Post by Tampaboy19N on Aug 11, 2010 7:52:03 GMT -5
Since everyone keeps sending me PMs about where to vacation in flordia, i'll make a thread, similar to one I wrote for another forum, but here goes.
I have absolutely zero financial interest in any of this. I am certain there are many other fine places to spend your money at. But I mention only the places I know.
Places to stay:
(I have stayed at all of these places as well as many others which I won’t recommend.)
High end places are the Ocean Key Resort and the Pier House. They are very nice but they are expensive. They charge extra for everything. They are also close to the party area of Key West. If you want to impress, if you and/your SO don’t mind dropping $250 plus, plus, plus a night for a room, if your SO is the high maintenance type, I would recommend those 2 places.
If you are looking for a romantic place that does not cost an eye and a foot, The Garden Inn is BEAUTIFUL. It is quiet, private, lush and the staff is friendly.
If you just want a cheap place to pass out after a hard night of drinking, check out El Rancho or the Days Inn.
My personal 2 favorite places to stay are the Travel Lodge and the Pegasus Hotel. The Travel Lodge is great if you have a group of people because the rooms are HUGE and you can get many people in them. The suites have full kitchens, separate bedrooms, huge living rooms with sleeper sofas, balcony with water views and they are reasonable in price. Also I have never gotten sh*t from them for jumping the pool fence at 3am for a swim.
The Pegasus is also great. It is in easy walking distance to the bars and easy staggering distance from the bars. They have a second floor pool that is great to party at into the wee hours. Their rates are very reasonable. There is a pizza/sandwich joint right next door that is open till 4am. The only drawback is you have to park like a ½ a block away and the staff can be a bit surely. But for me, that hotel is the best place to party with a friend or group of friends and have a good time. Whenever I am planning a trip there, that is always my first choice.
Other places I have stayed are the Duval Inn. The Southern Cross. The Southern Most Hotel. La Concha. The Inn at Key West. The Key West Marriot. The Galleon Resort. If you are gay, the Heron House was very nice. (I stayed there with my wife as that was the only place in town that had any rooms.)
Places to eat:
I avoid the nice looking places on Duval Street by the bars. They are expensive and the food quality is fair and that is being generous. They cater to cruise ship passengers who want to say they ate the grouper with the mango sauce in Key West. Just an FYI.
The best place to eat, not only in Key West, but on this planet IMHO is Blue Heaven. With wine, apps., entrée and tip expect to drop at least $100 for two. But it is worth it. The service is great, the atmosphere is incredible and the food is out of this world. Be warned, if you take my recommendation and go there just on that, you might think I am full of sh*t when you get there. But when you leave, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Trust me on this. (Get the pan seared sea scallops and/or the lobster when it is in season! )
Santiago’s Bodega is also a great place. It is a tapas type restaurant. They have small portions of many different selections so you can order 2 or 3 of them. Beware, while all the things are fairly cheap, it is easy to order a lot of them and that can add up. I would highly recommend the yellow tail ceviche and the blue cheese tenderloin.
There is a desert place called “Better Than Sex”. If you like chocolate or if your SO likes chocolate, that place will be a guaranteed blow job. It sets a good mood and the food is excellent. But also be warned that it is easy to drop $60 for two there on deserts and drinks.
Abbondanza is a wonderful Italian restaurant. The food is great, the prices are reasonable and the portions are HUGE! Even toeshoes would ask for a to-go container.
Thai Cuisine by Sloppy Joe’s has some excellent sushi. Mr. Z’s next to the Pegasus Hotel is open till 4am and has cheap pizza by the slice and sandwiches. There is a Denny’s and a Waffle House there for cheap eats as well. There are also street venders selling tasty sausage dogs until the wee hours if you feel like playing e-coli roulette.
