Fantasy Fest Survived!

We have survived! Though I have to tell you that by Thursday night I wasn't sure I was going to make it. Working and staying out each night is for the YOUNG!!! None the less we did make it, had an excellent time and am really glad we didn't miss all the things we were able to get to. So let me recap the week......

Friday and Saturday night were Goombay which I have already shared with you.

Then came Sunday and we went to the Hot Wench & Wicked Pirate Tea Dance at the Mel Fisher Museum. Yes I know that the tea dance part sounds a little strange but that seems to be what an afternoon of drinking and dancing is called here. It was our first introduction to the costumes that we would see worn through out the week. There are many people who come down for the entire week and bring a different costume for each day. The theme for this years Fantasy Fest was Pirates, Pundants and Political Party Animals. To say the least there was a lot of pirates, Obama's, McCain's and Palin's running around. We then met friends are Schooners and ending the night early (actually home by 8 pm) after being out late Fri & Sat.

Monday we decided we needed a night off after being out the previous 3 night and had 6 more nights to go.

Tues it began!!!
We started with dinner at Finnegan's Wake which had a Green Party. Everyone was to dress in green which many did (Tom included). We stayed there for a few hours, eating, drinking and making friends. A couple sitting next to us were down for a few days and didn't even know it was FF. What a surprise for them!
Then we headed down to Capt Tony's Saloon for the Plaid Party. There is where everyone is to wear plaid and we had heard it has become 'the place' to start the party week. Boy was that true! I don't think we even made it all the way to Capt Tony's since when we got to the street where the saloon is and it was already closed to traffic and the street was packed. It just so happens that our Iguana Cafe is across from Tony's so we found a place to adjust to all that we were witnessing. Now people had tried to explain to us what the week was all about but until you see it I am not sure you can believe it. It is a week where people leave their everyday lives to live a fantasy. That fantasy has many themes through the week that includes wearing little if no clothes at all. Yup you hear me right.... LOTS of naked & half naked people, all shapes, sizes, ages and everything you probably cannot imagine (but trust me I say 'ALL' and yes I mean 'ALL'). I probably spent the first 30 minutes out in the middle of the street just staring with my mouth open before Tom made me move and to get a grip. He seemed to take in all in stride and adopted the Ron White saying of ' If you see 1 naked boobie you want to see them all'. We were just amazed at the amount of people who wanted to walk around in various stages of nakedness. After a bit of this we headed down Duval (the main party street) while the people were still coming into the street to party and parade around in their costumes. We ran into Josh and Danielle who were having dinner and wanted to check out Capt Tony's so we once again headed down into the craziness but this time there were so many more people that they had closed off sections of Duval. Any this was only Tuesday night. We spent a number of hours people watching and manage to get home around midnight which we had chosen as the cut off time to be able to make it out so many night this week. I have to say that by the end of the evening had had grown accustom to the costumes and was developing a new appreciation for body painting. I have included a couple pic of lady who were painted and were my favorites of Tues night. Yes the pink top is all paint!

Then Wednesday was to be another night out to the parties... but Mother Nature had a different idea! We are still technically in the rainy, hurricane season but usually by FF things are pretty quiet. Not so for this week! It was the rainiest week on record and Wednesday was a record breaking day. The last time I checked out weather gauge (a thank you to the HACI group for the great gift) and it was over 5 inches that one day. We had been having rain everyday the past couple of weeks but it came in squalls and moved on (as we are used to) so it wasn't stopping us until Wed. It rained ALL DAY!!! When we started out to meet Jan, Ray and the gang it was still raining. There was the Walk the Plank Party at Schooners that we wanted to get to along with a couple of other parties down on Duval. Even though we had a umbrella we were soaked by the time we made it to Jan & Ray's house and it didn't appear to be letting up anytime soon. Since we weren't going to let the rain get in the way of a good time we all stayed there, drank, ordered dinner to be delivered and practiced our Zombie Pirate dance for Friday. Now you would think that we would cut it off early but once again it was midnight before we made our way home.

