West Palm Beach, Florida - 2020

During our Florida drive from Key West to the mainland, we made a brief overnight stop in West Palm Beach. Although somewhat out of the way, we wanted to visit the Flagler Museum. After all, Henry Flagler was a primary force in Florida development.

If you're unfamiliar with Flagler, he was one of the founders of Standard Oil Company, in Ohio, and the owner of the Florida East Coast Railway. This railway company established rail service throughout Florida, including over water to remote Key West.

In early 1880s, Flagler moved to Florida and, in 1888, opened his Ponce de Leon hotel in St. Augustine. He continued building Florida hotels and expanding his railroad to support his businesses. 

In 1902, Whitehall, located in Palm Beach became the winter home to Flagler and his wife, Mary Lily Kenan. The house had 75 rooms and cover 100,000 square feet. The house extends over three floors and a basement, There are 12 guest bedrooms and a central courtyard. In the late 1950s, the home was in danger of being demolished. After successful restoration, the home opened as a museum in 1960.

Also located on the museum grounds is Flagler's private railcar. Constructed in 1886, this railcar was built for Flagler's private use. The railcar interior has been restored to reflect its 1912 appearance.

If you're in Palm Beach, a visit to the Flagler museums is well worth a stop. We find peeking into the homes of gilded age industrialists is always a fascinating step into the past.

Where to Stay

There are many hotels to choose from in Palm Beach. Most can get expensive during winter high season. We stayed at the West Palm Beach Hilton, primarily because we are Hilton Honors members and the location was close to the Flagler Museum.

Everglades National Park, Florida - 2020

It had been almost 15 years since we spent any time touring Florida. With cancellation of our cruise to Cuba, our non-refundable flight tickets created an opportunity to take a driving trip to southern Florida.

We used Townplace Suites Hotel as a homebase to visit the Everglades National Park. This hotel is about a 20 minute drive to the Everglades National Park Ernest Coe Visitor Center. The Center is a great place to get acquainted with park features and wildlife and plan your walks and activities. In addition to rangers, the center is also staffed by volunteers sharing their terrific local knowledge.

Here is a brief summary of the park areas we visited:

Shark Valley
There is a small visitor center in the northern area of the park. The primary activity is a 15 mile paved path that provides a circular park tour. You can rent bikes, walk or ride a ranger narrated tram to cover the path. We purchased advance tickets over the Internet for the 2 hour tram ride. The tram is a good way to receive interpretative information as you view the plants and wildlife. If the day is very warm, the tram also can be more comfortable than a bike ride as the path has little or no shade.

This "Jetson-like" tower is an observation platform at Shark Valley

If you visit this park area, try to make time to stop at Glades Eats Miccsosukee Restaurant, near the turnoff from Highway 41 to Shark Valley. A park volunteer recommended the restaurant's Indian Taco. This was a delicious treat - fry bread with chili, lettuce, tomatoes and cheddar cheese.

Royal Palm
Royal Palm was established as a state park in 1916 and later became part of Everglades National Park. At this location, there are several trails you can walk. We walked along the wooden boardwalk Anhinga Trail and were rewarded with sightings of birds, fish, alligators and turtles - even birds eating fish. We also walked the Gumbo Limbo trail to view this hammock area and trees for which the trail is named. Each of these walks are short in length (0.4 to 0.8 miles). More time is spent observing wildlife or plants and trees on these trails than actual walking.

Only Do This With a Model Alligator!

Anhinga Drying Feathers

Mahogany Hammock
While only a gentle half mile walk on a well-constructed boardwalk, this walk was one of our favorite park activities. The hammock is a dense, jungle-like environment of trees and plants. There are many Gumbo Limbo trees and the largest Red Mahogany tree in the park located along this path. At times, the sunlight was completely obscured by dense plant growth.

Flamingo
This area is about 38 miles from the Ernest Coe Visitor Center. In 1892, a small village of fisherman, farmers and hunters was established in this location. In 1910, the census reported 49 residents. Flamingo is now the most southern headquarters of the Everglades National Park. Hurricane Wilma severely damaged many of the existing lodging, food services and Park Visitors Center in 2005. There are plans to rebuild the Mission 66 style National Park buildings but much work is still needed.

Look at bottom for the Manatee drinking rain water from platform.

It was raining on the day of our visit. We walked along the marina and observed manatees, alligators and nesting osprey. This was the first day of viewing alligators - and we viewed many during our three days of park visits. We arrived at Flamingo late in the day and an earlier arrival could have allowed us to ride a tour boat to explore Flamingo from the water.

Robert Is Here
On the drive to the Everglades National Park, you are likely to see the "Robert Is Here" fruit stand. Robert Moehling's roadside stand specializes in exotic vegetables and tropical fruits. Robert setup his first stand in this location in 1959 as a seven year-old. You can purchase mangoes, papayas and avocados here, but also vegetables and fruits that are rarely seen in grocery stores. For example. have you ever seen the fruit of a Swiss cheese plant (monstera deliciosa),  jackfruit or guanabana? This is a must stop if you find yourself on SW 3444th Street in Homestead, Florida.

