Flower Power Cruise: Day Five

This is our last day!  Again, things have been so busy that I am running late in writing.  We began our day by taking The Old Town Trolley which allows you to hop on and hop off during the tour.  The first stop was the Key West Butterfly and Nature Conservatory.  This place is amazing.  There are about 50-60 species of butterflies flitting around.  I have not taken the time to find the names of the ones that remained still enough for me to take a picture, but will post them anyway.

Birds and Butterflies

More Butterflies

After the Butterfly experience we walked to the southern most point in the United States.  Ray had already been there, but it was a first time for me.  Of course, we brought Cy with us so he got  his picture taken with us.

Cy is joining us at the southernmost point in Continental U.S.A.

Cy is sitting this statue of a man blowing on a conch.

Next we visited the Ernest Hemmingway House.  He has never been a favorite author of mine because I am not into bull fights, hunting and war stories.  The reason I wanted to visit his house was to see the cats.  Even though he was a hunter he had a soft spot for cats and had about fifty.  These are cool cats because many are descendants of the white (named Snow White) cat that was given to Hemmingway by a ship's captain.  This cat was a 'mitten paw' kitty or a polydactyl kitty.  It had six toes instead of five.  The cats living there now carry the polydactyl gene and so many have the extra toes...some have all four paws with an extra toe. 

This kitty has six toes.  I think his name was Humphrey Bogart.

This is an old urinal that Hemmingway got from the Sloppy Joe Bar.  He thought
it would make a good watering hole for the cats, but they do not use it.  Instead
they lick the water from the fountain flowing down the side of the vase into the urinal.
At least that is what we were told on our tour.

Hemmingway's wife had this pool built while he was out of the country (with
another woman who later became his wife). 

I think this kitty's  name was Bette Davis.  We were told that she comes to the
master bedroom every morning when the museum is opened, and she sleeps right
in the middle of the bed.  She did not seem bothered at all with all of us tourists
interrupting her afternoon nap.  In fact, she just opened one eye, gave me a
sleepy blink and then went back to sleep.

There were cats everywhere.  Some were playing in the yard, others sunning themselves. A few seemed to pose for pictures and welcomed pats on the head.  We were told we could pet the kitties but not pick them up.  I was so happy to get so much kitty energy since we have left Ary and Molly at home.

Hemmingway's House Cats

Our final concert experience was Felix Cavaliere's  Rascals. As was the case with all the other concerts we saw on the cruise, the performance was excellent. So many songs that we knew and always well done. The audience could sing along and many of them were dancing in the area between the stage and the seats. Ray might have chosen our balcony seats knowing that on the floor he might have been called upon to dance (Horrors!) had we been elsewhere.

There are so many things we did during the cruise that I have not written about.  Hopefully, I will be able to tell about Peter Asher's concert.

 I want to thank Ray for helping me write this post and proof reading all of my others.