Sunshine & Mojitos

Southern Miss is on Spring Break this week and I am still a student, but when you get this far along in graduate school you have to play by others' rules, so no SB for me. But y'all, Key West is all I can think about lately.  The weather here in Birmingham cannot decide whether its ready to be warm and sunny or stay cold and wet.  Unfortunately this week, she has been giving us the latter.  I mentioned in a previous post that we are taking a trip to Key West in early May for my graduation.  You can read about that here.

Anywho, we booked our flights in January and we've pretty much stopped there.  We are huge procrasinators when it comes to planning a trip, which is so unlike me because I like to have everything planned way way ahead of time. So when we booked our flight, we decided we wanted to fly into Miami and then rent a car to take the scenic drive to KW.  Flights to Miami were considerably cheaper than the direct flight to KW and neither one of us has been to KW so we decided we wanted to get the full experience and do the drive.  It's a good thing we're not terrified of being on a bridge for an exteremly long period of time AKA 154 miles, 3-4 hours depending on traffic and if we get stuck behind a grandpa.  Now, comes to our next big decision.  Where to stay.  We have it narrowed down to 2 places:  Southernmost Hotel and Parrot Key Resort.  Now, let me give you the pros & cons of these places. 

Southernmost Hotel
Pros: It is located on the beach and in the heart of downtown KW which means we can walk/ride bicycles pretty much anywhere we'd want to go which leads to the next pro.  Since we would only need a rental to get down to KW and back to Miami, we could rent a more expensive car, such as a convertible or Jeep.  Also, the hotel provides beach chairs and there is a cafe/bar located on the hotel's beach. The cons: It's an older hotel and the rooms do not appear as nice.  It is a little more expensive than the other place. Since the car rental place is located at the airports,we'd have to have a shuttle/pay for a cab ride to & from the hotel when arriving and leaving. 

Parrot Key Resort
Pros:  It is fairly new and modern and each room is a cottage/bungalow.  It is waterfront and since it is a little more affordable, we could have a nicer room with a great view. The cons: It is much further out from downtown so we would probably need to keep the rental for the entire trip which means we would just get an economical ride.  It's on the water, but theres no beach access so we'd have to drive to get to the beach.

I'm pretty obsessed with TripAdvisor when booking any hotel, so I've done my research and they both have great reviews.  I always disregard the really nit picky comments because apparently those people live in a perfect world and expect everything to be perfect. Which hotel would y'all choose?  We pretty much have a decision made but I like to hear outside opinions because there just might be something we haven't thought of yet.

Now, on to slightly more fun things.  With any trip, it's always fun to pick up new clothes.  I find this especially true for this trip, maybe it's because it has been so long since we've been on a real vacation or maybe I'm just in the shopping mood.  I wanted to share the fun stuff I'll be strutting down in the Keys.



Express. Got it in black. Can't you picture this with colorful espradrilles?



From Target.  With a braided belt and T-straps?





Express. Hello super-fun clutch!



Don't y'all worry. Ben has gotten some new stuff too.  Well, only just a new pair of swim trunks, they;re Ole Miss red.  He really wants a pair of Vineyard Vines trunks for our trip since it's KW and he can totally get away with loud britches there so we're on the hunt to find him the perfect pair.  Now, if only he'd let me get the Canon Rebel I've been hinting around about to use for this trip....