We’ve been in Key West 
for two days now and it’s growing on us.
Our first experience was talking a wander out on our first night and ending up on Duval Street 
, looking for somewhere to eat. We didn’t see any of the 5* hotels, top restaurants and beautiful marinas and beaches I had expected. Instead, there are lots of tacky T-shirt shops and empty bars and we ended up eating in the Hard Rock Cafe (which was quite nice actually but still… )Â It turns out that September is the dead season here. Everywhere is pretty empty and the bars all close at 10pm.
I did say it was growing on us though because today has been much better. We took a trolley tour around Key West which showed us some of the nicer parts, including Ernest Hemmingway’s house , Key West Lighthouse, the southernmost point in the US (which is closer to Cuba than it is to the Florida mainland) and Key West Aquarium. It’s actually a lovely place in the day and there are quite a few sights we’re going to revisit before we leave. After the tour we went to the top of the “Shipwreck Museum” which has a really tall tower on top giving great views of the island.
Tonight, we did a bit of research before going out for dinner and found a really nice ocean-front restaurant in front of one of the marinas here. The Florida Keys are famous for “Key Lime Pie” 
and I thought it’s be rude not to try it (hence the photo) I can confirm that it’s pretty amazing. Finally. on our way home we were treated to one of Florida’s famous lightning storms which I tried to capture on camera, but it was a bit cloudy.
So, it turns out that Key West is actually as nice as we expected it to be. You just have to walk in the right direction.