Eclipse 2024

An exciting day seeing a 45% partial eclipse in Key West.  Without the glasses there was nothing going on - maybe a slight haziness versus a darkness.  But boy, with the glasses...what an amazing experience.  I put on the glasses and it was so dark (PITCH BLACK) that I initially thought they weren't working. And then, I turned to the sun and with blackness (still) all around I saw the bring sun with a chunk taken out of it by the moon.  I GASPED! And then passed the glasses to my colleague and she too gasped.  Unbelievable.  I've never seen anything like it, and I guess it could be another 20 years before I see it again.  

I leave you with beautiful photo of sunset at Shannon Estuary, taken by my sister Katie on the same day of the eclipse in the USA

 

Twinchronicity

How about this for a bit of a mad co-incidence?! (Twincidence as we like to call them lol)

On Sunday, I see on Enid's instagram story that she got flowers. From a girl

I immediately sent her a text:

Want to guess what I got today?

Back to Seven Fish

Took a jaunt back to Seven Fish and better experience this time round.  Skipped the appetizers (really did not like them last time) and just got a nice Entree dish each.  Patrick got his favourite of a Seafood Marinara (mahi mahi, shrimp and baby clams).  I got the mahi mahi gnocchi with mushrooms in a bleu cheese sauce.  I got a Malbec. Patrick a Cabernet Sauvignon.

Done and done.  It was a very enjoyable Thursday evening,

 

Old Dominion

Old Dominion were in town and were scheduled to play Friday, Saturday and Sunday night but when a storm blew in for Friday night they shifted to cancelling that show and squeezing in a 11.30am Sunday show!!!!  

Sounds crazy, but actually really worked! With four support acts before they came on it felt like sunny fun festival weekend kind of thing.

Beautiful location

Great stage

Great show!

Taste of Key West 2024

Delighted to report that the Taste of  Key West 2024 was as good as ever - if not even better.  

Scallop from Lola's

Wild Boar from Lola's

Lobster Mac & Cheese from 915

Lobster roll from new lobster/crab shack on Duval that I can't remember the name of :(

Mahi Mahi...can't remember what restaurant eek

Not pictured

Cerviche and Octopus

Giant Meatball from Tavern'n'Town

Obligatory photo - we have one from every year.  My crappy phone camera strikes again lol!

See you next year Taste of Key West!

Seven Fish, Key West

Nice "date night" evening out yesterday.  We went to Seven Fish which have been dying to try for years.  Very nice ambient restaurant, mixed reviews about the food let's say that....

We shared three appetizers

Shrimp salsa ceviche - a hit

Grouper rolls - awful :( A big old mush of blandness imo.

Spicy tuna roll.  So so imo.  Good flavour but veering towards mushiness in my humble opinion.  Would not order again.  Prefer spicy tuna roll in Origami - a million times better.

We shared a fabulous entree of Seafood Marinara - mahi mahi, shrimp and baby clams over angel hair pasta.

We would go again! And order different...

 

Estate Sale of the Artist Richard (Dick) Matson

Estate sales are not something I am familiar with in Ireland.  Although, the second I typed that out I thought about farmers in the country in Ireland - when they die, I guess the auctioneer comes out to the farm and sells off all the machinery in the farm yard.

Anyway, my point is, that I find Estate Sales funny - there seems to be one every two weeks here in Key West.  One day you are alive/dying - aren't we all :( And then, you are gone, and all your kitchenware, clothes, linens, home furniture, paintings, literally all your house contents/life accruals are laid out in your house and sold.  All in one day.  

One day you are there, the next you are not :(

Even before I started going to the odd estate sale I have been a big believer in Swedish Death Cleaning and the older I get, I continue to be more so.

Today I went to the estate sale of Richard (Dick) Matson RIP.

I bought this wonderful little sauce pot - Danish - Danske Designs for the princely sum of $1.  I think I got a bargain: on ebay these range between $25-75

And this! Which was not a bargain lol. It was $4 and it is just Timex.  But I like! It's classic looking.  I have ordered some new straps on it from Amazon and I will wear it with joy every day.  I do love a nice watch face like this.

Sister Season Casino Night

Another fundraiser in ANOTHER cool venue - The Hemingway Social Club

Patrick needs a beard trim, I teased him it was like being with Hemingway. Lol

Fun night - casino tables, appetizers and Pilar rum cocktails!

Poker face!

Really beautiful venue

Really bad photo of beautiful venue

Lifesize model of the man himself, Ernest Hemingway at the bar 

St Patrick's Day in Paradise, 2024

Lá fhéile Pádraig sona dhuit!

As is customary we donned our green - Patrick wearing his 20 year old Irish soccer jersey and me in some kind of old vaguely rugby type shirt.