Drinking:
My typical Duval Crawl goes as follows. I like to start at Guy Harvey’s as they have $1.00 domestic drafts and a good, albeit slightly expensive menu. It’s a great place to put something in your stomach and pre load without emptying out your wallet. Then it Is off to Irish Kevin’s. They feature local artists who interact a lot with the crowd. Most of the acts at least occasionally get women on stage. The acts are usually great. If you can catch Jarred Michael Hobgood, I would highly recommend him. He is funny as sh*t. After that, I go to Sloppy Joe’s. They usually have very good to excellent 80’s/90’s cover bands. They cater to the spring break crowd. A great place to check out the “I just turned 21 and now I can drink” set. Then it is off to the Martini bar at Rick’s. A place to chill when I am already humming with a glass of nice scotch. The Red Garter is an all nude strip club. You will pay strip club prices for drinks there but the hustle they typically put on you in those kind of places is fairly tame. Bonus, the management actually looks at them naked before they hire the strippers. There will be some less than strip club material women there. But they won’t be all Georgia, side of the interstate strip club material either. It is either there of the Garden of Eden which is a clothing optional roof top bar above the Bull. Most are there just to look. But if you go there on a busy night between midnight and 2am, there are usually a few women who are drunk enough to bare it all.
Other excellent places to drink and have fun are The Bull, Captain Tony’s, Hog’s Breath and the local favorite, The Green Parrot.
There is a liquor store open till 3am next to the Bull but you will pay about a 25% markup there. If you plan ahead, go to the liquor store at Walgreens on Roosevelt. They have fair prices. I now always have a bottle of something and a couple of bottles of mixers when I go down there. It ****ing sucks when the bars close and you still want to drink but came unprepared. There is a small grocery store near Irish Kevin’s that sells munchie food, beer, wine and smokes. But be warned, a pack of Marlboro’s will cost you about 9 bucks. A 12 pack of Miller Lite will set you back about 16 bucks. Just so you know.
Beaches:
There are surprisingly very few beaches in Key West. A few hotels have tiny man made beaches exclusively for their guests. They will work if you want the beach experience. But you will pay for them on the price of your room. But honestly, the beaches there are crap. If you want a proper, “South Beach” type of beach, go to South Beach.
With that said, there are only 2 main public beaches there. Smather’s and Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. Smather’s beach is free although you do have to feed a meter to park. It is a decent beach. It is wide, sandy and usually has a decent crowd and at least a few venders selling cold drinks and other sh*t.
The beach at Ft. Zachary Taylor is the best. You do have to pay to go in. But there is ample parking, shade, they have a concession stand, they have BBQ grills, beach type rentals, an area to fish and watch the boats go by, the water is reasonable. My only knock is that it is a bit rocky. Especially by and in the water. If you go there, wear shoes you don’t mind getting wet.
Fishing:
You can do 2 types of fishing. The party boat/drift fishing thing or the 6-pack charter thing. The party boat will cost you ~$40 a head for a half day trip. The 6 pack charter deal will run you around $100 each provided there are six people throwing in on it for a half day trip. The party boat will put you on mainly bottom fish and is a cheap way to mark, “I fished in the Keys” off your list. It is also an affordable and great thing to do with the kids. The six pack is the way to go if you want to catch mahi mahi, (dolphin as the locals call them down here), kingfish, the occasional sailfish or the even more occasional marlin. I won’t recommend any specific operation as they are all pretty much the same in price and service.
If you feel like driving 50 miles, there is one operation I would recommend. Sea Dog Charters in Marathon runs an excellent operation and they are cheap. It is an older boat. But it is paid for and the owner also owns the slip where it is based. You can do a charter from there for easily 60 cents on the dollar that you would in any place in Key West, I have always had fun on that and caught fish every time.
Snorkeling:
Almost every place in Key West that offers snorkeling will take you to Looe Key which is a good 25 mile run by boat from there. They charge anywhere from $60 to $80 dollars per person for a 3 stop, half day trip. Or you can drive to mile marker 28 and hop on the dive boat at the Looe Key resort, pay $45 to snorkel the same 3 dive sites and save some cash. I recommend that place. They are friendly, safe and a lot of fun.
