Key West

	The word "key" comes from the Spanish word cayo, which in this case means island. They say that "getting there is half the fun," and we certainly enjoyed our little island-hopping drive down Highway 1 from Miami. Perhaps the thing that people know best about the drive is that there is one particularly long bridge on the way, called "7 mile bridge," pictured here. As you can see, there are actually two bridges, the new and the old. There's a place to pull off at either end so that you can stretch your legs and take in the scenery a bit.
Highway one stretches from Maine to Key West. If you follow it to the bitter end, you arrive here near the beach. There are some beautiful old houses in Key West, to be sure. This particular house, which was being turned into a guest house while we were there, will be the southernmost hotel accommodations in the U.S. when it's finished.
	Just about a block down the street from the above house is the southernmost point in continental U.S. marker. Technically, it isn't the actual southernmost point. But it is a good place to have a marker for tourists to have a souvenir picture taken, which is just what we did.
Remember that at that point you are, as I see it, in the Caribbean, although it's officially considered to be the Atlantic. At any rate, Cuba is 90 miles away, as this vendor reminds you.
	Adventuresome lot that we are, we hadn't bothered to make any hotel reservations. When we got there, we had a little trouble finding accommodations, especially because it was spring break for some college students, who had a lot of the budget stuff taken. After a lot of checking around, we finally stayed here, in this house. It's actually part of the El Rancho Hotel, right on Highway 1 before you get to the Duvall Street strip. Bear in mind, though, that this is the only room they have like this, and they said that they only offered it to us because we were a family.
Key West, we found out, is pretty much of a party town, with the action centered around Duvall Street. Any trip to Key West will almost certainly include a walk down Duvall, with its bar after restaurant after antique shop after T-shirt shop. The architecture is interesting and has a unique feel I'd never quite experienced before.
	A bit further down Duvall you come to the Strand theatre, which now houses the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. I would have liked to have seen what the area looked like before it catered strictly to tourists.
Speaking of believing it or not, this is the Hard Rock Cafe, Key West. Sure bears no resemblance to the one in Tokyo, but thank God for that. Much better that they took over this old house than to build one up from scratch.
	Still Duvall Street. It literally goes from one side of the island to the other. Nice strolls to be had.
Now, most of you probably already know that Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West for many years and liked to frequent Sloppy Joe's Bar. What you may not know is that the Sloppy Joe's that you now see is a newer one, down the block from Hemigway's original haunt. Be that as it may, the old one is still a bar, just under a different name, so you can still say you slammed down a brewski at Papa Hemingway's favorite hangout.
	Hemingway lived in this house at 907 Whitehead St. from 1931 until his death in1961. The furniture inside is original, although the artwork on the walls has all been added. Hemingway had over 50 cats when he was living here, and their descendants still roam the grounds. Most of them are 6-toed. It's a lovely place to walk around, even if you're not a Hemingway fan.
Behind the house is a two-story outbuilding, and, to protect his privacy, Hemingway had a precarious catwalk, which few people wanted to brave, built out to it. Here he wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Snows of Kilamanjaro, and many other works.
	To tell the truth, Key West isn't really geared to families, and we had to do quite a bit of looking before we could find two bicycles with child seats, one of which was small enough for my wife to ride. We ended up having to get one at two separate rental shops, and this took half the morning. But once we got going, Key West is a very nice place to ride around. This large public beach is on the south side of the island, away from the downtown area. I understand the sand was actually shipped in from the Bahamas.
We were advised by a local fellow to visit Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, so we rode our bikes there. Now I'm advising you NOT to go there, because 1. you have to pay (for what?) to get in 2. the "beach" is a rocky landfill that looks like they just backed up a dump truck and then spread the fill around with a road grader 3. the fort is a totally uninteresting concrete lump. Here's the most interesting picture I could manage there.
	There's a "train" which leaves from near the waterfront on Du Val St. and takes you on a tour of the entire island. I found it rather pricey, but it was worth it in the end. The guided tour is very well researched and you learn all kinds of "fun facts" about the history of Key West (like, that the sand on the beach came from the Bahamas). Here it is parked at the end of the tour.
I took this from the moving tour train. This house is fairly typical of the houses you'll see in Key West. Our guide pointed out the latticework on the balcony, which is called "gingerbread."
	Here's a picture of my kids posing by a mannequin in front of a gift shop. The picture is not very well centered, but I'm including it because it conveys a little of the Disneyland feeling that Key West has. Many of the shops and attractions there would look right in place in Adventureland or Main Street, U.S.A. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with Disneyland - in fact, I think it's great. But just be aware that Key West is like Disneyland with bars. If that's what you're looking for, you'll love it.