Earlier this month I attended a close friend’s wedding in Key West, and I have to admit it: I’ve fallen in love with that place.

I’m not kidding, if it wasn’t so inaccessible – both by air and road – I would move there in a heartbeat.

It has charm and architecture similar to Charleston with the nightlife of New Orleans and some of the most friendly people I’ve ever met. I stayed about a mile from most of the wedding activities (just a few blocks from the Southernmost point) but never felt unsafe walking to and from my hotel.

To make a long story short, I can’t wait to go back.

The wedding itself was amazing; props to my long-time friend Jamie and her new husband Cory for putting together a perfect weekend! I met Jamie on my very first Walt Disney World College Program and – I’m aging us here, oops – fifteen years later, we’re still close, despite living over a thousand miles away from each other and leading the busy lives that adults lead 😉

Other WDWCP friends were there as well, so it was a mini reunion as well as a great vacation. I traveled by myself but never had a shortage of people to talk to, whether they were fellow wedding guests, other travelers, or locals. (Seriously, everyone was SO nice.)

I ate at some great places – most notably Blue Heaven and Cuban Coffee Queen – and of course did some touristy things, like attending the sunset celebration in Mallory Square and visiting the Hemingway House, the Southernmost Point, and Fort Zachary Taylor Beach. I also rekindled my strange obsession with Ernest Hemingway, and am weirdly excited that I’ve now visited both places he lived while he worked on For Whom the Bell Tolls, which wasn’t exactly my favorite Hemingway novel (okay, I didn’t really like it), but hey, seeing both his suite at the Sun Valley Lodge and his home in Key West, where he did most of his work on that novel, is just really awesome to me!

You know, plus there were cats. (At the Hemingway house, I mean.)

As for the wedding itself, we got to do a sunset cruise with Fury Tours on Thursday night, followed by the bachelorette party, and then on Friday the rehearsal dinner was at Bagatelle on Duval Street and it was a blast. The wedding itself was held at the Pier House and everything was absolutely beautiful.

I think the best part, though, was how much Key West inspired me to read and write. I honestly spent half my time in bars reading while I sipped my drinks, and I don’t know if it was the heat, the sea air, or just the place as a whole that made it hard to leave my computer and notebooks behind to go out and actually do all the touristy things I did. It was a blessing and a curse.

I was glad to go home but like I said, I can’t wait to go back. I’ll leave you with a few more pictures from my trip and the suggestion that if you ever have the chance to visit Key West, just GO 🙂