One of the indignities that my friends tolerate me inflicting upon them is to have a meal or a conversation abruptly interrupted by photographic urgency. This image, with its shadows and overlay of raking bounced light called to me at breakfast over Amy’s shoulder. I abandoned her for a couple of minutes to record it.

The breakfast was at Azur, the restaurant on the same property as our hotel, and after our second meal there, we decided that we needn’t go elsewhere the remainder of our trip. (Frankly, I can only wish we’d done that sooner: FANTASTIC food, delightful service, good value.) Here’s a the corner of Azur that faces onto Fleming.

After our visit to the Hemingway house, we climbed the Key West Lighthouse. It’s not very high, but the view was lovely if not especially photogenic, and the breeze at the top was delightful. The interior, however, had some interesting effects of light and structure.

Our Great Men Tour continued with a visit to the Audubon House. We ogled the beautiful bird prints, and I admired this humble bath-time still-life.

At some point I noticed that slats are everywhere in Key West. I guess they allow a breeze but mostly keep out the rain (and prying eyes, too). The graphic combination of slats, shadows, and tropical light is ubiquitous.

Bonus: I liked the shadowplay on the wall so much, I also made a little video of it.

Bicycles are everywhere in Key West. They’re an easy and convenient way to get around: bike lanes are common, the weather’s great, and—as previously noted—Key West is flat like pancake.

There were two salient, if not especially surprising, features about bicycle culture in Key West. The first is the tendency to decorate, adorn, and gussy the bicycles, and the second is the rarity with which you will see anyone wearing a bicycle helmet. Tourists I can understand (who travels with a bike helmet?), but the locals are equally nonchalant about brain injury. Probably it’s just too darn hot and sticky to wear heavy headgear. I will confess that we did not.

You’ve heard of bikers with tattoos, of course. Bicycles in Key West demand to be inked too!

Pedal too close to the sun for too long and this may be your fate. I suppose an all-black racing bike was a misfit in Key West from the get-go.

There was a man who loved cats. He loved their grace and their independence and their unsubservient affection. He loved their sang froid and their remorseless, predatory ways. He wanted the cats that kept him company to be true to their own nature, as he saw it, and so he did not spay them. Some of them had extra fingers on their paws; their tribe grew and prospered.

Eventually the man died by his own hand, but the cats lived on, generation to generation, in the freedom of his generosity. You can see many facets of his personality—pugnacious, funny, expressive, triste, dynamic, indolent, affectionate, charming—in the free-range felines whose dominion over the home continues uninterrupted to this day.

It’s rather a nice house. It was built by a man who made his fortune as a wrecker, “salvaging” ships that foundered in the shallow waters just offshore.

The cat-loving man added modern amenities, although it’s not clear what benefit the cats derived from them.

There are good places for lying in the sun.

And some places that are good for cooling your belly.

Proper homage is paid in decoration.

And reverence even in the death of nameless ones. (The survivors are all named for movie stars.)

It turns out that the man also wrote some books. Of course there was a cat icon on his writing table.

Bonus: If you are very, very lucky, one of the residents will deign to take notice of you and make himself comfortable on your person. I was the fortunate recipient of such favor. The very handsome and elegant Humphrey Bogart elected to settle in my lap for a few precious moments. I feel this represents the apogee of my career as a cat whisperer. The remarkable occasion was documented by Amy.

Key West’s signal feature is that it is an island at the confluence of large bodies of water. Its history and its future are predicated on the oceans. Sun, sky, architecture, artists, sure, whatever. Ultimately they came, and still come, for the water. (And other potables.)

If you sail or dive or fish, Key West must truly be paradise.

The rest of us can swim in the pools or brave the somewhat rocky, weedy beaches. Or, you know, just have a drink by the seaside.

There are certain colors, and combinations of colors, that make little sense away from a tropical environment. If you live above the Mason-Dixon line, don’t even think about it.