Thursday the rain had let up and there were more parties to get to and to participate in the Guinness Book of World Record for the tattoo. So once again we met up with friends and headed down to Key West Ink to check in for our tattoos. Now that turned into being a Cluster! We didn't get the tattoos. We had a 7 pm appointment and they were so far behind to tattooing that it was going to be HOURS before they would get to us. The worst part was that they wanted us to stand in line and wait. The appointment meant nothing. As of 8 pm there had been only 70 people tattooed (since 2 pm) with 80 more staged to go. We figured they would never get to us and decided a Duval Crawl was more fun so off we went.
The party of the night was the Toga Party at Sloppy Joe's which brought out some of the most amazing togas I have seen. Of course there was the crazy pirate costumes and the body painting everywhere. We had a great time just walking, drinking and people watching. The picture to the right is the group of us out Thurs night.

Friday was the highlight of the week with the peoples parade which is officially called the Masquerade March. It is the where anyone can can join in the parade (it's all just people dressed up in their own costumes) that starts at the cemetery and moves 2 two different directions until it meets on Duval. It starts at 5 pm and was one of the craziest, fun things we have done. We were the Zombie Pirates, Ray had built a coffin that was a ice chest to carry the rum & beer, and had even come up with a short dance to do on the parade route to Micheal Jackson's' Thriller. So 30 of us gathered (once again at Jan & Ray's so it a good thing they only live 2 blocks from us) early to dress, do the 'dead' makeup thing and get ready to march. The picture at the top of the blog is the group photo taken before we hit the parade trail and th picture to the left is Tom and I before the parade. It is amazing what white makeup and baby powder (in large quantities) can do.
Then as things go.... we had a major mishap. The cart carrying the coffin and the music set up went through a puddle that was deeper than it appeared. The music set up burned up! We had no music to do our dance but continued on the route anyway. We did get lucky that on a potty stop at a friends house they had speakers that went out to the street. We put in the music and got to do the dance a couple of times out in front of their house. We heard that someone had videotaped it so if I get that I will let you know. It was a blast to do! The parade took us 3 hours and we never made it to Duval. We dropped off the coffin and headed out to party... in costume and all late into the night. There are many more pictures that were taken but I haven't had a chance to gather them all. Here is a link to a local photographer that took pictures of us during the parade. this link starts on photo 132 and ends on 141 for us. There are many pictures of the others in the parade so check those out too. They are quite a hoot. I take no responsibility for what you may see.

http://www.printroom.com/ViewGalleryPhoto.asp?userid=bigdfatboy33&gallery_id=1324113&image_id=132

Then Saturday brought us to the final day of the Fest. There was a street fair and local music stages set up on Duval for the afternoon and then the grand parade was to start at 7 pm with over 60 floats entered. We slept late then started out for the street fair at 2 pm. Of course met up with friends, had a few drinks and found the first decent Mexican food we have found here and it happened to be at a street vendor upstate Florida. The burritos made me homesick so through out the day we had 2!
To watch the parade we headed to Josh and Danielle's. They are the young kids in the picture from Thursday night. They have an apartment that overlooks Duval with a balcony so it was the perfect place to watch the parade. Josh is the grandson of Mel Fisher and also a treasure diver on the Dare so we a bunch of the divers with us on the balcony. The picture to the left is of diver Bill who was dressed in costume the last 3 nights that he was out with us. For Saturday he got body painted.
It was an amazing parade with float after float and most of them with live bands. The picture to the right is one that I took of the Junkanoos (yes I have a thing for them) and the great thing is the beads that are flying mid air. There was A LOT of beads being thrown from the floats to the crowd. At one point we had to so many beads we were throwing them back to the floats.
After the parade ..... well you already know the drill.... it was out to the street to check out the crowd. Now you would have thought that we would have been done after a week of this but ohhhh noooo! The streets were crazy and by midnight things were getting weirder than they had all week. A bunch of us decided it would be better to finish the night somewhere else so we headed to our house for some Wii bowling, cheese steaks (a local place, Mr Z's has the best ones ever) and the last drink of the night. Well those of you who have done late night Wii know that it is never just one game... Finally at 3 am we were done and our friends headed home!!!

Now it is Sunday and we have done NOTHING!!!! It has really taken us a whole day to recover and I am not so sure it won't take a couple more!
So ends another week of Adventures.... many that I can't believe I saw but an adventure none the less. There were many events we didn't get to and are already planning those for next year. The theme is Villains, Vixens and Vampires so the planning for the peoples parade will also begin at the next Schooners happy hour on Friday.