Best Things To Do in Key
West
Indoors or out, Key West will keep you busy. Key West separates the
Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Mexico, but it looks and feels like the
Caribbean. Water sports, fishing, diving, parasailing, boating, reign supreme
during the day, followed by eating, drinking and serious partying after
sundown. Key West has long been the destination of serious anglers intent on
world records. With so many fishing opportunities, however, even novices can
enjoy a good measure of rod-bending fun on even a half-day trip. Snorkeling is
great, but scuba is better, stay submerged longer and really appreciate the
wrecks and reefs. Although the Florida Keys boasts the only living coral
barrier reef in the United States, the most notable dive of late is the wreck
of the Vandenberg. For such a flyspeck of an island, it’s amazing how many
activities are available: fishing, diving, water sports, sightseeing,
sunbathing, surfing, dining, shopping and enough bars to handle an impressive
per capita consumption of alcohol.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
If you’ve never parasailed, it’s time to fly. Get
yourself strapped in, whisked off your feet and settle back for an awesome
glimpse of Key West that most others never see. You head out into the harbor on
a fast boat; when it’s time to fly, the crew hooks you up to a large parachute,
then slowly picks up speed to inflate the ’chute until it lifts you off the
deck. Pretty soon, your head is even with the top of the Key West lighthouse.
It’s safe, so don’t worry about falling, and besides, even if you do, it’s a
blue splash, not red. Other activities offered include snorkeling, kayaking,
rock climbing and even water trampoline.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Of all the presidents who have visited Key West,
the one who kept coming back was Harry Truman, the haberdasher from Missouri.
He didn't just vacation here, he loved the city. A former command post for the
Navy, it became Truman's vacation headquarters immediately after World War II
and it served as his Winter White House for the balance of his presidency.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
A great option is feeling your hair flowing in the
wind sailing aboard a high-speed catamaran to Fort Jefferson in the Dry
Tortugas. The massive 19th-century brick fort was used to imprison the
conspirators who helped John Wilkes Booth assassinate President Abraham
Lincoln. It’s 70 miles from Key West, and its remoteness means there are fewer
impacts on the coral by divers and a greater variety of sea life on view.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Serving as Hemingway’s home base from 1928 until
1940, Papa loved this hard-drinking, hard-fishing town and the town loved him.
He would write all morning in his secluded office above the pool room behind
the main residence, the area walled off and only his famed six-toed cats
allowed to roam the small property. The afternoon was reserved for fishing or
guzzling booze at gin joints like Sloppy Joe’s. Hemingway wrote "The Snows
of Kilimanjaro" and other works while in Key West. The house is worth
visiting, particularly tiptoeing up the steps to peer into the office where
Hemingway’s desk, chair, typewriter and wall ornaments are supposedly just as
he left them. Plants and trees shade the back yard and you’ll encounter a
graveyard of past generations of his beloved cats. The visit’s worthwhile for
about half an hour, after that it’s boring.
Neighborhood: New
Town
Get wet and go deep on any of the three daily trips
to wrecks or reefs, including a night dive. We prefer to dive first thing in
the morning because the water is usually calmer. A lot depends on water
clarity, and it’s wise to call and ask about that in the morning before you
head for the boat. The newest popular dive site is the Vandenberg, a World War
II-era troop carrier later converted to track nuclear missiles. Subtropic does
a daily 8AM trip to the Vandenberg.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
A simple and breezy way to learn about the history
of Key West’s Old Town is to hop aboard the Conch Train. The drivers tend to be
amusing, no matter how many times they repeat the same old lines. It begins at
the Front Street Depot where you can wait in the adjacent schlocky gift shop
until your train is ready to roll. You can get off and on, but you could miss
some of the insights about the history of various guesthouses and attractions.
Since the train is open-sided, skip this tour if it’s really hot or looks like
rain because the full tour runs 90 minutes.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Long known simply as “the big red brick building,”
the latest use of this towering former mansion is all about art and history.
Built in 1891, the building has served as a post office, courthouse and
government center. It also spent many years sitting empty and boarded up. The
Key West Art & Historical Society changed all that with a massive
restoration project and it’s now chock full of interesting things. View
paintings of old Key West and portraits of famous characters in the city’s
history, and saunter through exhibition rooms that touch on topics such as
Hemingway’s adventurous life, pirate lore and the very location where the U.S.
agreed to declare war on Spain after the sinking of the USS Maine.
Neighborhood: New
Town
Weinhofer is a veteran charter boat captain and
skilled with everything from bonefish to billfish. It’s not likely you’ll bat
zero with Captain Weinhofer behind the wheel. On the reef and wrecks it’s all
about snapper, grouper and cobia, while offshore the limelight belongs to
marlin, sailfish, swordfish, wahoo, blackfin tuna and the like. Inshore quarry
range from tarpon to permit.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Don’t ask us why anyone would come to Key West to
view butterflies, but evidently a lot of people enjoy this attraction. And
they’ve got birds, too. OK, if small things that fly float your boat, you’ll
like this quiet conservatory with many species of the insects flitting here and
there. For dyed-in-the-wool entomologists, you can learn all about their
breeding habits and lifestyles.
