Key West; March 17-23, 2024 (The good, the bad, and the ugly)

We've been to Key West on a cruise but only spent 4 or 5 hours there so we wanted to go back and stay for several days to experience the island fully.

We arrived and had a nice room at the Eden House on Flemming Street. It's 5 blocks from Duval Street, the main street in Key West.

We walked around a lot. A LOT! Key West is a walking city. There is no need to rent a car. The parking places are few and when you can it's expensive to park. We saw a lot of walkers, bike riders, scooters, and golf carts. 

We also saw a lot of roosters. There are chickens but you really see roosters. They are everywhere. There are more roosters on the island than chickens. You can hear them crowing all day. We decided our symbol for Key West is a rooster. Connie went to several souvenir shops and found some roosters to bring home.

We decided to take the Hop on/Hop off Trolley to get some bearings and see where things and places are located. This is a good way to do just that. Of course, we saw the famous southern most point buoy but the line to get pictures with it was a mile long so we passed. We have gotten a pic of us with it years ago on a cruise before Key West was so popular and the lines short.

From our December, 2010 cruise

For beach days we took an Uber to Higgs Beach. It was nice and had a restaurant onsite. As the day went on many people and families showed up to enjoy a beach day. 

We also did a 5 hour excursion where we went on a kayak tour of some mangroves. 

You will get 2 stories of how the kayaking went but I can tell you Connie is not a good kayaker. We ran into the mangroves several times. As the rower in the back it was quite comical to see her try to row. She tried really hard but didn't quite master rowing. I asked her if this was "suppose to be a bonding experience."

We also went out to a sandbar in the middle of the ocean where we anchored and spent about an hour and a half walking around the sandbar. It was pretty cool. Water, water everywhere and you're standing in the middle of it. I don't know how far out we were but it took about an hour to get back to the dock.

Everything was going pretty good until our last day. I received a text message that our flight was delayed. It meant we would have less than 30 minutes to catch the connecting flight. A few minutes later I got the news we did not want. Our flight leaving Key West was cancelled! There was a prediction of heavy rains and high winds so that was probably why our flight was cancelled but the rains and high winds never came. We heard planes coming and going all day.  It was our last day and had no where to stay and sleeping on the streets of Key West is not on my to-do list. Luckily, someone cancelled for the night and we were able to stay at Eden House, at a premium price, of course. We just had to change rooms. An extra day in Key West.

The next day was very rainy. Again, I received a text message that our flight was delayed and then, again, our flight was cancelled. We had to stay another night with nowhere set? Then, after scrambling to find a place there was another text message that we were booked on a new flight that was leaving in about an hour! We quickly grabbed an Uber and went to the airport. Once we got there we learned this flight was delayed. It kept being delayed over and over. I was starting to think we would never leave.

The airport was slammed. I have never seen so many people. Obviously several other flights were cancelled and they were trying to get everyone out. 

We finally flew out about 7 hours later than scheduled. But, our flight from Charlotte to Columbia was not available. This meant we would have to rent a car to get home. We started looking for one-way rentals and quickly found that there were none. Or, rental agencies don't like to rent one way rentals. Either way, how were we going to get home? We had used Uber all week in Key West so I looked up what the price would be to use Uber from Charlotte to Columbia airport (where our car was) and it was comparable to renting a car so once we landed in Charlotte I starting looking for an Uber. 

But before this we had to get our luggage since the final destination was Charlotte. We decided to grab something to eat since it was late and didn't want to find something outside the airport. When we got to the carousel we thought our luggage would be there.  It wasn't on the carousel. After waiting a while I wondered over to another carousel and saw a TSA area where some luggage was being held and saw ours. I went in and confirmed it was ours and they gave it to me. 

Now with our luggage I could find an Uber. Since it's a long ride not many drivers want to spend 3 hours round trip on a Charlotte to Columbia Uber fare. I found someone who would do it but not through Uber. It was not appealing financially to him since Uber takes 60% of the fare so he made us an offer for a cash transfer. By this point we were so ready to go home and get past this travel nightmare so  we decided to do it. Actually, it was still about the same price as renting a car and all we had to do was ride. We finally arrived at the Columbia airport, put our luggage in our car and drove home. We arrive at our house at 2:30 am Sunday morning. We were exhausted. It was over.

Overall the trip was nice but the last 2 days were taxing.

Key West is a very expensive place to stay. Everything is at least twice what you would pay in Columbia. We took several Ubers everywhere. They were very fast to arrive and quite reasonable. They were probably the most reasonable thing we purchased on the island.

If you go to Key West remember it's very expensive. You will see lots of roosters and several interesting sites walking around. It was a nice trip but it's quite nice to be home.