Key West

Key West-a touch of the Caribbean in the United States! Our family owns a guest house there, the Mango Tree Inn, so my wife Sharon and I go there frequently (or as often our aunt and uncle can stand us!). Just follow US RT1 south from Miami 'til it ends and you are in Key West.

Key West is the southernmost city in the US. It is closer to Cuba (90 miles) than it is to Miami. You can see a strong Cuban and Bahamian influence in the town. The original settlement of the town is now called "Old Town" and is the primary tourist and cruise passenger area. ("New Town" has more of the traditional shopping center/chain restaurant atmosphere.) Old Town and the main drag, Duval Street, have restaurants, bars, museums, hotels, guest houses, souvenir shops, sightseeing, and T-shirt shops. Since Key West is not really known for its beaches (my favorite beach is at Ft Zachary Taylor but is small), I don't feel it is really geared to long stays with young children. It is more of a relaxed, eat, drink, and be merry type of town for adults. There are things that children would enjoy such as the the Butterfly Conservatory, the Mel Fisher Museum, the Pirate Museum, the Winter White House for President Truman, Ernest Hemingway's house, and a boat trip to Ft. Jefferson (70 miles east of Key West famous for housing Dr Mudd, John Wilkes Booth's doctor). Water sports are also readily available (sailing, fishing, jet skis, snorkeling, etc) and souvenir shopping is everywhere, but after the nightly Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square, the town is for adults.

From gourmet to casual outdoor dining, the restaurants are plentiful and tasty. From Lobster and steaks to Cuban to Italian, Thai and Japanese to conch fritters; they are all well represented. Some of my favorite restaurants are Conch Republic, A&B Lobster, La Trattoria, Blue Heaven, Michael's, and Bagatelle, but part of our fun is trying new places to eat. Of course, the cheeseburgers are good at Margaritaville. The other part of the Key West fun is bar-hopping or the "Duval Crawl" as it is sometimes referred.

Old Town and Duval can throw quite a party. This is not the wimpy kind of "one bar on every corner" type of place. With Key West temperatures averaging 85F-65F (all-time high of 97F/all-time low of 41F) many of the venues are open to the tropical air. (July and August have the highest humidity and warmest temperatures.) Some of our favorite watering holes (but certainly not limited to!) are Hogs Breath, Schooner Wharf, Irish Kevin's, Cowboy Bills, and Virgilios. Most bars have Happy Hours and are open to the wee hours. Karaoke is fun at Two Friends. If you like to party, Key West is the place.

There is a wide range of accommodations available near Old Town, but finding one on the beach is tough. Sunset Key (a small island off of Mallory Square formally known as Tank Island) probably offers the most exclusive accommodations in the area and nice beach area. It is accessible only by ferry. In Old Town itself the Westin, Hyatt, Ocean Key, and Pier House are convenient to Mallory Square and its nightly celebration of hand made crafts, food, and circus like entertainers. Duval has a number of other hotel properties and still others are available away from the hustle and bustle. Prices generally go down as you get away from Duval and most hotels will offer shuttles to the partying. Cabs (including pink ones) and even the rickshaw type pedicabs are always available. Some visitors rent bikes, scooters, or electric carts to get around town.

My favorite type of accommodation in Key West is the Guest House. The typical architecture of these houses is wood frame, tin roofs, covered porches, shuttered windows, with gingerbread trim. Many of them date to the late 1800's and are painted a variety of pastel colors. With their lush tropical foliage and many having pools, the guest house is the perfect way to get away from normal, relax with a "boat drink" in your hand, and sing Jimmy Buffet songs. My favorite guest house in Key West is the Mango Tree Inn, of course, but it is also the favorite of many repeat visitors to the island. Owners Peggy and Johnny make their guests feel like family. Ask Peggy for some of her key lime pie and I'm sure Johnny will share some of his tequila with you!

So, if you like to relax, eat good food, enjoy nice weather, and go out on the town, Key West is a perfect place to Live The World!

Hubbard Glacier

As our Alaskan cruise continued, my wife, Sharon, woke me in the early morning. Our ship was sailing into Disenchantment Bay, home of Hubbard Glacier. It was drizzly, foggy, cool, and too early for me to rush awake. Sharon went up on deck and I followed later.

Hubbard Glacier is North America's largest tidewater glacier. A tidewater glacier is one that travels far enough to reach the sea. The origins of Hubbard are back up in the Yukon about 75 miles and it is still advancing. The face of the glacier is 6 miles long and 300-500 feet high. A lot more is under the water. It is HUGE! Our ship, Celebrity's Summit, was dwarfed by this 50 story high chunk of ice. We "parked" about a mile from Hubbard, but because of its size, it looked like you could almost reach out and touch it. When we saw a sea bird fly by our ship toward the glacier and almost disappear as it neared the face, we gained a little perspective!

For our best view we were allowed to go to the front of the ship to the helicopter landing pad. There, facing the glacier, a Tlingit naturalist (who Sharon & I had met and become friends with in Hoonah, our previous stop) told us all about Hubbard. The ice has a blueish tinge as did many of the glaciers we had seen earlier. I think this is caused by the air in the ice being pressed out by the pressures of the glacier. The color seems more evident under cloudy skies than sunny. A lot of the glacier's surface is heavily crevassed and fissured. Again, the size of these jagged cracks and convolutions was hard to comprehend until we saw them dwarfing full size spruce trees near the glacier edges. All glaciers also have dirt/gravel they have up heaved incorporated throughout their ice. Some appear "dirtier" than others like the smaller glacier to the side of Hubbard.

Viewing Hubbard Glacier was almost like a religious experience for me. Here we are, in the middle of nowhere, all by ourselves (well, 2500 other passengers too), in a slight drizzle, with fog shrouding the tops of the mountains, in front of a massive, thousands of years old example of nature, and it is perfectly silent. The silence would occasionally be disrupted by a reverberating "crack" or a distant rumble like thunder. Never quite heard sounds like that before. These sounds were Hubbard expanding and contracting. Like the old man he is, he creaks like my old knees. We kept a sharp eye because some of these cracks and moans meant calving (ice falling into the sea from the face of a glacier). Because of the size of Hubbard, though, by the time the sound got to the ship, the calving had already occurred. Did I mention that Hubbard is big? Live the World!