TacomaWorld Travel Guide

Hi everyone, I wanted to start a thread for everyone to share their travel experiences and provide some guidance, tips, and suggestions.

If you want to write about a trip, start off by listing the destination (city/state/country) and what time period you were there (arrival date - departure date). Then you can list your experiences, bad or good, and recommendations.

Hope this helps.

 

Key West, Florida

Wednesday May 8, 2019 to Tuesday May 14, 2019

I Traveled to Key West with my wife to celebrate our 1 year anniversary. We drove down to Key Largo on Wednesday from Sarasota. We chose to take US-41 through the Everglades instead of i-75. Although the speed limit is slower you see a bit more of the everglades. It also has some great spots to do Airboat tours if you have not done that before. There is also a visitor center along the way were you can stop and see alligators for free. We decided to stop in Key Largo for the night to break up the drive.

On Thursday we took our time to make the trip down to Key West. There are some great places to stop along the way. We really enjoyed Morada Bay Beach Café on Islamorada. It has an awesome beach area as well as some great food. We both had the Tuna Poke which was amazing and all the other meals we saw on the other table looked amazing as well.

Overall we had a great time in Key West. This was our second time visiting. We were disappointed in the service we received ranging from the wait staff to the hotel employees. A lot of the places on Duval street are also very commercialized and don’t provide a great experience. Although there are some great places on Duval street in general we had a better time one or two roads back from Duval street.

We rented bikes from Fury which was $15 for the first day and $10 for each day thereafter. This was the best price we found and the bikes were great and we had no issues. They also come with lights for night time riding, (which is a requirement), as well as a lock, and helmets if desired. I would recommend renting bikes, as it is a great way to get around and provides a bit of a breeze to combat the heat. Also, parking is very hard to come by and very expensive.

We did not do any water tours or activities on this trip, but we have on our previous trip. The tours are fairly expensive, but also a lot of fun. We had done a snorkeling and water sports trip with Fury, and were satisfied with our experience.

Some restaurants and bars that I would recommend that we enjoyed are: Thirsty Mermaid; Amigos; Green Parrot; The Café; Moondog Café; Kojin Noodle Bar; Panini Schamini; Hogs Breath Saloon; La Trattoria. There are some great happy hours and specials. The best all you can drink Mimosa special we saw was at Ocean Grill & Bar for $7.95 from 9:00am till 3:30pm, however we did not manage to go, so not sure if they are good or not, but it looks like a nice restaurant. The best happy hour was at the Thirsty Mermaid. $2 beer, and $5 food specials, including half a dozen oysters, muscles, wings, mac & cheese, and ceviche. The food is really good and a steal for that price. The happy hour is every day from 4:00pm to 6:00pm.

Some cool places to see are Ernest Hemmingway’s house (really cool guy, and great place to see); the southernmost point; Fort Zachary Park; and Mallory Square.