Amazon & Carnival Explorer Cruise - Day 2: Key West, Florida

Tuesday, February 5

Today we are in Key West, Florida, the southern most point in the contiguous United States.  Key West is the southernmost island and city of the Florida Keys and is located at the end of US Route 1, the longest north-south highway in the US.  It has a total area of about 7.25 square miles and a population of around 27,000.

Southern Florida and the Florida Keys.  Fort Lauderdale is on the upper right and Key West is on the lower left.

We docked at 8:00 AM, but we didn’t see it as we were still sleeping.  We were so tired we didn’t get up until after 9:00.  By the time we got up and were ready to get going, it was too late to get our breakfast in the Neptune Lounge as they had already removed the breakfast food and hadn’t yet put out the lunch and snack food.  We had managed to hit the gap in the normally always stocked supply of food in the Neptune Lounge.  We puttered around a bit and then decided it was time to go ashore.

I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting much from Key West, but it actually was much nicer and much bigger than I expected.  The ship was docked right in town so all you have to do walk off the ship and you’re in town.  We walked around a bit, but then decided to buy tickets to the hop-on / hop-off bus.  Tickets were quite a bit more expensive than most hop-on / hop-off buses, but we found out why as the day went on; everything is expensive in Key West.

As you can see, when you get off the ship your are right in the town.

As we rode the bus, the driver talked about what we were seeing and added stories and local color.  Key West is where key lime pie was first made so the first place we “hopped off” the bus was Kermit’s Key Lime Shop where everything you could think of was key lime flavored.  We even saw Kermit himself.  After looking around the shop a bit we decided to pass on the pie here and have some later.  We walked around the area for a while and then made our way to the bus stop and after a short wait, hopped back on the bus.

Inside of Kermit's where anything key lime was sold.

I don't know what this was about, but it was unusual.

As we drove on, we passed Jimmy Buffet’s original Margaritaville.  The story we were told was that before he was discovered he played in a bar in Key West, then after he became famous, he came back and purchased the bar and named it Margaritaville.  I’ll have to research that to see if that’s a true story, but it sounds good (It turns out it is mostly true).

The next thing we wanted to do was visit Ernest Hemingway’s house so we got off at that stop and walked a couple of blocks to his house, which is open to the public for tours (for a price of course).  It was a large house situated on an acre of land which is the largest home lot in Key West.  The grounds were beautiful with lush vegetation and a large swimming pool.  The house is a bit dated of course, but you could see it was very nice for its time.  It had the first inside bathroom in the area.  This is where he did his most prolific writing and most of his most well known books were written in this house.  We found the tour to be interesting and I learned quite a bit about Hemingway’s life that I hadn’t known before.

Ernest Hemingway's house.

 

It turns out that Hemingway was a great cat lover and descendants of his six-toed cats roam the grounds.

We were getting quite hungry and decided to look for a place to eat.  We found a restaurant called the Blue McCaw which advertised homemade key lime pie so we decided to eat there.  We both had sandwiches for lunch that were good and of course ordered key lime pie for dessert.  I’m not a big pie eater, but I have to admit, it was very good.

Pie is not my favorite dessert, but this key lime pie was delicious.

After lunch, it was time to move on so we made our way to the bus stop and caught the bus after a short wait.  By this time, it was mid-afternoon so we decided to just ride the bus the rest of the loop and not get off at any more stops.  Key West was much larger than we expected and the rest of the loop took almost an hour, but it was very interesting with the driver continuing to point out the sights and telling stories about the area.

After finishing the bus tour, it was getting near time for the ship to leave so we walked back to the ship.  Today turned out to be a very nice day with moderate temperatures and low humidity.  After a partly cloudy morning, we had blue skies the rest of the day.  We enjoyed our visit to Key West and I once again learned not to prejudge a place based on some feeling which is based on nothing.

A couple of pictures of Key West from the ship.

 

We were back on the ship in time for late afternoon trivia so Val was off to that where she met up with Roy and several others to form a team, while I stayed in the room and relaxed.  Val returned and joined me doing nothing until it was time to get ready for evening trivia and dinner.

As we sailed away from Key West there were boats everywhere.  Obviously it's all about the water here.

 

Dinner was once again excellent so we are cautiously optimistic about the food on this cruise.  We returned to the casino where I didn’t have much luck, but Val turned her fortunes around from last night and had a winning night.

Tomorrow is the first of three sea days before our next port.  We are looking forward to the sea days as we haven’t had much time to settle in.
 

A beautiful sunset to end a great day.