Sunset Love

Watching the sunset together

A little romance at sunset time

Love is in the air

Kiss after sunset

EVERY SUNSET

Author: Jessica Voyles

Meeting you 

was pure destiny,

You and I 

were ment to be.

Maybe not now

but someday soon,

We'll meet not under the sun

but beneath the moon.

We'll watch the stars

'till they fade away,

but we won't fade

together we'll always stay.

This is the day 

I'm waiting for,

from that day

I'll love you more and more.

I can't wait to watch

the sun set with you,

every sunset from that day

'till the rest of our lives are through.

Do you like Pina Colada...

This is what you need, right?
And a "Pina Colada" in your hands.... Cheers...!

Tropical Beach

Tropical beach scene on a gray afternoon

More Wordless Sunday

Impressions of Fantasy Fest in Key West

There is a lot to see on Duval street!


I'm posting here some OLD Fantasy Fest pictures - just in case if we will have some rain tonight, I will NOT be there!

And the weather predictions are not that good.

A lot of glitter costumes in the parade

A pretty "Bird of paradise"

All the beautiful "ladies" in front of La-Te-Da

History of Fantasy Fest in Key West

First held in 1979, what began as primarily a gay party staged to add pep to the quiet days of October soon acquired a life of its own. Tony Falcone and the late Bill Conkle, owners of Fast Buck Freddie's Department Store, along with Joe Liska and Frank Romano, who owned Key West Aloe at the time, organized a party to stimulate business. The ten day celebration now includes balls, costume competitions, AIDS fundraisers, drag queen contests, costume parties, lots of drinking, as well as pet and neighborhood parades for the whole family. Fantasy Fest has grown to rival New Orleans' Mardi Gras as an event drawing out-of-towners.

The highlight of Fantasy Fest is a parade featuring humorous floats, including one carrying the annually elected Conch King and Queen. In recent years, Fantasy Fest attendance has surpassed 100,000 people, or more than three times the population of the island itself.

In October 2005, the event was postponed because of devastation wrought on the island by Hurricane Wilma; instead of being held at its usual time close to Halloween, it was moved to December and celebrated just before Christmas.

The Conch King and Conch Queen are symbolic titles bestowed upon two residents of Key West, Florida selected annually during the course of Fantasy Fest. The tradition stems from the longstanding practice of locals to refer to themselves as Conchs, and jokingly to the island as though it were a separate country called the Conch Republic. The title is also a play on the name of the Queen Conch, once very common in the waters around Key West.

Events

Goombay - a street party held in Key West's Bahama Village neighborhood.
The Royal Coronation Ball - where the Conch King and Queen are crowned.
The annual Headdress Ball.
The Pet Masquerade - a costume contest for pets.
Pretenders in Paradise - an annual costume contest.
The Masquerade March - a daytime procession through the streets of Key West.
The Street Fair.
The Fantasy Fest parade - the culmination of the festival.

Just right for the Holidays...

About the CafePress Online Shop:

CafePress.com is an online retailer that produces and dispatches user-customized products on demand. Opening and operating a basic CafePress shop is free. A basic shop can be upgraded to a premium shop for a small monthly rate, allowing an unlimited number of products per type and additional maintenance and customization features.

CafePress was founded as a privately owned company in 1999 by Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain. As of February 2006, the site hosts over 2.6 million online shops with over 35 million products. CafePress.com is headquartered in Foster City, California, and its production facility is located in Louisville, Kentucky. Major accounts include Star Trek, Dilbert, Phil Collins, Peanuts, and Wikimedia. Shops are also frequently created for pop-culture phenomena such as JibJab.com and "All your base are belong to us". Shop owners have the ability to customize their own merchandise and select items that best reflect a particular consumer group. CafePress.com also offers print on demand services for books and music CDs.

After creating a shop, the owner can proceed to select products and upload files, such as images to print on t-shirts or bags. They can also determine a price markup for each item sold in the store. CafePress.com provides the online storefront and website hosting, order management, fulfillment, payment processing, and customer service. In other words, the shop is effectively managed by CafePress.com, and the shop owner only has to take care of customizing the products they want to sell. The base price for every item is determined by CafePress.com, providing its chief revenue stream. Shop owners can buy items at the base price, but they also receive commission payments within regular intervals.

Just right in time for the Holidays I have re-opened my

CAFEPRESS Online Shop

(member since 2003).

