Key West :
Florida Keys
Family fishing at its best down in the Florida Keys.
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belly sliders, 8-oz. lobster tail with sweet corn jalapeno sauce, or Cuban “ground beef” picadillo. Both restaurants serve a very decent key lime pie.
HISTORIC MALLORY SQUARE
A short walk from the Turtle Kraals lies Mallory Square, the city’s historic nexus. Here sit venerable tourist institutions: the Conch Tour Train depot and at the end of David Wolkowsky Lane the Key West Aquarium with its turtle kraals, touch tanks, and shark feedings. Around the corner the massive redbrick and terra cotta trim Custom House Museum (1891), stores folk artist Mario Sanchez’s vibrant painted woodcarvings of early 20th century Key West daily life like a fish peddler or a funeral cortege. Whitehead and connecting streets offer literal treasure chests: the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum containing his 1985 gold and silver salvage from the Spanish galleon, Nuestra Señora de Atocha (1622); Audubon House and Tropical Gardens with its 28 first edition unique 1832 prints for James Auduon’s “Birds of America” folio; and across the street a block away the Harry S. Truman Little White House, the 33rd President’s winter residence.
HEMINGWAY HOUSE
If time is limited try a quick self-tour. Hop on Old Town Trolley Tours from Mallory Square and roll down Whitehead past gingerbread mansions to The Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum. Here you discover the iconic refuge of the 1954 Nobel-prize author with its garden of heloconia, broelaids and plumbago, yellow shutters and iron grillwork, the Depression-era “$20,000” swimming pool, “Papa” Hemingway’s sun-filled writing room, fishing memorabilia, and the 40 to 50 wandering, lounging and sleeping descendants of his original six-toe cat “Snowball”. An excellent gift shop is just below his upstairs writing room. Across the street the 88-step Key West Lighthouse Museum, built in 1847, is remarkable as the city’s best observation tower and worth the admission alone for its gorgeous Fresnel glass lens from France. Around the corner at 1316 Duval marvel at The Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservatory, a glass enclosed, climate controlled habitat with 60 species that flutter overhead.
UNCLE DAVID
Later that night over drinks I spoke to my Uncle David Wolkowsky. With a sly smile he suggested that despite the changes Key West was still a “drinking town with a fishing habit.” Perhaps. But to me, it will always remain, essentially, a familiar town.
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