Key West

Key West

Finally I managed to get some time to continue with some updates about the vacation in Florida. As promised I will continue cronological and therefor - Key West, the visit from the last weekend, or better the end of last week. The journey was a bit longer. The overseas highway #1 is quite long going over all the islands (keys) to arrive finally at the southernmost point of the USA - Key West. When we arrived on Thursday in the evening at the hotel we were kind of exhausted but the hotel ... absolutely overpriced for the kind of shithole it was. At least it was just for sleeping and shower and in between we explored the island.

Overseas Highway #1

There was quite a lot to see for the relative small island. I mean Key West has roughly 22500 inhabitants and is the size of my hometown Höxter in eastern Westfalia. Back to Key West. The unique location a great deal off the mainland makes Key West a bit more left and crazier compared to the State itself - colourful, open, gay, touristy, ... there are a lot of attributes you can connect to Key West and which would describe the place fairly well. But what can a tourist find in Key West? First of all the house of Ernest Hemingway - a very nice colonial style mansion with quite a big garden around in the very heart of the island. Secondly there is "THE" tourist attraction, the "southernmost point" of the USA. In general a big painted stone with which you have to take a picture ;-) Also it is the start of Highway #1 - mile 0.

Hemingway house in the center of Key West.

Southernmost point of the USA - 90 miles to cuba.

Something else is the glorious sunset at the pier of Key West which you have to see while enjoying a stay. It is the time of the day when all the "crazy" folks comes out to show and demonstrate artistry, music, art. While you can relax and have a look at everything going on at the square the sun starts to set and sinks as a grand final behind a small island with a very colourful sky.

Sunset at Mellory Square.

 And what to do after sunset? - Easy! Key West is some kind of Las Vegas - go and celebrate what ever you like :-) There are a lot of bars and pubs, restaurants and cafés. On Friday evening we found a very nice pub serving very very very many different beers from all over the world and as the bartender was such a nice bloke we left the first Euro note at the ceiling of the pub :-)
With this the trip to Key West was already at an end, next morning we departed again going first for a short stop to Miami and afterwards back home to Cape Coral.

Some commemoration of our visit at the "Krawl" in Key West.