11.06.2012 – 11.06.2012  32 °C

A good early and sticky start! It sure is humid here in Florida!! I guess similar to Cairns in summer time. Overnight here, one of the cars was broken in to.. clearly we weren’t staying in the best hotel in town last night!! 🙂

Today’s drive took us the whole length of the Florida Keys to Key West. This drive feels like one big bridge! It’s a case of small mangrove island, water, bridge, small mangrove island, houses, water, bridge.. A very beautiful trip though, as the water is a lovely tropical aqua marine colour. One of the largest bridges in the world is here in the Keys, seven miles long!! The Keys themselves remind me of the Gold Coast, lots of small islands covered in houses and apartments.. Nice and very tropical (lots of palm trees) but not much pizazz!

That is, until you hit the final and quite big, coral cay, Key West.. What a place! It is everything I always imagined the Keys to be and so much more!! Key West is a cross between an old colonial shipwrecker’s town (absolutely gorgeous old plantation, shuttered houses) and modern tourist town. It is one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to.. totally laid back, funky, fun and in such a beautifully hot tropical location.

We had stopped halfway down the Keys to look for accom and I’m so glad we continued to drive down to Key West to find a place to stay as it makes the other Keys look drab and boring. We found a nice resort on the outskirts of Key West that was not only cheapish it was quite a nice place to hang out. We went straight downtown to the ‘Old Quarter’ of KW, parked the car and walked along the main drag, Duval St. The OQ of KW is full of beautifully preserved circa 1800 plantation houses. Street after street of gorgeous old houses that are surrounded by tropical plants and huge Banyan trees.. V Picturesque.. I can understand why artists from around the world have flocked to KW for generations to paint and photograph this town.

We found a bar (when it is this hot you just want to find a cold drink every other minute!) that also sold nachos and we settled in to some eats and a cold drink. After a good couple of hours touring the old part of town we headed back towards our hotel to find ourselves some dinner and enjoy the sunset from our hotel room.

D headed back into town after dinner for a tour of the strip, I have a headache so passed and M wanted to snooze so we finished our night off chewing on M&Ms and watching some crap US tv! Off to go on a snorkelling tour of the reef offshore of KW tomorrow.. Here’s hoping we find some nice coral and fishies!!

Song of the Day– Jimmy Buffett, Margaritaville