Where Did We Stay?
We happened to arrive in Florida on Super Bowl weekend. This made finding a hotel room quite a challenge. For our visits to Everglades National Park, we stayed in Homestead. This was far enough from Miami that room availability was not an issue. Our home base was the Townplace Suites by Marriott. The suites at this modern business hotel included a full kitchen which was convenient for a takeaway dinner. Our park drives from our hotel ranged from 30 minutes to one hour, depending on our destination within Everglades National Park.

Key Largo, Florida - 2020

Key Largo was a one-night stop for us, a stop from our drive between Homestead and Key West. We stayed at the Bakers Cay Hilton Resort and spent our entire Key Largo time on this resort property. We felt like we were in Hawaii as we enjoyed the warm breezes and scenery.

bakerscay.com

If you’re looking for a relaxing location with a private beach and resort activities, this is the place to visit. The 200 room resort reopened in February 2019 after a two year renovation. The resort (previously the Hilton Key Largo) was heavily damaged by Hurricane Irma in September 2017 and required extensive reconstruction.

Our fourth floor room in the Hammock Wing had an ocean view. Lower floor ocean view rooms in this wing had ocean views that were obstructed by trees. The resort provided us with unexpected but enjoyed complimentary breakfast, drinks at the on-site Calusa restaurant and drinks at the Dry Rocks bar and restaurant.

With only a one-night stay, we didn’t have much time to take advantage of the many resort activities - note there is a daily resort fee of $38. During the day, noisy maintenance work was being performed to upgrade the elevator near our room. The sound of drilling holes into concrete was very loud and annoying. If we were staying longer, we would have asked to move our room to a more quieter location.  

Key West, Florida - 2020

With three full days in Key West, we had plenty of time to explore the historic area and include a seaplane trip to Dry Tortugas National Park.

For those viewers that haven’t been to Key West, there’s a lot to see in this area. There is a historic area filled with homes many of which were built in the mid to late 1800s. There’s also several resorts, small hotels and bed and breakfasts for lodging and a wide variety of bars and restaurants. We also found lots of shops selling typical tourist souvenirs and t-shirts as well as opportunities to watch talented street performers along Mallory Square and the Southernmost location in the US.

If you enjoy touring historical houses, I suggest including at least three  houses during your Key West visit:

Hemingway House: The house at 907 Whitehead Street was Ernest Hemingway's residence from 1931 to 1939. Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Short Happy Life of France Macomber, To Have and Have Not and The Green Hills of Africa from his upstairs Carriage Hose study. The house still contains the furniture used by Hemingway and his family. The descendants of the cats the author kept at the house still reside on the property.

hemingwayhome.com

Truman White House: Originally constructed in 1890 as a naval officers quarters, this house was used by President Harry Truman as his winter White House for 175 days of his presidency from 1946 to 1952. Other presidents to use this house include Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.  The house has two formal bedrooms, a dining room, living room and lanai. There are also some guest rooms that were not included in our house tour.

Audubon House: This elegant house was built by John Geiger in 1840 for his family. Geiger made his fortune in the ship recovery business. After 100 years, the house was targeted for demolition but was saved by the Mitchell Wolfson Family Foundation. The house was restored and furnished to reflect the late 1800s. Interesting to note, this house does not have an interior kitchen or bathroom. John James Audubon did not actually visit this specific house but is believed to have stayed in a house that previously resided on this property.

audobonhouse.com

Southernmost Point
Just before sunset, you can join Key West visitors and residents as they gather near Mallory Square to enjoy the sunset. The crowd of gazers grows quite large and if can be a challenge to find a standing spot. I think if the number of people were less, I might have found it more enjoyable. That said, watching the sunset at Southernmost Point seems to be a Key West favorite. If nothing else, this sunset watching area places you in a great spot to watch the late afternoon street performers.

Mallory Square Street Performers:
The Catman, Dominique Lefort, is well known for his performing street cats. The cats jump through from platform to platform and through both small hoops and flaming hoops. All the while Dominique provides entertaining banter and odd facial expressions.  The Catman’s wild facial expressions made him appear bit unbalanced. This show has been performed for over 30 years, from Disney World to Mallory Square and has been shown on television. The wind was fairly strong during the performance and this may have caused the cats to be easily distracted.

A cat takes flight

We caught the end of Reidiculous Show (Reid Fierheller-Conklin). Reid started performing at Mallory Square at the age of 12 and has continued performing here for the past 16 years. He is a contortionist, juggler, comedian and is able to balance himself on platforms that are balanced on a cylinder. We found his show well worth our attention and a donation.

Dry Tortugas National Park
This national park requires some effort to visit. It lies about 70 miles, over water, from Key West. Visitors either ride a boat ferry or seaplane to reach the park. The park is known as the home of Fort Jefferson, blue waters, coral reefs and marine and bird life.

Fort Jefferson is a massive incomplete fortress covering 16 acres. Construction started in 1849, with plans for 300 canons to be installed via two tiers. The fort's objective was to protect Gulf shipping and US interests. At its peak, about 2000 soldiers resided at the fort. The fort was too difficult to maintain with hurricanes and challenges to supply food and water. The fort was abandoned by the military in 1906.