Destination was The Saint Hotel for their special green themed brunch.  It was really, really good I have to say.  Undoubtably the best Endless Small Plates brunch on the island.  And of course with Endless Mimosas.  The hit for us was the chorizo eggs benedict which we both ordered twice.

SPCA fundraiser

Lovely event for the Florida Keys SPCA, held in the Little White House in Truman Annex - what a beautiful and historic venue.

I wore my Lilly Pulitzer jumpsuit which I have been waiting for an occasion to wear at so I was pleased  with that.  It felt very comfortable all night.

Dinner, drinks and fun little silent auction - I bought cute little pineapple embroidered cocktail napkins

The Salty Grunt 2.0

Summer is coming as you can see from this pic! And indeed, while out fishing yesterday I got a little bit burnt, so it's time to start being strict about applying suncream.

This morning it got up and did a nice 30 minute session on the peloton. By nice, I mean killer. As always, I felt great after it. 

Afterwards I nipped across to the boat to give it a little clean. We had problem with the water lines over the weekend so the hose didn't work when we came in from crabs on Saturday and fishing on Sunday. Luckily, it didn't get too dirty at these times but it still needed an aul' scrub. I took my time and she is now sparkling! 

 

Tuna - Little Tunny

Caught this fine fellow out last week,  A little disappointed it was not a blackfin tuna but our day will come, I know it!

Made a simple marinade of garlic, ginger, soya, siracha and lemon juice

Marinaded for an hour or two

Very quickly seared and served over a bed of seaweed salad, with a sprinkling of sesame seeds.  Delicious and healthy!

 

Mother's Day in Ireland

Did you know that Mother's day is held on a different date in Ireland and USA.  Father's day is the same.  Funny that, eh.

I used a gift website based in Ireland and sent my man these lovely Orla Kiely cake tins.  I adore her retro designs.  And then a nice bottle of bubbly - veuve cliquot is my favourite champagne.

As the presents and cards rolled in from all my sisters mam posted photos of them on our whats app, that was cute!

 

Mac's Place

 Mac's Place is now open! Really, really nice to have a new good option within in walking distance of the house - plus also on the water, always nice :)

Yesterday we went out to check our crab traps late in the afternoon.  Very happy with 4 decent sized ones.  Also tried a new method of removing their claws which worked really well and is supposed to be much more humane so that got a bit thumbs up from the two of us,

We floated around a bit just enjoying the sun starting to go down and then we hopped on the bikes and headed down to Mac's - yes with the cooler of crab claws lol.

Just had one beverage and split a burger - the Cowboy.  Good work by their kitchen and all front of house.  Excited to become locals of this cool new bar!

U2 at the Sphere, Las Vegas

When I am at a concert, even one as visually amazing as the Sphere, I tend not to take photos and videos.  I prefer to just live in the moment and try keep the memories in my mind rather than my phone.  I do tend to go online though and watch other people's videos after the event however.

This is my one photo and it is an interesting one, to my mind anyway.  While Bono does a huge shout out to Bram the stand in drummer for Larry, and it is indeed clear the band very much respects him, this photo also defines their relationship.  The band is up front and Bram further back doing the job, and doing it very well, that he was hired to do.  The band are saying U2 is still Larry and Bono, Edge and Adam.

Anyway, I digress. There is nothing I can say that will surprise anyone.  I have literally zero criticisms or critiques.  The whole performance from U2 was brilliant - and testament to them that the amazing venue, visuals and effects do not over take the music.  But equally, testament to the venue that it stuns and impresses while enhancing the band.  It is a crazy, beautiful, symbiotic relationship...

10 million zillion out of 10

Big Elvis Las Vegas

About a million years ago I was in Las Vegas with Ciaran and Enid and Ciaran, a big Elvis fan, introduced us to Big Elvis - one of the top 10 Elvis impersonators in the world.

While Patrick played a little poker I took myself and my Elvis purse (bought in San Franciso around 2007) off to Harrah's to see Big Elvis before the U2 concert.  The cocktail was called a Double Treble, thanks for asking, it involved tequila, elderflower and lime juice.

He was as fantastic as ever.  If you are in Las Vegas be sure to check him out in Harrahs - Mon, Tues, Friday 2pm/3.30/5pm.  Cannot recommend this little show from the big man enough,

 

Toronto Maple Leafs v Las Vegas Golden Knights

By pure chance / happy coincidence it turned out that the Leafs would be playing in Las Vegas same time we were there.  Patrick decided we were going and worked out his strategy about getting tickets on the secondary market on the day of the game.  The picture above does not know show the agonies we went through to get the tickets sent/downloaded but anyway, enough about that, we made it!

It was a WONDERFUL match with 10 goals in total.  Ten! Can you believe it.  And 7 of them, most importantly, were for Toronto.

Btw. I had forgotten how cold it is at hockey games... I had 4 layers on and I still freezing!