Please stop by and there you will see:

TROPICAL CALENDAR 2008

with photographs from my paradise island

ORCHID CALENDAR 2008

with 12 wonderful orchid photographs

and a lot of other GREAT gift items like : tiles, mugs, caps journals,framed prints, posters, mouse pads and so much more!

CHRISTMAS Greeting Cards

are NOW also available!!!

VISIT MY SHOP

please and buy some nice gifts for your loved ones and friends !

http://www.cafepress.com/susanne49

Palm trees in Black & White

It was a gray and cloudy day, barely sunshine.... I went to the beach to shoot some pictures in black & white.
They look much better then they would look in color.

Sorry, that you have to keep up with palm trees again, but I think they belong to paradise like the pine trees to the rolling hills on other places.

And I love palm trees!

Cloudy Sunset

Sometimes the sun decides to set behind a wall of clouds

My Island in the Sun

Sunset over the island of Key West

He enjoys his canoe ride in the last sun beams of the day

Sitting on a dock on the bay and watching the sun melting into the ocean

Saturdays Rain and stormy Winds

It is not sunshine every day in paradise! Saturday we got soaked with heavy rainfall and strong winds, for hours!

But it seems, not all are scared of bad weather.

My Wordless Sunday

Palm leaves

Green is a very relaxing color for your eyes and for your soul!
Have a look closer...and relax!

Amazing Nature Spectacle

Sunsets need no descriptions, no long words and no comments.
Just sit down and ENJOY this amazing spectacle of mother nature.

Bamboo

Introduction

Bamboo is just grass, but it varies in height from dwarf, one foot (30 cm) plants to giant timber bamboos that can grow to over 100 feet (30 m). It grows in many different climates, from jungles to high on mountainsides. Bamboos are further classified by the types of roots they have. Some, called runners, spread exuberantly, and others are classified as clumpers, which slowly expand from the original planting. There are also varieties of root systems that are a mixture of these types. Generally, the tropical bamboos tend to be clumpers and the temperate bamboos tend to be runners.

Bamboo is both decorative and useful. In many parts of the world it is food, fodder, the primary construction material and is used for making great variety of useful objects from kitchen tools, to paper to dinnerware. The Species Source List contains a listing of the bamboos that are commonly used for furniture, construction, musical instruments and many more things.

The species most-often identified with the giant panda is Gelidocalamus fangianus, but Fargesia spathacea, Sinarundinaria chungii, Sinarundinaria nitida, and Sinarundinaria fangiana are common bamboos in the panda's home range.

There is a lot of confusion in the naming of bamboos. There are both common names, which vary from place to place, even within one country; and there are the botanical names, which vary less from place to place, but are still not well-standardized. For a explanation of why this is, Gib Cooper has written a short discussion of the taxonomy problem.

Taxonomy

Botanically, bamboo is classified thusly:

KINGDOM: Plantae

PHYLUM (DIVISION): Magnoliophyta

CLASS: Liliopsida

SUBCLASS: Commelinidae

ORDER: Cyperales

FAMILY: Gramineae (Poaceae)

SUBFAMILY: Bambusoideae

TRIBE: Bambuseae

SUBTRIBE: bambusinae

The Class, Subclass, and Order classifications are according to Cronquist (1988). The levels below Order can vary depending on whose classification you use. The ones shown above are widely accepted.

Read more here...

Tropical Sunset

Last sunbeams at the beach

Jamaica Farewell - Mustafa

This is Mustafa, our singer on the pier at Mallory Square. He sings and entertains all the tourists who are watching the sunset with his Calypso sounds. It makes you dream about island living for ever.


(You can also listen to this song on my player to the voice of Harry Belafonte - scroll down to find the player).

Harry Belafonte - Kingston Town Lyrics

Jamaica Farewell

Down the way, where the nights are gay,
and the sun shines daily on the mountain top,
I took a trip on a sailing ship,
and when I reach Jamaica I made a stop.

But I'm sad to say,
I'm on my way,
won't be back for many a day.
My heart is down,
my head is turning around,
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

Sounds of laughter everywhere,
and the dancing girls swing to and through.
I must declare my heart is there,
thou I've been from Maine to Mexico.

But I'm sad to say,
I'm on my way,
won't be back for many a day.
My heart is down,
my head is turning around,
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

At the market you can hear,
ladies cry out while on their heads they bear,
acky rice, salt, fish are nice
and the rum is fine any time a year.