Neighborhood: New
Town
Generally it’s better to leave the navigating to
someone with local knowledge, but if you’re an old hand behind the console,
these folks will rent you a boat. It’ll come with GPS, a fish finder, VHF
radio, bait and tackle and coolers for the catch or drinks. Or venture to one
of the best reefs in the Keys: colorful Looe Key, scene of the 1744 wreck of
the British warship HMS Looe and several other ships. The reef is within the
marine sanctuary; no fishing equals lots of fish on the reef.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
If you haven’t seen enough strange creatures
walking past on Duval Street, check out the Key West Aquarium. It’s small and a
bit antiquated, but if you can look past that you’ll find a homey charm to this
attraction. Built in 1934, it features shark and turtle feedings, narrated
mini-tours, a Touch Tank and exhibits showing moray eels, parrotfish and scores
of other species.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Life’s a wreck, and then you find one. That was the
motto of salvagers in times when wind power wasn’t enough to keep sailing
vessels upright in a storm. “Wreckers” profited from others’ misfortunes; when
a sailing ship ran up on one of the numerous area reefs or was driven ashore by
storms, they salvaged the cargoes and sold them. This industry made Key West
the richest city in Florida until advancements in marine power and navigation
made shipwrecks less common. Climb the 65-foot observation tower and pretend
you’ve spotted a merchant vessel offshore laden with goodies. If you hope the
hull breaks open on a reef or it gets pushed ashore by a gale, you’re a wrecker
at heart. There are lots of cool artifacts and exhibits, as well as a nice
presentation on how the salvaging industry worked.
Neighborhood: New
Town
OK, this isn’t Pebble Beach or Augusta National,
but it’s a surprisingly sporty layout when you consider the scarcity of dry
land. Claiming to be the “Southernmost Golf Course” in the United States, it’s
an 18-hole, par 70 layout designed by Rees Jones. They do rent clubs and you
probably won’t play the course more than once, so leave the bag at home.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Even if you’re in Key West only one night, make
sure to take in the scene on Mallory Square: There are jugglers, wire walkers,
guys made up like robots, magicians, fakirs and singers all performing for
visitors as the sun sinks slowly over the harbor. Our favorite is Jeep and his
dog Cleo, with Jeep strumming a guitar and rasping out ballads while Cleo
gently bites down on dollar bills extended by tourists and drops them into a
bucket, corny but endearing. Amid the junk souvenir stands are local artisans selling
their own handcrafted knickknacks. It’s certainly a remarkable sunset
celebration.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
You can pretty much count on any place where John
James Audubon may have tossed his bags ending up a tourist attraction. Key West
is no exception, although this is actually the former home of a wrecker named
Captain John Geiger. When Audubon visited the area in 1832, he made a number of
drawings, and one of these was of a white-crowned pigeon that purportedly
included a tree in Geiger’s front yard. True or not, the property is beautiful,
replete with an herb garden, orchids, bromeliads and a nursery said to be a
faithful re-creation of an 1840s garden. Take the audio tour and note the
historic home furnishings.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Who hasn’t thought about finding sunken treasure?
This place tells the story of one man who did. Mel Fisher, a former chicken
farmer, said to hell with the hens one day and set his sights on finding
Spanish galleons. Fisher hit pay dirt off Key West in 1985, when his crews
found the mother lode of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. The galleon had been
lost in a hurricane in 1622 while sailing from the Americas to Spain loaded
with silver ingots, silver and gold coins, emeralds and other artifacts worth
an estimated $450 million. The precious cargo salvaged from the Atocha and
another ship of the 1622 treasure fleet, the Santa Margarita, fill this museum.
The gift shop seems over-priced, but then any authentic gold escudos or silver reales from wrecks
more than 400 years old don’t figure to be cheap. In the summer of 2010, two
guys found an easier way to recover sunken treasure when they lifted a nearly 5
pound gold bar out of its “touch” case in the museum and walked out with it.
Street value? About $550,000.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
If you want a similar tour to the Conch Train but
would rather bump along in something a bit larger, try Old Town Trolley Tours.
We like the train better just because it’s a bit funkier, but the trolley also
hits over 100 points of interest in its 90-minute loop and you can hop on and
off all day. If you’re intending to see a lot of town, at $29 a day, the
Trolley is cheaper than a cab for getting around as long as you’re not in a
hurry, you can wait as long as 30 minutes for the next trolley to show up.
Neighborhood: New
Town
This is our favorite museum in Key West and we
never get tired of visiting it. With 8-foot-thick walls, this Civil War-era
fortress never saw action. It has an absolutely fascinating collection of
historic artifacts, historical records and military memorabilia relating to Key
West. Even if you’re not all that interested in the city’s evolution, history
and art buffs will enjoy the variety of exhibits and the folk art from noted
regional artists, including some modern sculptures made from recycled machine parts.
Neighborhood: Old
Town
Sebago offers a Key West champagne sunset cruise
with complimentary beer, wine and champagne. Looking back toward the island
from a mile or two out at sea, the buildings reflect bright red, matching the
Rumrunner in your glass. It really doesn’t get any better than this. Sebago’s
website offers a web cam with updated views of the city and attractions.
Neighborhood: New
Town
We recently did a half-day trip with Captain
Santelli, running 17 miles into the Gulf until he located good bottom structure
with his depth sounder. After anchoring, out went bags of chum and he ladled
more of it from a bucket. In minutes we engaged chunky yellowtail snapper,
snagging enough for our small party of five for dinner. What a fun trip, and
especially all the insights by the skipper on techniques. This guy’s really
smooth and will put you on the hotspots.
fuente:http://travel.aol.com/travel-guide/united-states/florida/key-west-best-things-to-do/