One of the interesting aspects of this national park is that you can wander in just about any fort location with few restrictions. In many walking areas there are steep drops with nothing to prevent - other than common sense - a likely fatal fall.

We spent a half day at Dry Tortugas National Park. We rode a seaplane to the park that reduced one-way travel time to the park from 2.5 hours (by ferry) to 45 minutes.

Key West Seaplane Adventures

Where to stay:
Key West has a wide variety of accommodations, from small B&Bs, small hotels and large resorts. If you want to stay in a large modern resort, most of these units are located away from the downtown area. Closer to the historic downtown area, near Duval Street, are smaller hotels and B&Bs. We wanted to be near the historic area but away from too much noise. This led us to the Gardens Hotel and its “Carriage House” room.

This large upstairs room had a king bed, loveseat, desk, chest of drawers, HDTV, en suite, a covered balcony with two patio chairs overlooking the pool and included a wonderful hot breakfast. The room location was very quiet and had its own entry via an internal set of stairs. The Gardens Hotel has been recognized by The NY Times and US News and World Report as one of the best hotels in Key West. I believe this recognition is derived from the hotel's wonderful guest rooms and cottages, as well as lush gardens which cover an acre within a downtown block.

Where to eat:
We enjoy both casual and more upscale dining. For casual dining, we ate at Caroline's Cafe on Duval Street, Cuban Coffee Queen (Cuban sandwiches), First Flight (a local brewery) and Eaton Street Sea Food and Restaurant (Lobster rolls). Eaton Seafood offers several takeaway dishes and has been the subject of a NY Times travel article.  Sarabeth’s was a terrific upscale location for a cream of tomato soup starter, garlic bread and entrees including scallops and shrimp and grits. “Sarabeth” Levine is a James Beard pastry award winner and owner of restaurants in New York City.

South Beach, Miami, Florida - 2020

We had one full day to explore South Beach and the nearby Miami area. Not a lot of time within a large geographical area. We bypassed a morning walk in Little Havana and, instead, drove over to Vizcaya, the former home of James Deering, an industrialist in the early 1900s. You might recall the name of Deering's McCormick International Harvester.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens

With 1,000 workers and 180 acres (now just 50 acres), Deering built a large villa with Italian and French Renaissance features, formal gardens, recreational areas, lagoon gardens, agricultural fields and a service village. Deering resided at Vizcaya during winter season, from 1916 to 1925. Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan used this location for the First Summit of the Americas and a meeting with Pope John Paul II, respectively.

As we toured the interior of the house, we learned that many of the rooms were specifically designed for large wall and ceiling panels imported from European castles, monasteries and homes.

Being childless, after James Deering passed away, the house and gardens were inherited by family members. In the early 1950s, the cost of maintaining the house and gardens became too large a challenge and Miami-Dade County took ownership of Vizcaya.




South Beach and Art Deco Historical Area

In the afternoon, we walked through the Art Deco historical area of South Beach. There are guided tours as well as free online walking tours available. We chose the latter via freetoursbyfoot.  We reconfigured out walking itinerary to start from one end of Ocean Drive (Delano, 1685 Collins Avenue) to the other end (Celino Hotel, 641 Ocean Drive). This path allowed us to end our walking tour closer to our hotel.

If you're in Miami, we recommend viewing these visually striking buildings from the 1920s and 1930s. After a while, you start to identify the Art Deco building characteristics, such as sharp horizontal and vertical exterior lines, smooth walls and geometric and symetrical shapes.

Dining in South Beach 
Many of the restaurants along Ocean Drive presented a touristy vibe to us. Leaving this busy area, we looked for restaurants a block or two away from heavy foot-traffic.

Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant: We weren't familiar with Stone Crabs but received a recommendation to visit Joe's. This restaurant was founded in 1913 and continues under family management today. The menu has many offerings but many guests focus on Stone Crabs. These  crabs are caught in the waters surrounding Florida. Interestingly, one claw is harvested from a caught stone crab and the crab is returned to the sea so that the missed claw can regrow.

Joe's doesn't accept reservations and the wait line grows quickly (we heard the wait could be as much as three hours later in the evening). Almost all 450 seats were filled within minutes of the 5pm opening. That said, we were seated almost immediately at 5:05pm. A dinner of four jumbo Stone Crabs, a small order of hash browns (more than enough for two), creamed spinach, a key lime pie slice and two glasses of wine ran about $200.

If you visit Joe’s and find the wait too long for a restaurant table, there is a take-out counter next door. This counter area has a bar and some seating.

Rossella’s Kitchen: This Italian restaurant is at the corner of 2nd and Washington Streets. We ordered a swordfish entree and branzino entree, both were excellent. This is a much more moderately priced restaurant with excellent food offerings, terrific service staff and a quiet setting for dinner.

Where Did We Stay in South Beach?

We stayed at the Marriott Stanton Beach Hotel for two nights in South Beach. This beach front hotel is at the end of Ocean Drive. This location is generally known for less street noise - though the weekends may take on a party atmosphere. The hotel lobby and public areas have been recently refreshed. The rooms were last updated in 2013 and already seem ready for additional attention.