But I'm sad to say,
I'm on my way,
won't be back for many a day.
My heart is down,
my head is turning around,
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

Down the way, where the nights are gay,
and the sun shines daily on the mountain top,
I took a trip on a sailing ship,
and when I reach Jamaica I made a stop.

But I'm sad to say,
I'm on my way,
won't be back for many a day.
My heart is down,
my head is turning around,
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.

Sad to say,
I'm on my way,
won't be back for many a day.
My heart is down,
my head is turning around,
I had to leave a little girl in Kingston Town.



Read more Harry Belafonte Lyrics here

The Lighthouse in Key West

Lighthouse in a pink evening sky

View from the top to the west where the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico come together. Can you see the big cruise ship in the harbor?

View from the top to Hemingway's house and his wonderful garden

View to the East overlooking the Atlantic

Built in 1847 to aid to ships navigating dangerous reefs off the lower Keys, the Key West Lighthouse now stands sentinel over one of Florida's finest historical sites.

The tower was originally 46 feet high and powered by 15 oil lamps with 15-inch reflectors, but was extended to 86 feet in 1894. Inside visitors now climb 88 iron steps to the observation deck that affords spectacular views.

The tower and nearby Keeper's Quarters have been faithfully restored and maintained as they were before the lighthouse was deactivated in 1969. Many of the historic elements remain, including the pipes used to deliver acetylene gas that powered the light before it was electrified in 1927. The clapboard bungalow where the keepers and their families lived while maintaining the beacon has been recreated in turn-of-the-century name with historic furniture, furnishings and photos that provide a sense of life in Key West during that formative time.

This light station was built after the hurricane of 1846 destroyed the original 1825 tower on the coast. It is the 15th oldest surviving lighthouse in the country.

But as intriguing as the structures themselves are the lives of the keepers who climbed the steps each day to clean and fuel the lamps, especially that of Barbara Mabrity, who took over after her husband died in 1832. She tended the lamps for the 32 years until at age 82 she was fired for making statements against the Union, which controlled Key West and the lighthouse during the Civil War. When a hurricane destroyed the light station in 1846, Barbara Mabrity survived but six of her children were killed after the family sought shelter in the tower. In 1886 the original keeper's dwelling was torn down and replaced with the present building. After its deactivation, the Lighthouse was acquired by Monroe County. In 1972 it was leased to the Key West Art & Historical Society, which added safety features and opened it to the public in 1989. The keeper's quarters were renovated in 1990 and opened as a museum.

In 1998 the lighthouse was nominated for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark, which would put it in the same category as the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

The 88-step circular iron stairway leading to the lighthouse deck from which much of Key West and the nearby ocean is visible.

Reed more here.....

It's My Wordless Sunday again

You have to see this!

That was yesterday evening - a breathtaking show of our setting sun!

All the famous Bars...

If you have not been in Sloppy Joe's, you have not been in Key West

Here you can meet the legendary Captain Tony himself, an ex mayor of Key West, an all around colorful character in every respect.

This is the meeting point of all parrot heads, big fans of the singer
Jimmy Buffet.
Listen please to Jimmy Buffet's song "Margarita-Ville" on my radio player (scroll down on my blog!) and you will know what's all about!

For a good Island food you have to dine out here in the lush garden of "Pepe's".

And after all your strolling up and down Duval and all the other streets, come to the "Green Parrot Bar" and have some beers, hang out with the locals and listen to the great live bands.


And there are still many more other bars in Key West to explore......

A very special Restaurant and a MUST to visit!

Blue Heaven front view

The bar in the yard - always on Pina Colada time

Upstairs

Outdoor Gallery

Upstairs Balcony

The islands most quintessentially "Key West" restaurant has to be Blue Heaven. Like everything in Key West, it's got some history. The building once housed a bordello and later Hemingway refereed boxing matches there.

Located in the Bahamian neighborhood (Bahama Village), this restaurant is an absolute favorite with locals and visitors serving fine American cuisine.

During the day a few chicken and roosters roam the outdoor dining garden. By nightfall, they have moved to the trees to roost for the night while the cats come out to play.

The food is outstanding, the atmosphere funky and lively, and the experience should be memorable. Live music is gently offered by local musicians as diners enjoy the breezes caught in the shade sails.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
No reservations accepted (except for very large groups).
729 Petronia Street

Read more about here