"'You want another copita?' the barman asked. 'No, thank you,' said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted cafe was a very different thing."

OK, this is the last post I’m going to bore you with from our mad, Dean Moriarty-style dash to Sarasota and back over the weekend. But hey, I took a lot of pictures, and I like to do something with them.

Of course, this isn’t the usual fare for this blog. But I refuse to be pigeonholed. And since I know The Shop Tart reads this blog, I thought I’d share some stuff she might enjoy. So I took pictures of my food, and merchandise in the St. Armand Key shops that my wife and youngest daughter stopped into, and now I present this Tartesque report.

My favorite part of the dining and walking around was spending the time with the wife and daughter. But I did sort of get into the moment when I sat alone at the sidewalk table outside Columbia restaurant (where we had eaten the night before — I had the Filet Steak Salteado with a local beer, and we shared a pitcher of sangría) and said “una copita mas” to the waiter. Very Hemingway. Way existential. The waiter just smiled, indulging the tourist, and murmured “una copita mas” as he went to fetch my second expresso, which I drank Cuban style with loads of sugar. It set me up quite nicely for the long drive home later that day.