traffic we sure weren't paying much attention to boarding or anything! We chose seats in the terminal that backed up to ours and were just chatting like we had no place to be. It was pretty quiet and me being a people watcher I turned to look around and saw the screen with a red banner that said FINAL BOARDING CALL. I said, "Shane, that screen says final boarding call.. is that us?" And about that time over the intercom a lady says, "This is the final boarding call to Key West." We jumped up out of our seats, walked up to the counter, the attendant calls us by name, "Hopper?" with a look on her face, and we are the LAST ones on the plane!! I could not help but to laugh as I was sitting down. 

Before I left, one of my clients told me have fun making lots of memories and I think we definitely made one there early on in our trip!

I DESPISE flying but I love the scenery of being up so high. Our flight was very smooth, THANK YOU JESUS! Side note- I'm not really sure why I hate flying so much. I don't like all the noise, the turning, anything and all the times that I have flown it has been sunny and great weather. If I had a flight when it was raining or snowing I would probably flip my lid. 

This was the first time that I exited the plane on the tarmac. Very weird for me! The pilot did warn us too to be careful when we exited because winds were up to 25 mph.. and he wasn't joking! I would have never have thought it either because I felt no turbulence when we were landing. 

On the way to our hotel.

Some fun facts the taxi driver shared with us-

*the longest stretch of the island is 4 miles

*the shortest is 2 miles wide

*year round there are 25,000 residents

*on one end of Duval Street is the 

Gulf and the other end is the Atlantic Ocean

*we arrived on the coldest day recorded since 1968.. it was still 71*

We took a short ride to our home for the week, La Concha, unpacked and straight up passed out for a few hours. 

A couple I know, that are hair clients, have been coming to me for years, and I've gotten really close with, has been going to Key West now for 18 years with the Parrot Head Club. They could name every place we needed to eat and what street it was on. One of their suggestions was the Half Shell Raw Bar. We decided this was a casual, good place to start so we got dressed, hitched a ride in a Pedicab, and chowed down on some delicious food!

This guy across from us actually got up from his table and offered to take our picture. He saw us trying to take it ourselves and chuckled saying "selfies" most times don't turn out right. LOL! I must say I am glad he generously got up from his meal to take our picture.

Oysters for Coach!

I tried the Clam Chowder but it was NOT good. It had entirely too much sage in it. 

Sooo yummy! Love me some seafood!!

Couldn't end the first night there without dessert!

This was on the back wall.. 

While checking around on the website I discovered the bar area above was featured on Kenny Chesney's single, "When I See This Bar".

SOURCE

Update:: I forgot to mention when I first wrote this post that several people told us La Concha was haunted. I just brushed this off and never really thought anything else about it. WELL. When I unpacked everything I put this plastic bag filled with coupons and brochures in the floor next to a chair that was right next to our bed. In the middle of the night, it sounded like someone was going thru it! I never said a word to Shane but a couple days later he got on the elevator with a woman that kept telling him the elevators were haunted. When he got back to the room, he shared this story with me and I told him then about what I heard with the bag. He 'fessed up and told me he heard it too!! Ghosts or no ghosts, we know what we heard! Coach just said he was welcoming us to Key West. Ha!