Is Key West Worth Visiting? 11 Things I Loved and Hated

Yes, Key West is worth visiting, but not for the reasons the brochures give you. Go for the architecture, the water, the history, and the genuinely lovely people. Do not go expecting great beaches, a beautiful drive down, or a quiet island, because it is none of those three. I spent the Christmas holiday there and came home with a list of things I loved and a list of things I did not, which I think is more useful to you than another roundup of attractions.

I spent the Christmas holiday in Key West Florida. It was my first time there and I really enjoyed the balmy December weather. But there were certain things I didn't like. I have been trying to figure out a way to write a road trip report without sounding like a snob or a hippie (strange dichotomy I know, but trust me on this one) so in the end, I think it just comes down to this: Key West may not be for me. But I am not giving up on it, and I am not going to talk you out of going either. Here are 11 things I loved and did not love about this town at the end of the world, plus all the practical things I wish somebody had told me before I booked.

I blame myself. Even as a seasoned traveler from time to time even I pull a rookie mistake. I didn't do enough research before booking this trip, heck I didn't do research after booking the trip either. I looked into some restaurants and a couple of things to do, but I didn't really dig around to find out more about Key West. So consider this post the research I did not do. Every mistake I made is in here, along with the things that made the trip worth taking anyway.

A quick note before we start

I took this trip over the Christmas holiday and first published this post back in 2012. I left my original observations exactly as I wrote them, because how a place lands on you doesn't really expire. What I did was go back and check every practical detail, so the addresses, prices, and logistics below are current as of 2026. Where something has genuinely changed since my visit, I say so. The hotel I stayed at, for one, no longer has the same name.

Key West pros and cons at a glance

If you only read one thing on this page, read this.

What I loved	What I did not
The architecture in Old Town, which is the best thing on the island	The drive down, which is four dull hours for 45 good minutes
The color of the water, which really is that turquoise	The beaches, which are small and mostly trucked in
The history, especially the aviation history	Staying in a cruise port, which was my own fault
How genuinely friendly everyone was	The croissants, which have a butter problem
Hot Tin Roof, the one meal I would go back for	Stone crab, if you have grown up on Dungeness
December weather, which is as good as Florida gets	The prices, which are high for what you get

[1] The color of the water in the Florida Keys

The water in the Florida Keys really is that turquoise, and no, the photos are not edited. I will forever associate this color with Florida, as it truly is the color of the water and it is absolutely beautiful.

The color comes from shallow water sitting over pale sand and living coral, which bounces the light back up at you instead of swallowing it the way deep Atlantic water does. It is the single most beautiful thing about the journey south, and it is the entire reason the 45 good minutes I complain about below are worth the four bad hours.

[2] Key West history, and the flight that started everything

If you love history (and I DO!), Key West is a fascinating place steeped in history, particularly travel history.

The first American commercial international flight took off from Key West in 1927, headed for Havana, and that is how Pan American World Airways began. Ninety miles of open water is really the whole story of this island. It made Key West a wrecking port, then a cigar town, then a naval base, and then a place writers came to disappear into. If you want to get your arms around that in a single afternoon, the Hemingway Home and Museum, the Key West Lighthouse, and Harry S. Truman's Little White House are all within an easy walk of each other in Old Town.

[3] The drive from Miami to Key West

The drive from Miami to Key West is about 160 miles and takes roughly four hours without stops, closer to four and a half once you have pulled over for photos or lunch. You cross 42 bridges on the way. We came from Fort Lauderdale, which adds about 30 more miles.

However, the drive from Miami to Key West is 4 hours of crap and about 45 minutes of beautiful turquoise views. If you are from (or familiar with) the San Francisco Bay Area, think of the worst part of El Camino Real for 4 hours. The drive should normally take about 3 hours, but with construction, a million lights, and traffic, I am not sure that can happen. We left from Ft. Lauderdale, and it took us nearly 6 hours. The coastal drive of Carmel and Big Sur, and the drive up the Oregon coast, are far superior to the Dixie Highway south.

I stand by every word of that, and here's what I didn't know at the time. The good part is not spread evenly. Almost all of the beauty is in the last stretch from Marathon down, and the Seven Mile Bridge is the moment the drive finally turns into the one you were promised. So if you are short on time, that lower stretch is the part worth driving, and the upper half is the part worth skipping.

And if four hours of strip malls sounds like a poor use of a holiday, you do not have to do it at all. Key West International Airport sits right on the island with nonstop flights from a decent list of US cities, and you can be on Duval Street half an hour after you land. Given the choice again, I would fly in and rent a car for one day to drive the good half.

[4] Stone crab vs Dungeness crab, and what to actually eat in Key West

West Coast's Dungeness crab kicks Florida's stone crab ass any day of the week. Sorry to say it, but I gave it a couple of tries, and it just can't compete.

That is a West Coast opinion, and I know it. What I would add now is that I was ordering the wrong thing entirely. The food Key West genuinely does well is Cuban and Caribbean; not shellfish. You can get better somewhere else. Conch fritters, a Cuban mix sandwich, yellowtail snapper, and a proper Cuban coffee are what I would be eating if I went back, and they are what this island is actually good at. Conch, by the way, is pronounced konk, and you will hear it about forty times a day.

[5] Staying in a cruise ship port in Key West

I will never stay in a cruise port unless I am on a cruise! I think this was the worst thing about our stay, and it was something we could have easily researched.

