Day 6 - Key West

It’s cloudy and windy when we wake up, which is kind of disappointing when you’re in the Keys. Not what I'd expected at all ... it's supposed to be a tropical paradise!

We take our breakfast out onto the porch where we’re shielded from most of the wind. Somewhere in the distance a rooster crows. For some reason there are a lot of free roaming chickens and roosters on Key West and you see them everywhere.

After we’ve checked out, Lucie, the receptionist, orders bikes for us and 5 minutes later someone comes to drop them off. There’s only limited parking so at $18 a person for a 24hr rental this is a great deal. They’ll even pick them up from the same place when you’re done. Here's Sandy with her bike (in front of Ernest Hemingway's old house)

 Duval Street during the day time. Even though it's early most of the bars are already hopping.

There are a lot of beautiful houses in Key West

We ride all the way down Duval until we get to the Sunset Pier, with its brightly colored stools. Only 90 miles to Cuba!

Surprisingly the clouds are letting up and at times it feels very hot. It's a good thing there's a little bucket on the bike to put all my excess clothing.

Mallory Square looks very different in the day light.

There are no street performers or throngs of people. There’s a cute collection box for the feral cats.

A huge cruise ship is moored right at the end. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cruise ship up close before and it’s a lot bigger than I expected. During the day we spot many more cruiseships docking in Key West ... it's a popular connection between the US and the carribean.

We’re right by a busy shopping area and we head into the Sponge factory to buy presents and we also find a nice license plate to put in our game room as a little reminder of our trip. A lot of the tour companies have stops here and the area is bustling with people exiting and entering trams and buses.

Sponge man in front of the store:

One of the island’s best beaches (oddly enough the Keys don’t have a lot of nice beaches) is supposed to be a Fort Zachory Taylor state park. As the name implies there’s also a Fort in the park so we do quick walking tour of the fort before going to the beach.

There’s not a lot to see and strangely the fort appears to be falling apart even though it’s less than 200 years old.

There’s a bike trail that leads down to the beach.

It’s quiet when we get there, probably because of the fierce winds, but it’s warm enough for a few brave souls to tan in their bikinis. Here too the water is very clear and a little boy is snorkeling near the shore. I think the water is supposed to be 71 degrees and while it doesn’t feel cold whatever is exposed above the water must be freezing.

For lunch we head to a small bakery called the Old Town Bakery that’s supposed to have the most amazing deserts. Most notably the OMG Brownie, which unfortunately was still in the oven when we get there.

Instead we have two delicious lunch sandwiches and desert to go and we eat it in the garden of our B&B. (Sandy’s eating her chocolate croissant right now on the plane and it is fantastic!) One of the cats in the garden.

After lunch we ride our bikes to Southernmost Point. It’s an oversized buoy that marks the southernmost point of the United States (although I read somewhere that it’s not truly the most southern) with a throng over people crowding around it trying to take pictures. After a short wait it’s our turn and we snap a few pictures, but there’s really nothing to see so we get back on our bicycles.

We ride past another beach called Higgs beach.

The beach seems pretty nice and there’s a long pier jetting out into the gulf. It says no diving, but I wonder if you can jump off it in the summer? There are lots of stairs leading from the pier to the water so maybe you can? Must be fun to just jump into the water again and again.

The island’s main beach, Smathers, is a bit of a letdown. I heard it gets really crowded too when the weather is nice so the social scene is probably why it’s so popular.

We cross over to the other side of the island so I can take some pictures of the mangroves growing near the shore. Yesterday morning we saw the most beautiful mangroves in the fog, while driving down from the upper Keys, but because we were in a hurry we didn’t stop for pictures. I’m really regretting that now because they don’t look the same in the watery sunlight and the wind is making for some difficult biking.

Sandy’s not used to biking as much and she decides to wait until I come back so I can go faster. I can’t quite remember where I saw them and it’s a lot further than I thought so I’m about to turn around when I finally spot them. They’re not the greatest pictures. I was pretty pooped at this point and it was getting late so I didn’t want to keep riding around looking for a better angle.

The ride back is a lot smoother; the wind is so strong I almost don’t need to pedal! I meet up with Sandy again and we ride down to see the lighthouse. It’s several streets land inwards and I’m not sure if it’s always been like that or if those streets weren’t there when the lighthouse was built. It’s quite a nice looking one though! For $10 you can do a tour of the lighthouse and the grounds, but we decide not to do that.

We drop the bikes off at the B&B and say goodbye to the other cat, Coose.

Then we walk down Duval street to look for some key lime juice (for cooking – I’m officially a fan after yesterday’s yummy dinner) and to stop at the ice cream shop at the corner of Duval and Truman. They smell smurf ice cream; blue raspberry with marsh mellows! Hmmmm good!

The airport is only 3 miles from where we parked so we make it there without having to get more gas. We prepaid for them to refill the tank at a cheaper price (gas is expensive on the island) so we made sure to run it (almost) empty.

I think there are only four gates at the airport. The TSA screener is a nice woman who tells us there’s a beach and a waterfall after security so we’re kind of excited about that, but although it is a nice sandy area with tables and umbrellas it’s also extremely noisy so we flee back inside.

Funny painting at the airport restaurant

Unfortunately our plane gets in late so when we arrive in Charlotte we have only 10 minutes to make it from terminal C to E. It looks doubtful, but I take off running as fast as I can ... only to find out that our flight to Baltimore is also half an hour late!

Now I just need about a week's vacation to recover from our trip!

Total miles for today: 3 (plus many more by bike)

Total miles for trip: 914

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Breakfast: free at B&B
Lunch: Old Town Bakery
Dinner: The Conch Flyer at EYW airport