Things to do:
There is a sh*t ton of stuff to do there. The Key West light house. Hemmingway House. The wrecker’s museum. Sun set at Mallory square. Mel fisher’s Museum. The butterfly garden. A day trip to Ft. Jefferson. (Costs ~$100 per person.) Sunset drinking cruises. (Surprisingly not as lame as one might think with the right crowd.) The Audubon House. Every type of people watching you can imagine. Tons of stores and shops that range from $1,000 a print art galleries to $5 t-shirt places. Bottom line, if you are bored there, it is because you choose to be bored.
My top three when I am entertaining guests are Mallory Square at sunset. (An absolute MUST DO!) Hemmingway House and the Mel Fisher museum where you can hold in your hand a gold bar from a sunken Spanish galleon. (Just don’t buy any of their sh*t there because they are a ****ing rip off.) The Ripley’s museum there is a strait up rip off. The butterfly garden I thought was lame as all hell but my ex-wife always loved it so whatever. The Key West aquarium is not even worth a stop. F.Y.I..
Outside of Key West:
Go to the beach on the ocean side of Boca Chica Navel Air Station and you can watch various Navy fighter jets practice landings as they fly a mere 30 feet over your head. Keep walking down that beach and you will find a nude area. Swedish Bikini team? No. Grandma and grandpa? Yes. I mentioned the Looe Key Resort and Dive center. Great operation and a cool bar. The Square Grouper is an excellent restaurant and one I would definitely recommend. Boondocks on Summerland Key will always have a place in my heart. Decent pub grub, lots of TV’s. Good crowd. I also got picked up by a couple there one night where a night of MFM action went on till the wee hours. There is the Blue Hole on Big Pine Key which is the only fresh water pond in the Keys. There are a couple of alligators there and it is a cool place to take pics. Also on Big Pine, there is the No Name Pub. A very unique place. It has dollar bills on all 4 walls and ceiling that people have signed over the years and stapled there. Sometimes they are 10 deep. The food is good, especially the pizza and the shrimp platter. Keep driving over the bridge into No Name Key and you are very likely to see the famous Key Deer. Think the average American white tail deer the size of a large dog when full grown. The Cracked Egg is a decent and cheap place for breakfast and lunch. Rob’s Island Grill on Big Pine is a nice place to eat and drink.
The beach at Bahia Honda State Park is truly one of the nicest beaches in the United States, if not the world. A HUGE park and a wonderful place! The Stuffed Pig and The Wooden Spoon are great places in Marathon for breakfast and lunch. The Tiki Bar in Islamorada is a destination unto itself. There is a hotel, lots of bars, water sports galore. But it is a bit expensive. Still I would recommend it. There are a lot of deep sea charters there as well. Many good back country charter boats are located at Bud and Mary’s Marina. Take your pick. There is the seafood buffet at Whale Harbor where the food is always good as well as Wahoo’s and the Braza Lena, a Brazilian style Steak house where waiters walk around with various cuts of meat in an all you can eat setting. ($100/couple alert!) There is also the Island Grill which is a great place for all three meals.
North of that there is Board Walk and Tower of Pizza. Two great pizza joints. Dillians Pub is a great place to eat as well as Hog Heaven. (One of my favorite places!) There are many snorkeling operations out of Key largo. All are very good and in the same price range. There is an excellent McDonalds there as well. (OK, Just wanted to see if you were still paying attention!) Harriots in Key Largo is considered the best place in the Keys for breakfast and lunch. A sentiment I can’t disagree with.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on Key West and the Florida Keys. Sorry this is so very long but I hope this helps.
Random tips:
-Geographically, locations in the Florida Keys are refereed by mile markers and what side of US-1 you are on. The Florida Keys is a long, thin chain of islands. The closest part to Miami starts at around mile marker 110 and terminates in Key West at mile marker zero. US-1 is the great divider. If you are looking for something on the right side of US-1 as you are driving down to Key West, that would be on the bay side. If you are refereeing to a place on the left side as you are driving down, that would be the ocean side. For example, I live at mile marker 89 on the bay side. (mm89, BS.) The Tiki Bar in Islamorada is at mm 85, os.
