I decided to turn right for a little bit and check out the Keys, particularly Key West. Perhaps this is not the best choice for which Key to hang out in, but it seemed obvious at the time. The drive down from South Miami was different than I had anticipated. I expected the bridges connecting the string of keys to be much longer than they actually are. There are many similar bridges around the word, some are called causeways, which seems to be a better term for the road to Key West. The entire road feels like a 130 mile long causeway, even the parts that are really just roads on the keys. Interesting experience whatever it is called. An interesting feature are the old bridges paralleling the current bridges. They have just been left there as a rotting eyesore. Some parts have been fixed up so they form very long fishing piers, but mostly they are blocked off and crumbling into the sea.

I ended up staying in the hotel on Key West that is furthest from “the action” (the old town). That means it is necessary to take some sort of vehicle to see anything of interest. Parking is a nightmare, I haven’t found any reliable public transportation, and the “tours” are more expensive than I want to pay at $85 a person. The hotel provides a shuttle service every hour – that was my choice. Unfortunately the pick up point is a very long walk to Duval Street, which is the hub of activity. I was pretty worn out by the time I got to the place that I wanted to walk around and see things.

The concierge at the hotel explained the reason for the large distance between the hotels and “old town.” He told me that the key used to be less than half as large as it now it. The old town was the entire key. At around 1980 it was decided that more room was needed for the hotels, fast food joints and knock off shopping centers. They then built the other half of the island! It is huge, considering the effort that must have been required to move so much sand, and the monumental environmental destruction that undoubtedly accompanied that project is mind boggling. I assume they dug the sand out of the nearby water ways, they wouldn’t have trucked it in. I wonder who paid for that effort. In any case, now the normal cluster of hotels exists on the part of the island that is not “old town,” and everything of interest is several miles away. I am rather sorry that I missed Key West in the days before the monster hotels and easy highway access.

I don’t know exactly what I expected to find in the old town, perhaps I found it – plus a lot of other things. It seems that perhaps 60% of the stores are woman’s dress shops. Perhaps 10% are stores selling mementos and there are many art galleries. One end of the street is packed with restaurants and bars. If I were looking for a partner my feeling was that it would be easy to connect up with a man, but not so easy to find a woman. My impression was that the women were with their families, I didn’t see many single women. However, single men were very obvious. I chose to remain a sightseer. My takeaway was that I found the entire experience to be mostly boring. The building architecture was interesting, but the “vibes” were just another tourist trap dressed up as a used to be turn of the last century get-away. Perhaps it is still a place conductive to writing or art, just not for a tourist like myself. I don’t know what else I could have expected.

I decided to stay a couple more nights to give myself enough time to investigation other things on the island, or perhaps other nearby keys. Throwing myself into the center of the beast on Duval Street did just what I should have expected – it is more like a funky Disneyland than a “real” place. Perhaps some place, such as Ram Rod Key or Marathon Key with the Boys Scouts adventure camp would be better choices.

I spent an hour or so at the hotel pool last night, enjoying a wine at the poolside bar. Once again, I believe it would have been easy to pick up a guy, but that was not exactly my goal. It was sort of too bad, I would have liked to talk to someone but there were no women to talk to, and the guys were clearly making eyes at me. So I just enjoyed the warm weather and the wine.