Key West

The biggest problem with seeing two different places in the same holiday, is the travel. Getting from Uncle Martyn’s place in Jamaica to Key West involved a 1.5 hour bus ride to Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, a 1.5 hour flight to Miami, plus an additional 30 minutes circling in a holding pattern, and then another 1.5 hours waiting on the tarmac for our gate to clear (all due to a massive thunderstorm over Miami), and then a 3 hour drive down to Key West. Adding in the waiting time at the airports (waiting to board in Jamaica, then immigration etc. in Miami) and you’re looking at 12 hours of travelling. We were glad to get to bed last night!

We started late this morning too – we were tired from all that travelling! First thing we did after a huge breakfast was head to the Key West Lighthouse to get a bird’s eye view over the island. Well, after climbing up 88 freakin’ stairs, we finally reached the top – and for some reason, we weren’t super impressed! Sure, it’s probably the best place to see the whole island, but there’s really not much to see. It’s so flat! Most of the buildings that you can see are the same height! There goes $20 that we’ll never get back.

Our next stop was just down the road, at one of the places that Key West is most famous for – the southern-most point of the USA. (Technically it’s not the southern-most point, but the actual one isn’t accessible to the public). Again, it was a bit of a non – just a big barrel thing with faded writing – really just something to provide a photo opportunity for the tourists (like us). But who are we to argue with a photo opportunity?

After we dropped the car back at the hotel, it seems the rest of our day revolved around food. First, we walked up to the Hard Rock Cafe, and shared a black and white shake (that’s one more HRC glass for the collection!). After working up an appetite with a swim, we hit an oyster bar at the end of our street during their happy hour, and enjoyed some key lime garlic oysters, fried calamari, and buffalo prawns – all at half price! Finally tonight for dinner, we had a creamy prawn chowder at a little restaurant across the road. We’ll be hitting the gym as soon as we get back to New York .

The other “must-do” thing in Key West is to watch the sunset in Mallory Square. A whole bunch of street performers come to help every night – our favourite tonight being the guy whose dog was trained to take your money from your hand and drop it in his bucket. Very cute! Unfortunately the sky was very cloudy; but the sunset was still quite spectacular.

I can certainly think of worse places that we could be.