Ernest Hemingway

Key West, Hemingway, and Sunsets

~ John Loraine ~ 1 Comment

We finally arrived in Key West Florida around eight o’clock on a hot Tuesday evening in mid-June. The trip from Philadelphia was annoying and too damn long, but sure worth it. It took us a car ride, two shuttles, two airplanes, a rental, and a total of eighteen hours to get there. I am an inspired young writer trying to make it in a corporate world and my six-month happily pregnant wife, we’ve left for a little get-away right before the pregnancy, and traveling becomes too much of a burden for both of us. 

We’ve decided on Florida because it was a relatively affordable trip with an excellent travel package for a week and, of course, because of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway resided in Key West from 1931 to 1939. His house is a historic landmark and a museum, and it’s the primary destination for so many people coming down here, to the edge of the world, the far end of the Florida Keys. We stayed at Havana Cabana, a cool Cuban style hotel-resort located just about ten miles away from Hemingway’s house. We stayed there for the next five days, and this would be our last trip with only two of us before the baby arrives. 

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Memory Hotel

~ John Loraine ~ 2 Comments

The dark countryside road went up and down and into the nowhere and into the unknown darkness of the Pocono’s mountains. Google Maps was taking us somewhere we’ve never been before. Driving was getting exhausting as it was getting late into the evening and pitch dark all around us.  

“Honey, why don’t we pull out at the nearest hotel and spend the night there? We’ll hit the road tomorrow morning again. I am so tired of driving in this darkness. I can barely see where I am going.” 

“Ok, sounds good, babe. I am exhausted too and I need a hot shower” my wife said. I flicked a left turn signal shifted to the far-right lane and took the exit out of the highway.   

The curvy exit road took us through the toll booth and out into the town’s street with a gas station right there on the right. There were a few chain fast-food and pizza places down the street meant to be for the tourists, of course, to stop by for a quick bite of something painfully familiar while being away from the city. A few minutes driving down on that street we saw this classy, red-brick, four-story hotel with some lights on the outside of the building and a dead empty and quiet Broadway street. 

I and my wife love to go out into the countryside over a holiday break or just because we feel like going somewhere away from the city and just explore new places, enjoy the view and enjoy getting lost in some weird unknown mountainside traps. We were married for about just three years back then and life was just much simpler and free. 

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