Museums and Hot Sauce

Anyone suffering from tequila hang overs? I'm happy to say we avoided them, but that's mainly because the Cinco de Mayo activities didn't get started until later here yesterday. We did go to the Custom House for locals day and enjoyed it. This building is huge and can seen from just about anywhere in Old Town.

I thought this pic of the statues was funny because it looks like the little girl is staring at me.

Because we've been to a couple of other associated museums, we already had some background on many of the displays, but there was more of everything here. They had lots of stuff from Mario Sanchez, a Cuban who documented a lot of Key West life through his intricate, brightly colored, wood "paintings" and sculptures. That first painting
is Sanchez himself.

Mario was the son of a cigar maker, and one of the paintings, or carvings, was of men in a factory doing their thing while a reader read to them. They even had a schedule of what was read when. I could so do that job!

There was much on the ill-fated railroad too. I read a book on the subject when we first got here and am still amazed at how much bad luck the builders had with monster hurricanes during their attempts to build the thing. Other displays told funny stories about local characters and had huge paintings of people who'd influenced the island too. 

Afterwards, we went looking for mariachi bands and margaritas. Apparently it was too early for such a thing because all we heard was the twangy stuff. We did stop and get a glass of mostly ice, flavored with some tequila and margarita mix, and then I went home, got in my jammies, and prepared for the finale of the Amazing Race. 

These guys have costumes for everything.

Michael headed out to meet up with a coworker and see if they could find any Cinco de Mayo action. The road was closed down on Greene St for some music and dancing, but nothing was happening yet, so they headed to Schooner Wharf, which had a band...

and various eating contests (this one was tacos). 

Michael signed himself up for the hot pepper eating contest, but when they hadn't started the thing by 9:15pm (and knowing he had an early morning wake-up call), he headed home to catch the 2nd half of the Amazing Race. I'm sure his stomach's inner lining is breathing a sigh of relief.

This morning's excitement has been a helicopter buzzing very, very, very low over our place. Every time it passes over us, everything shakes. Even the cats duck. Hmmm...


 Next weekend, we have visitors, so I suppose we'll see what kind of trouble they get us into.