10. Key West


Now this is a lively place!

You can walk in the old town past white verandahs that overlook tropical gardens. You can see, on the desk under the antelope head, the typewriter that Hemmingway used to click out his butch stories. You can admire the imaginative obscenities of T shirts on Duval Street. You can grasp one of the gold bars from the ‘Atocha.’ This Spanish ship left Havana for Spain in 1622 and got blown on a reef just 25 miles east of here. Mel Fisher found the pile of a thousand silver ingots (each about the size of a loaf of bread) after a 16 year search. And you can visit Audubon House. M. Audubon never lived here although he traveled through Florida in the 1830s painting those bird portraits that have made him a paragon of conservationists. If you ever wondered how he memorized the details of these rare and shy birds – he didn’t. He wired them up in lifelike poses after he shot them.


In the evenings, you can wander that crooked walkway, over red bricks and wharf planks, that twists around the harbour past the sterns of old schooners and new fish charter boats. The open air bars are full of the smells of grilled fish and beer and the rattle of plates and the guitars of raunchy singers.

And there is the sunset ceremony on Mallory Square. Dominique, a Frenchman with untreated mania, persuades reluctant cats to jump through hoops. A gymnast stands on his hands and does twenty push ups with his legs in the air. A middle aged man with a paunch and a pony tail juggles on a tightrope. The encircling crowd, who have been drinking margaritas from plastic cups, laughs and claps.

And you can cheer, with 500 others, the final second of the sunset.