Escape From Rochester - Key West

Sunrise on our first morning

After those lovely three days in Miami, we drove four hours south down U.S. 1 to the Mile 0 marker on the island of Key West, the southernmost point in the United States.  Something happens as you get on the island:  life seems to slow down and any sense of urgency evaporates.  Of course, we arrived on St. Patrick's Day so things were a bit more lively than usual and on Saturday things really amped up.

We stayed in a Marriott boutique hotel, The Saint which is right on Duval Avenue so we had easy access to everything there.  Since the island is so small, maybe two square miles, we could also easily walk to just about everywhere.  According to my Fitbit, I have walked 57,000   steps since we arrived and I will put on a few more before we leave this morning.  That is about 29 miles!

Marilyn with Mikala, our server.

On our first evening, we had a late dinner at Le Petit Paris where we met Mikala, our server.  She is from the Czech Republic.  We concluded that she was spending time in the U.S. to gain a command of English.  Her family seems to visit annually.  She enjoys serving food because it puts her in contact with people and helps her English.  She did tell us that on the day the President signed the first immigration order, a customer told her that he was not giving her a tip because he was only tipping United States citizens.  I am not quite sure of the thinking behind not paying for good service because of the citizenship status of a worker.  Her immigration status is quite legal.  It is sad that a national political debate causes economic harm to an innocent worker.  Perhaps a better approach would be to ascertain the citizenship status of the owner and the employees of potential eating places and then only patronizing those that are "100 percent American."  Good luck with that.  Anyway, the food and service was so good that we returned two nights later for our final dinner in Key West.

Click here to see the complete Key West photo album.

The next day we walked Duval Street from end to end.  The place was jammed with St. Patrick's Day revelers, often to the point of obstructing sidewalks.  As the day wore on into evening, the crowds got louder and actually bothersome.  Some areas reminded us of streets in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

On one of our walks away from Duval Street along the beach, we found a lovely spot, West Martello Tower.  This is the site of one of two advance gun batteries connected to Fort Zachery Taylor.  The west tower was never fully armed and eventually fell into disuse.  It actually served as a source of bricks for local buildings.  Eventually it was declared a National Historic Site and the Key West Garden Club became responsible for it.  It is now a quiet and beautiful botanical garden which is free--the only thing free on the island as far as I could tell other than the sun.  Click here to see more photos of the West Martello.

Rooster and hen

Hemingway cat

There are roosters everywhere it seemed.  I understand that the locals are divided:  some thing they are part of the charm of the island and others think them a nuisance and a health hazard.  I can see both points of view but as a tourist, I lean toward the charm view as long as your hotel protects you from the constant calling.

Click here to see the complete Key West photo album.

One of the attractions is the Ernest Hemingway House where there are no roosters or hens but more than fifty cats, all descendants of the cat gifted to Hemingway.  It was a six toed cat which apparently is a good luck charm which Hemingway felt he needed given that he was accident prone...admittedly one of his accidents happened after he had imbibed 40 martinis which seems both comic and profoundly sad.

Hemingway's studio

The tour of the house was very informative about the life of this talented writer, who won both a Pulitzer and Nobel.  He wrote 70 percent of his books, stories and articles while he lived here.  He worked in a studio over what had been the carriage house in the 1851 constructed estate, the largest residential lot on the island. He worked here from 7:00 till about 2:00 each day and then spent the rest of his time drinking at Sloppy Joe's or fishing.  He had a full sized boxing ring in the backyard where locals would come once a week to box Papa who had lost the sight in one eye while boxing as a teenager in Oak Park IL.

Urinal from Sloppy Joe's

That boxing ring was dismantled by Pauline, his third wife, while Ernest was gallivanting abroad for 11 months with  Martha Gellhorn who later became his third wife.  When Pauline realized what was happening, she constructed an oversized swimming pool where the ring had been.  When Ernest returned, he was shocked and angered.  He responded by spending all night at Sloppy Joe's, actually helping Joe moved the bar to its current location.  As part of that move, he and Joe carried a men's urinal down the street and deposited it in the backyard.  Ernest declared the next morning that this was his swimming pool and he would remove it when the pool was gone and his boxing ring reinstalled.  That never happened but the urinal is still there serving now as a watering spot for the cats.  It has been artistically enhanced.

Shot back to the east as the run was setting

Our final evening we made the walk down to the Southernmost Point for the sunset.  With the St. Patrick's Day crowd gone, it was a more typical laid back Key West crowd.

The next morning as we were leaving Key West, we stopped for a tour of the Little White House, most famous for its use by the citizen from Missouri who served almost eight years as president, Harry S. Truman.  Being from Missouri myself, I was familiar with the life of our 33rd president.  The guide provided a fascinating tour of the house and the Harry Truman that used this navy facility to relax away from Washington.  Beginning in 1946, he made 11 trips here and spent around 170 days here overall.  Since this was a navy facility--in fact, The Little White House had originally been the commandant's quarters--detailed logs were kept of each visit.  These have been declassified and are available on the organization's web site.  Click here to view.  If you have time, click that link and then open one of the logs.  It is fascinating.  Since the facility is still available for use by current and former presidents, their extended families and government dignitaries, no photography is allowed in the house.  It has been set back to exactly how it was when Truman used it.  Detailed logs were also kept of decorations and furnishings.  Click here to see the complete Key West photo album.

We then set off north for our next overnight--three days in Homestead to tour the Everglades.  However, on the way north about halfway between Key West and Miami, we drove through Islamorada, a community of islands.  This is best known to us and millions more as the setting for Bloodline, a Netflix original series by the Kessler brothers of Damages fame.  We drove up to the office of the Moorings Resorts Homes where much of the series is filmed.  We were turned away since it is private and not open to the public.  However, we did find a very nice lunch spot on the beach nearby that put us into Bloodline scenic feel.  Click here for more photos from Islamorada.

And now, it is on to the Everglades!