Abandon Suburbia for the Dreamlike Solitude of the Florida Keys

Sunset in Key West, Florida.

Having lived in Key West for over three decades I can tell you that Tony Perrottet gets visitors off to a great Keys start with his travel review in The Wall Street Journal. Below his essay, I have linked a few of my own Keys favorites. Enjoy. Dick

Tony writes (abridged):

“If Ernest Hemingway were sailing, boozing and boxing his way around the Florida Keys today, he might still feel at home in a poetically ramshackle watering hole called Alabama Jack’s at the northern entrance to Key Largo. Or so it seemed to me, when I detoured off U.S. Highway 1 south of Miami, abandoning traffic jams and suburbia for the dreamlike solitude of Card Sound Road, where pristine expanses of lush mangrove pressed in on both sides like verdant tidal waves.

I spotted Alabama Jack’s half-hidden in the foliage, a solitary roadhouse—part bar, part open-air shack—that juts over glassy waters. Its interior is decorated with dozens of license plates nailed to pillars, a few dangling PVC fishing buoys and sculptural pieces of driftwood, and an impressive mounted marlin. For the next hour, I sat on a bar stool on the deck and watched the sky reflected on inky waters broken only by the splashes of leaping fish.”

By Tony Perrottet in The Wall Street Journal

Read more here.

• Key West #1 Wine Shop & Wine Expert
• Key West Greetings From the Thirsty Mermaid
• Key West’s Best Restaurant: The Thirsty Mermaid