-Parking. Park anywhere illegally in Key West and you are pretty much guaranteed a ticket. Parking the car at the hotel and forgetting about it till it is time to go home and then cabing it everywhere is the easiest thing. Cabs are cheap, they are everywhere at all hours and well worth the avoided hassle in trying to find a parking spot.
-DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE!!! You are never more than a $15 cab ride to anywhere. Getting a DUI in Key West is the dumbest thing you can EVER do. Key West is very laid back and you can get away with a lot there. Things like drunk and boisterous in public, open containers, public nudity are not even a hassleable offence. But the cops have to have something to do. So they pop drunk drivers for fun. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it.
-Key West is known for being very tolerant towards their gay community. If that is a concern for you, I am sorry. But you will never have to worry about a ‘gay rape’ scenario. Guys are not going to be messing with you. If a guy hits on you, (which has happened to me exactly 2 times in my 100 plus visits there), be flattered that at least one other human soul thinks enough of your fat, virgin ass to want to **** it. There is a gay end on Duval Street which starts at around the 700 block and goes up from there. If you are worried about gays, just stay away. If you are not worried then check out the scene. It is fun. Trust me, a gay man wants a strait man about as much as a strait man wants a gay man. The thing I love about Key West is that the species do coexist peacefully so to speak. One other thought on that. Don’t go dumb ass, red neck, homophobic on the gay people there. Keep your comments to yourself or within your group. They will not bother you, but they will stand up for themselves and their friends if there is a threat.
-If you drive down there, DON’T SPEED. Set your cruise control for the speed limit and enjoy one of the prettiest drives in all of the United States. But be nice, if there are cars stacking up behind you, pull over and let them pass. There are three places I would be most conscious about that. At mile marker 51, the speed limit drops down to 35mph. Don’t even do 36 there. It is a real speed trap and the cops are under strict orders to enforce it to the letter. At around mile marker 33, just after Bahia Honda, the road opens up to a wide, mile plus long 4 lane bridge. At the end is a slight curve to the left. Just after that is another speed trap. BEWARE of that one! Also, don’t speed in Big Pine Key where the signs for the deer are. If you are speeding and hit a deer, you are going to be pretty much as ****ed as if you were speeding and hit a child.
I have absolutely zero financial interest in any of this. I am certain there are many other fine places to spend your money at. But I mention only the places I know.
Places to stay:
(I have stayed at all of these places as well as many others which I won’t recommend.)
High end places are the Ocean Key Resort and the Pier House. They are very nice but they are expensive. They charge extra for everything. They are also close to the party area of Key West. If you want to impress, if you and/your SO don’t mind dropping $250 plus, plus, plus a night for a room, if your SO is the high maintenance type, I would recommend those 2 places.
If you are looking for a romantic place that does not cost an eye and a foot, The Garden Inn is BEAUTIFUL. It is quiet, private, lush and the staff is friendly.
If you just want a cheap place to pass out after a hard night of drinking, check out El Rancho or the Days Inn.
My personal 2 favorite places to stay are the Travel Lodge and the Pegasus Hotel. The Travel Lodge is great if you have a group of people because the rooms are HUGE and you can get many people in them. The suites have full kitchens, separate bedrooms, huge living rooms with sleeper sofas, balcony with water views and they are reasonable in price. Also I have never gotten sh*t from them for jumping the pool fence at 3am for a swim.
The Pegasus is also great. It is in easy walking distance to the bars and easy staggering distance from the bars. They have a second floor pool that is great to party at into the wee hours. Their rates are very reasonable. There is a pizza/sandwich joint right next door that is open till 4am. The only drawback is you have to park like a ½ a block away and the staff can be a bit surely. But for me, that hotel is the best place to party with a friend or group of friends and have a good time. Whenever I am planning a trip there, that is always my first choice.
Other places I have stayed are the Duval Inn. The Southern Cross. The Southern Most Hotel. La Concha. The Inn at Key West. The Key West Marriot. The Galleon Resort. If you are gay, the Heron House was very nice. (I stayed there with my wife as that was the only place in town that had any rooms.)
Places to eat:
I avoid the nice looking places on Duval Street by the bars. They are expensive and the food quality is fair and that is being generous. They cater to cruise ship passengers who want to say they ate the grouper with the mango sauce in Key West. Just an FYI.