Vegas food

 Okay, am warning you in advance, these photos are just horrific.

We arrived in late Wednesday evening.  It is quite crazy how big America is, how far away we are from everything in Key West, and how long it took us to travel to Vegas - we might have been quicker coming from Ireland!

So, we quickly checked in and headed out to explore.  We decided to go to Battistas Hole in the Wall which we liked from our last trip but while googling the directions I noticed it would be closing in just 45 minutes at 9.30pm.  Rather early closing time I think, don't you?!

Because we were outside New York, New York we decided to go into Nine Fine Irish Men as it served food and had a good band playing (a bit of Irish diddley eye is always good in my book lol).

Horrific photo number 1 coming up:

I had the mussels. Patrick had clam chowder.  And they were both great.  Hard to believe that from this photo but I assure you on this.

The next morning, similar to last trip we woke up very early and couldn't sleep - jet lag! We decided to throw caution to the wind and head out for breakfast/brunch Las Vegas style - yes we decided we were going to have a little alcoholic beverage with our food.  We did a quick google and decided on the Pyramid Cafe in the Luxor - it was convenient to our hotel (Mandalay Bay) and the menu looked appealing.  We had fabulous chorizo burritos and we were set up for the day - they were so filling that we didn't even need lunch!!

What we did need was a nap though! And I made sure to get one in the late morning/early afternoon - we were going to a hockey game that evening after all.

Before the hockey game we went to "Eataly" in the Park MGM and had the most beautiful glass of wine and a lovely sandwich.  We may or may not have had hot dogs at the hockey also ;) 

Friday! The U2 Concert day.

Patrick tried to persuade me to have the burritos again this morning, but instead I persuaded him that we should go to Ri-Ra and have a proper Irish breakfast.  It was really good - nice proper Irish ingredients imported from Ireland. (While I don't think the black and white pudding was Clonakilty, it was very close in quality).

See my separate blog post about Big Elvis - we took some time apart this afternoon (I went to see Big Elvis, Patrick played some poker) and we met in Battistas for dinner before the concert.

I had the lasagna which was excellent as expected - I got it last time too.  Patrick enjoyed the meatballs and spaghetti.  The wine was "ok/fine".

Valentine's Day 2024

As a follower of my blog you may be aware that I love anything heart shaped for Valentine's day.  For this year, I was just delighted when Patrick told me that he had bought me a heart shaped pizza!

Well, so I was not expecting THIS on the day!  

I walked out of the bedroom into a kitchen where we always lay out gifts/cards for any occasion.  I was expecting just a card and I literally GASPED with surprise when I saw a nice (heart shaped woohooo!) gift too.  What a surprise!

Weather was enough to eat outside this year

Not pictured: my present for Patrick (and me, tee hee) was Cupcake Sushi for dessert

Doesn't front desk area of The Saint look very nice all dressed up for Valentine's

 

Cero Mackerel

Yesterday was literally the one good boat weather day so we jumped on it!  Good job too, because is raining really heavily, all day.

We headed out past Sunset Key towards Hemingway's Stilts and set up our trolling rods.  A few little bites but nothing catching. We described the fish as "very tentative today".  Finally however we got this nice little (20 inch) Cero Mackerel. Nice!

Considering the weather we decided to push on and go check our crab traps - we were happy with this little haul of 4 nice sized ones.

We were pretty tired after that morning! We were going to go to Martin's for happy hour but decided to go casual to Half Shell where we shared a dish of clams, mussels, shrimp, sausage, potatoes and corn.  Mmmm!

Here is Patrick, waxing lyrical in Half Shell Raw Bar

 

Birthday brisket!

It was Feliz's birthday on Friday so we are having her and Bill over for dinner today.  We are going to make brisket in the smoker!  Brisket is apparently Feliz' absolute fave (we found this out on tomahawk night) so no pressure lol! Also, last time we smoked brisket we overcooked it - we're blaming a dodgy meat thermometer and we we have since bought a new one - so doubly no pressure!

I gave it a rub/marinade this morning.  I put an initial layer of honey and mustard.  And then the piece de resistance of our adored Rendezvous seasoning.

I am also going to buy Cupcake Sushi for dessert which will double up as a little birthday gift for Feliz too :)

 

Super Bowl Food

Our friend's Joe and Emily are just the best hosts - you might remember we spent Thanksgiving at theirs this year.

Super Bowl is all about the snacks, right?

Emily always has the BEST cheese.  And look, the napkins and little plates were themed!

Chips, veggies, dips

Emily's AMAZING air fryer chicken wings

Pigs in blankets

Swedish meatballs

Not pictured:

Isabelle & Wyatt's buffalo chicken

Our Stone Crab claws and key lime mustard sauce

Even dessert was football themed

Which team was I rooting for btw, you ask?

Taylor Swift's boyfriend's team.  Yay! They won