Seafood? What seafood?

So today was the Marathon Seafood Festival in the Florida Keys. I first saw an ad for the festival in the Weekend section of the Miami Herald about two weeks ago and knew instantly that I had to go. I LOVE seafood. I'm not too much of a fish person, but I like other fruits de mer. So I showed my mom the ad and asked her if she wanted to go, to which she said yes. I've been looking forward to this thing -- and I mean really, really looking forward to it -- for two weeks. As each day got closer I got even more excited.

So today was the magical day. My mom and I set out at about 9 a.m. to make the two hour drive to Marathon. The drive on US 1 in the Keys is just gorgeous, so I didn't really mind it most of the way. Once we got to Marathon, which is in the middle Keys, we started seeing signs for the festival and I couldn't wait to get to all the seafood that was awaiting us. I was looking forward to stuffing myself with shrimp, scallops, crab, etc. We eventually found a place to park down the street and followed the crowd in through the festival gates. Once inside I saw all these booths and just wanted to run around and see what there was. So my mom decided to look at the map in the program to determine the best place to start in grabbin up food. That's when we realized...the food section in this seafood festival was very small. On the map the section of people selling products was about three or four times as big.

We went over to the food section and found a very paltry selection. Eight booths of food. EIGHT BOOTHS! One booth had hotdogs/hamburgers and one had desserts, leaving six booths of seafood. Six booths of seafood at a "seafood festival"??? Are you kidding me?!?! So what did I get to eat at this seafood festival I've been extremely excited about for the past two weeks? Shrimp cocktail and conch fritters. They couldn't even have hot, seasoned shrimp. The shrimp tasted so plain. I don't even really like shrimp cocktail in the first place. The conch fritters were like 95% batter and 5% conch. I couldn't believe these people have the nerve to call this a seafood festival and have the nerve to be doing this for 32 years. But you know what? I wasn't even mad. I was disappointed, but I had a good time on the drive down and enjoyed hanging out with my mom. So the trip wasn't a total loss, but now I'm desperate to find a real seafood festival with food as far as the eye can see.