The best place to eat, not only in Key West, but on this planet IMHO is Blue Heaven. With wine, apps., entrée and tip expect to drop at least $100 for two. But it is worth it. The service is great, the atmosphere is incredible and the food is out of this world. Be warned, if you take my recommendation and go there just on that, you might think I am full of sh*t when you get there. But when you leave, you will know exactly what I am talking about. Trust me on this. (Get the pan seared sea scallops and/or the lobster when it is in season! )
Santiago’s Bodega is also a great place. It is a tapas type restaurant. They have small portions of many different selections so you can order 2 or 3 of them. Beware, while all the things are fairly cheap, it is easy to order a lot of them and that can add up. I would highly recommend the yellow tail ceviche and the blue cheese tenderloin.
There is a desert place called “Better Than Sex”. If you like chocolate or if your SO likes chocolate, that place will be a guaranteed blow job. It sets a good mood and the food is excellent. But also be warned that it is easy to drop $60 for two there on deserts and drinks.
Abbondanza is a wonderful Italian restaurant. The food is great, the prices are reasonable and the portions are HUGE! Even toeshoes would ask for a to-go container.
Thai Cuisine by Sloppy Joe’s has some excellent sushi. Mr. Z’s next to the Pegasus Hotel is open till 4am and has cheap pizza by the slice and sandwiches. There is a Denny’s and a Waffle House there for cheap eats as well. There are also street venders selling tasty sausage dogs until the wee hours if you feel like playing e-coli roulette.
Drinking:
My typical Duval Crawl goes as follows. I like to start at Guy Harvey’s as they have $1.00 domestic drafts and a good, albeit slightly expensive menu. It’s a great place to put something in your stomach and pre load without emptying out your wallet. Then it Is off to Irish Kevin’s. They feature local artists who interact a lot with the crowd. Most of the acts at least occasionally get women on stage. The acts are usually great. If you can catch Jarred Michael Hobgood, I would highly recommend him. He is funny as sh*t. After that, I go to Sloppy Joe’s. They usually have very good to excellent 80’s/90’s cover bands. They cater to the spring break crowd. A great place to check out the “I just turned 21 and now I can drink” set. Then it is off to the Martini bar at Rick’s. A place to chill when I am already humming with a glass of nice scotch. The Red Garter is an all nude strip club. You will pay strip club prices for drinks there but the hustle they typically put on you in those kind of places is fairly tame. Bonus, the management actually looks at them naked before they hire the strippers. There will be some less than strip club material women there. But they won’t be all Georgia, side of the interstate strip club material either. It is either there of the Garden of Eden which is a clothing optional roof top bar above the Bull. Most are there just to look. But if you go there on a busy night between midnight and 2am, there are usually a few women who are drunk enough to bare it all.
Other excellent places to drink and have fun are The Bull, Captain Tony’s, Hog’s Breath and the local favorite, The Green Parrot.
There is a liquor store open till 3am next to the Bull but you will pay about a 25% markup there. If you plan ahead, go to the liquor store at Walgreens on Roosevelt. They have fair prices. I now always have a bottle of something and a couple of bottles of mixers when I go down there. It ****ing sucks when the bars close and you still want to drink but came unprepared. There is a small grocery store near Irish Kevin’s that sells munchie food, beer, wine and smokes. But be warned, a pack of Marlboro’s will cost you about 9 bucks. A 12 pack of Miller Lite will set you back about 16 bucks. Just so you know.
Beaches:
There are surprisingly very few beaches in Key West. A few hotels have tiny man made beaches exclusively for their guests. They will work if you want the beach experience. But you will pay for them on the price of your room. But honestly, the beaches there are crap. If you want a proper, “South Beach” type of beach, go to South Beach.
With that said, there are only 2 main public beaches there. Smather’s and Fort Zachary Taylor State Park. Smather’s beach is free although you do have to feed a meter to park. It is a decent beach. It is wide, sandy and usually has a decent crowd and at least a few venders selling cold drinks and other sh*t.
