Walking to Key West

The trip to Key West from Fiesta Key takes about an hour and a half by car. There's only one road in and one road out and Key West is a popular place. It's also a cruise ship stop. That's how we arrived there last May. That day in May there were at least three cruise ships in port. It makes the town ridiculously crowded so when we were planning our day in Key West we tried to pick a day when there would be no cruise ships. We decided to go on January 2nd. Zero cruise ships in port according to the website that lists cruise ship ports and ships and where they are on any given day.

One of the things we noticed when we were in Key West last May was the inconvenience of having to pay for parking and we were only driving around in a golf cart. So when we went back this time with our Jeep, Mark thought it would be a good idea to park in a grocery store or shopping center parking lot and walk into town. It sounded reasonable to me.

He picked a spot that was "just a few blocks away". Honestly, I don't know what map he was going by. It took us over an hour (probably closer to two) to get into the historic part of town. Fortunately it was a pleasant walk. When we finally got there, I was looking for mile marker 0. Never saw it. What I did see was cruise ships. There were two of them in port. They were not supposed to be there! I had checked the website. There were not supposed to be any cruise ships in Key West that day. There were two possibilities - 1) the cruise ships had changed their itineraries or 2) I misread the website that posts the cruise ship calendars. I suppose it could have been either but no matter - we were in Key West and so were those cruise ships.

Since we'd wasted an hour or more just getting there on foot, we were starving. It was lunch time. Sloppy Joe's was out - you can't get near the place with two gigantic cruise ships in port. We thought we'd go to the same place we went in May - it was on the water, overlooking a marina. But since we were on foot and not in a golf cart or any other motorized vehicle, we couldn't find it and gave up looking. We found a really nice place, Bagatelle. They had shaded outdoor seating upstairs. Excellent food and service, just not overlooking a marina. By the way, great crab cake.

After lunch we walked back to Sloppy Joe's and bought a tee shirt. Then I wanted to make sure that we found the dock for the Yankee Freedom that would take us to Dry Tortugas the following day as well as the parking lot that was supposed to be near the Yankee Freedom dock. (We had to be there by 7 AM which meant leaving Fiesta at 5 AM. No margin for error.)

We didn't get very far when Mark started to complain that he had a blister on his foot from walking into town. Not only could he not continue the search for the Yankee Freedom dock, he couldn't walk back to the car, either. With all those cruise ship people in town would we be able to get a cab? Several went past us, all full. We took down the number of one, called their dispatcher and told her we were at the intersection of Duval and whatever street that was. We waited. And waited. It was Key West. Not New York City. Not Chicago. It's just not that big. There is no reason why a cab should take longer than 15 minutes to reach you. I called them back. "When will the cab be here?"

"As soon as I have a free one. It could be five minutes, it could be an hour."

"I see. Thank you."

Then I told Mark to start looking for an empty cab because the one we called probably wasn't coming. We managed to hail one quickly and he drove us back to our car. That only cost $20.

Then we set off in the Jeep to find mile marker 0 and the Yankee Freedom dock. We found the dock, very close to the historic district and plenty of parking. All day parking. $11. All day. Which means we could have driven in to town, cut out an hour and a half of walking, had more time to spend in Key West, and it would have cost us about half as much as the cab. And Mark could have avoided the blister. (To tell the truth, I'm the one who usually gets attacked by my shoes, so I was probably a bit smug about the whole thing.) We live and learn.

The traffic was a bit congested for such a small place. I did see mile marker 0 but there was too much traffic for us to stop and get out for a photo op. But that's okay - I found a photo on the internet.