One of the first days I could ride with no load on the bike, except my tools bag in one of the side cases. I also separated my normal shoes and jeans and would use the space available in the other cases to keep my leather jacket and riding pants at destination; temperatures were indeed getting higher in Florida, and I thought it was still wise to ride ATGATT (“All The Gear All The Time”) but wearing everything while wandering around is not so much fun.
First part of the journey to the keys was mostly some 30km of highway with no passing lane and a central wall until Key Largo, the first island crossed. Then many tourist stores selling t-shirts and stuff branded with “The Keys” started showing up, along with small mom and pop coffees and restaurants.
Going through the islands, most of the time you don’t even notice you’re on an island, but then you reach a bridge that crosses a channel between two island, or take a road that goes pretty much over the sea for miles, and then you feel like you’re really in the middle of nowhere with no continental coast in sight.
After quite some distance alternating short and wider islands and channels, I finally reached Key West, the last of the islands, and after following a little touristic train on wheels crossing the city and presenting the various places, I finally stopped at Starbucks both to change clothes (I was starting to feel quite hot) and have a quick lunch + latte. I then rode again to another street and stopped in front of Ernest Hemingway’s house to visit it.
One particularly interesting thing was the story of the wall Hemingway built around the house to keep journalists and tourists from taking peeks into the garden and property. A weirder one was the list of all cats who have lived – and died – in the property for years (after Hemingway’s own death); cats are treated like kings there, from what I heard one guide saying, and they’re quite a few around…
I then went to see if there were any beaches aroudn the city, and only found one, which was okay, but nothing really impressive.
And I finally decided to visit a bit more the little town, parking the bike again and walking around a few central streets. Key West seems to be a paradise for bikes and scooters, most tourists visiting seem to rent these 🙂
I eventually decided a little refreshment would be a nice option with the local temperature…
Then time had come to start the 2 hours ride back to the continent, but I stopped a few times for a few more pictures, and in particular at sunset…
I finally reached the hotel at night and decided to go to a laundromat nearby and deal with dirty clothes. I still had some left-overs from the little Cuban restaurant I had gone the evening before, so I re-heated them in the microwave oven at the motel and then called it a day.