The beach at Ft. Zachary Taylor is the best. You do have to pay to go in. But there is ample parking, shade, they have a concession stand, they have BBQ grills, beach type rentals, an area to fish and watch the boats go by, the water is reasonable. My only knock is that it is a bit rocky. Especially by and in the water. If you go there, wear shoes you don’t mind getting wet.
Fishing:
You can do 2 types of fishing. The party boat/drift fishing thing or the 6-pack charter thing. The party boat will cost you ~$40 a head for a half day trip. The 6 pack charter deal will run you around $100 each provided there are six people throwing in on it for a half day trip. The party boat will put you on mainly bottom fish and is a cheap way to mark, “I fished in the Keys” off your list. It is also an affordable and great thing to do with the kids. The six pack is the way to go if you want to catch mahi mahi, (dolphin as the locals call them down here), kingfish, the occasional sailfish or the even more occasional marlin. I won’t recommend any specific operation as they are all pretty much the same in price and service.
If you feel like driving 50 miles, there is one operation I would recommend. Sea Dog Charters in Marathon runs an excellent operation and they are cheap. It is an older boat. But it is paid for and the owner also owns the slip where it is based. You can do a charter from there for easily 60 cents on the dollar that you would in any place in Key West, I have always had fun on that and caught fish every time.
Snorkeling:
Almost every place in Key West that offers snorkeling will take you to Looe Key which is a good 25 mile run by boat from there. They charge anywhere from $60 to $80 dollars per person for a 3 stop, half day trip. Or you can drive to mile marker 28 and hop on the dive boat at the Looe Key resort, pay $45 to snorkel the same 3 dive sites and save some cash. I recommend that place. They are friendly, safe and a lot of fun.
Things to do:
There is a sh*t ton of stuff to do there. The Key West light house. Hemmingway House. The wrecker’s museum. Sun set at Mallory square. Mel fisher’s Museum. The butterfly garden. A day trip to Ft. Jefferson. (Costs ~$100 per person.) Sunset drinking cruises. (Surprisingly not as lame as one might think with the right crowd.) The Audubon House. Every type of people watching you can imagine. Tons of stores and shops that range from $1,000 a print art galleries to $5 t-shirt places. Bottom line, if you are bored there, it is because you choose to be bored.
My top three when I am entertaining guests are Mallory Square at sunset. (An absolute MUST DO!) Hemmingway House and the Mel Fisher museum where you can hold in your hand a gold bar from a sunken Spanish galleon. (Just don’t buy any of their sh*t there because they are a ****ing rip off.) The Ripley’s museum there is a strait up rip off. The butterfly garden I thought was lame as all hell but my ex-wife always loved it so whatever. The Key West aquarium is not even worth a stop. F.Y.I..
Outside of Key West:
Go to the beach on the ocean side of Boca Chica Navel Air Station and you can watch various Navy fighter jets practice landings as they fly a mere 30 feet over your head. Keep walking down that beach and you will find a nude area. Swedish Bikini team? No. Grandma and grandpa? Yes. I mentioned the Looe Key Resort and Dive center. Great operation and a cool bar. The Square Grouper is an excellent restaurant and one I would definitely recommend. Boondocks on Summerland Key will always have a place in my heart. Decent pub grub, lots of TV’s. Good crowd. I also got picked up by a couple there one night where a night of MFM action went on till the wee hours. There is the Blue Hole on Big Pine Key which is the only fresh water pond in the Keys. There are a couple of alligators there and it is a cool place to take pics. Also on Big Pine, there is the No Name Pub. A very unique place. It has dollar bills on all 4 walls and ceiling that people have signed over the years and stapled there. Sometimes they are 10 deep. The food is good, especially the pizza and the shrimp platter. Keep driving over the bridge into No Name Key and you are very likely to see the famous Key Deer. Think the average American white tail deer the size of a large dog when full grown. The Cracked Egg is a decent and cheap place for breakfast and lunch. Rob’s Island Grill on Big Pine is a nice place to eat and drink.
