May 2, 2025 Breakfast - Palm Bakery Lunch - Alabama Jack’s

May 2, 2025 Breakfast - Palm Bakery  Lunch - Alabama Jack’s

Two awful meals today and a rather uneventful walk at Biscayne Bay National Park.

Today was not great. We stopped for Breakfast on the way to Biscayne Bay National Park at Palm Bakery that turned out to be a Cuban bakery.

Suzette ate a ham and cheese pressed sandwich and I ordered a Nica Breakfast that was sautéed rice and black beans, two fried eggs, two slices of sweet sautéed banana, a fried slice of cheese, and a small fried slice of chorizo. I did not like it but I ate most of it except for the fried cheese and some of the beans and rice. Suzette drank coffee that she did not care for, but I loved my glass of fresh squeezed orange juice.

We then drove to Biscayne Bay National Park and took the ,8 mile walk but did not see anything of note.  Apparently the Park was created to protect the Bay and its offshore reef from development.

We did discover that Emily Graf worked at the Park and called her and she was kind enough to get us on a 9:00 boat trip to an island in the bay in the morning.

We asked at the visitor center if there were any shell shops and the attendant mentioned Shell World on Key Largo, so we decided to drive to Key Largo.

The 30 mile drive on Hwy 1 was rather unpleasant with lots of big pickups pulling big boats on trailers and large delivery trucks on a crowded highway, but we made it. Shell World was huge, several blocks long and a block wide with the highway on both sides.  It had lots of stuff, including specimen coweries. I bought two specimen shells and we also bought three air plants for our bathroom shower.

Shell World was the best experience of the day.

We then drove to the John Pennenkemp Coral Reef State Park and enjoyed its aquarium and I napped during a movie on the Caribbean wildlife that emphasized coral restoration projects.p for about 1/2 hour.

We then drove on a different road that Suzette said was the old road that was much more picturesque and uncrowded to the historic restaurant named Alabama Jack’s that the lady at Black Point Grill recommended last night.

Suzette ordered a Red Stripe beer and I ordered an Angry Orchard apple cider and we ordered the combo plate with Cole slaw and sweet potato fries.

We were interested in the combo plate because it included two conch fritters, two crab cakes, and three fish sticks.  As it turned out the conch fritters were inedible, more like a large deep fried hush puppy with a few flakes of conch thrown in. The crab cake was equally bad, a potato cake that resembled a crab cake but was actually mashed potatoes with some flakes of crab. The fish sticks were the only item that was edible on the combo, a stick of fish lightly breaded and quickly deep fried. We ate all three fish sticks and yielded the crab/potato cakes and conch fritters to the fish in the boat channel next to the restaurant. There is no trash. All the uneaten food is thrown over the railing into the boat channel to the fish.

When our waitress remove the uneaten conch fritters, sweet potato fries,  and crab cakes, she merely sent them into the canal with a flick of her wrist that became a roiling feeding frenzy of fish.

We then drove back to Homestead and picked up a sandwich at Broadway Subs to take on our boat ride tomorrow and filled the car with gas.

Then we drove back to the room and packed and watched the PBS news. The big news was Trump signed an Executive Order today to defund PBS, which apparently he does not have the power to do because it was created and funded by Congress and only Congress can pass legislation to defund PBS.

I then blogged and we watched Washington Week and went to bed.

Bon Appetit