The beach at Bahia Honda State Park is truly one of the nicest beaches in the United States, if not the world. A HUGE park and a wonderful place! The Stuffed Pig and The Wooden Spoon are great places in Marathon for breakfast and lunch. The Tiki Bar in Islamorada is a destination unto itself. There is a hotel, lots of bars, water sports galore. But it is a bit expensive. Still I would recommend it. There are a lot of deep sea charters there as well. Many good back country charter boats are located at Bud and Mary’s Marina. Take your pick. There is the seafood buffet at Whale Harbor where the food is always good as well as Wahoo’s and the Braza Lena, a Brazilian style Steak house where waiters walk around with various cuts of meat in an all you can eat setting. ($100/couple alert!) There is also the Island Grill which is a great place for all three meals.
North of that there is Board Walk and Tower of Pizza. Two great pizza joints. Dillians Pub is a great place to eat as well as Hog Heaven. (One of my favorite places!) There are many snorkeling operations out of Key largo. All are very good and in the same price range. There is an excellent McDonalds there as well. (OK, Just wanted to see if you were still paying attention!) Harriots in Key Largo is considered the best place in the Keys for breakfast and lunch. A sentiment I can’t disagree with.
Anyway, these are my thoughts on Key West and the Florida Keys. Sorry this is so very long but I hope this helps.
Random tips:
-Geographically, locations in the Florida Keys are refereed by mile markers and what side of US-1 you are on. The Florida Keys is a long, thin chain of islands. The closest part to Miami starts at around mile marker 110 and terminates in Key West at mile marker zero. US-1 is the great divider. If you are looking for something on the right side of US-1 as you are driving down to Key West, that would be on the bay side. If you are refereeing to a place on the left side as you are driving down, that would be the ocean side. For example, I live at mile marker 89 on the bay side. (mm89, BS.) The Tiki Bar in Islamorada is at mm 85, os.
-Parking. Park anywhere illegally in Key West and you are pretty much guaranteed a ticket. Parking the car at the hotel and forgetting about it till it is time to go home and then cabing it everywhere is the easiest thing. Cabs are cheap, they are everywhere at all hours and well worth the avoided hassle in trying to find a parking spot.
-DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE!!! You are never more than a $15 cab ride to anywhere. Getting a DUI in Key West is the dumbest thing you can EVER do. Key West is very laid back and you can get away with a lot there. Things like drunk and boisterous in public, open containers, public nudity are not even a hassleable offence. But the cops have to have something to do. So they pop drunk drivers for fun. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it.
-Key West is known for being very tolerant towards their gay community. If that is a concern for you, I am sorry. But you will never have to worry about a ‘gay rape’ scenario. Guys are not going to be messing with you. If a guy hits on you, (which has happened to me exactly 2 times in my 100 plus visits there), be flattered that at least one other human soul thinks enough of your fat, virgin ass to want to **** it. There is a gay end on Duval Street which starts at around the 700 block and goes up from there. If you are worried about gays, just stay away. If you are not worried then check out the scene. It is fun. Trust me, a gay man wants a strait man about as much as a strait man wants a gay man. The thing I love about Key West is that the species do coexist peacefully so to speak. One other thought on that. Don’t go dumb ass, red neck, homophobic on the gay people there. Keep your comments to yourself or within your group. They will not bother you, but they will stand up for themselves and their friends if there is a threat.
-If you drive down there, DON’T SPEED. Set your cruise control for the speed limit and enjoy one of the prettiest drives in all of the United States. But be nice, if there are cars stacking up behind you, pull over and let them pass. There are three places I would be most conscious about that. At mile marker 51, the speed limit drops down to 35mph. Don’t even do 36 there. It is a real speed trap and the cops are under strict orders to enforce it to the letter. At around mile marker 33, just after Bahia Honda, the road opens up to a wide, mile plus long 4 lane bridge. At the end is a slight curve to the left. Just after that is another speed trap. BEWARE of that one! Also, don’t speed in Big Pine Key where the signs for the deer are. If you are speeding and hit a deer, you are going to be pretty much as ****ed as if you were speeding and hit a child.