Let me make that concrete, because it is the most useful warning in this post. We stayed four days, and on three of them I pulled back the curtains to a cruise ship parked in my view.

Key West is still very much a working cruise port and typically sees a few ships a week, more of them in winter, docking at Mallory Square and the piers around it. Residents voted in 2020 to cap ship sizes and the number of passengers coming ashore, but a Florida state law that took effect on 1 July 2021 voided those limits, so the big ships never went away. If the view matters to you at all, book away from the harbor front, or simply ask the hotel which side of the building your room is on. It is a two-minute question, and it would have transformed my trip.

[6] The croissants and the French bakeries in Key West

The Frenchies baking up the croissants in Key West have a serious problem with butter. It may sound strange, but you can have too much butter in a croissant…

I tried two different French bakeries on the island, and both had exactly the same fault. A croissant is supposed to shatter when you bite it, and these just sat there being heavy. I have since moved to Europe and eaten an unreasonable number of croissants, so if anything I will defend that verdict more firmly now than I did in 2012. My advice for breakfast in Key West is to stop trying to eat French and go and get a Cuban coffee and a pastry instead. That is the thing this island does properly.

[7] The beaches in Key West are not great, and here is why

The beaches are Key West's weakest feature. They are small, most of the sand was trucked in, and several of them are rocky enough that you will want water shoes. If a beach holiday is the reason you are coming to Florida, go somewhere else in the state.

Private beaches are better than public ones. This is probably a universal truth. The hotel we stayed at had a private beach on an island, something we failed to learn until our last day!

That island is Sunset Key, and the ferry over takes about seven minutes from the marina at what is now Opal Key Resort. Discovering it on day four instead of day one is genuinely the single thing I would change about the whole trip.

Fort Zachary Taylor, the one public beach worth your time

Address: 601 Howard England Way

If you only go to one beach, make it this one, and it is not a close call. Locals call it Fort Zach. The water is the clearest on the island; it has the best shore snorkeling anywhere in Key West, and because of the rock jetties and the rangers, it stays far cleaner of seaweed than the others. There are Australian pines for shade and an actual Civil War fort attached. Entry runs around $7 for a car with two people or $2.50 if you walk or cycle in, and that includes the fort.

The rest of them, briefly

Smathers Beach on South Roosevelt Boulevard is the long one you see on postcards and has the worst parking. Higgs Beach on Atlantic Boulevard is easier to deal with and has a pier. South Beach at the end of Duval Street is tiny and exists mainly so you can say you swam at the bottom of Duval. In the warmer months, sargassum seaweed washes up on all of them, which is one more argument for coming in winter.

[8] Key lime pie in Key West, and how to spot a fake

Real key lime pie is pale yellow, never green. If the slice in front of you is green, they used food coloring, and you are not eating the real thing.

I have had better Key Lime Pie in Los Angeles (Westin LAX The Daily Grill [I know, crazy!]!). Remember, the authentic key lime pie is NOT green!

I still think that, and I am still a little embarrassed about it. In my defense, I never looked properly, which brings us right back to the research I didn't do. If you want to do better than I managed, these are the two names that come up over and over.

Kermit's Key West Key Lime Shop

Address: 200 Elizabeth Street

The one with the man out front waving a pie at passing traffic. Whole pies, slices, and a frozen chocolate-dipped slice on a stick that is better than it has any right to be.

Old Town Bakery

Address: 930 Eaton Street

A proper neighborhood bakery rather than a souvenir shop, which is exactly why locals send you there.

One thing worth knowing before you plan an afternoon around it. Blond Giraffe gets recommended constantly, and its Key West locations have closed. The remaining Blond Giraffe factory is up in Tavernier, well over an hour back up the Keys, so do not go hunting for it on Duval.

[9] Key West architecture is the best thing on the island

When you wander away from the main streets (universal truth) you can find some amazing architecture in Key West.

This was my favorite thing about Key West by a distance, and it is the part nobody puts on a poster. What you are mostly looking at are conch houses, built in the 1800s by Bahamian immigrants who had been ship carpenters. That is why they sit raised up off the ground, why the porches are so deep, and why the joinery is so much better than it needed to be. The pastel paint and all that gingerbread trim, the spindles and the decorative brackets, came along afterward.

Keep an eye out for the eyebrow houses too. Those are the ones where the roof drops down low over the upstairs windows so they sit half hidden, as though the house is squinting. It looks like a decorative flourish, and it is actually air conditioning, shading the bedrooms in the years before air conditioning existed. Once somebody points one out to you, you will see them on every block.

Old Town is where to do this, and the best way is on foot with nowhere in particular to be. It costs nothing, and it was comfortably the best hour I spent in Key West.

[10] Key West people, and the welcome you get

The staff, store clerks, restaurant waiters, and waitresses are extremely friendly despite being plied with tourists every single day.

I want to be clear about this one, because I have been fairly hard on the island everywhere else in this post. The people were kind in a way that didn't feel professional or rehearsed, and in a town that processes this many day visitors off cruise ships, that's no small thing. Nobody once made me feel like a transaction. If I ever do change my mind about Key West, it will be because of them.

[11] Hot Tin Roof restaurant is worth the splurge

If you eat one expensive meal in Key West, make it this one.

Address: 0 Duval Street

Hot Tin Roof restaurant (inside Ocean Key Resort, at the very top of Duval Street) rocks. Not only is the chef pretty hunky, but his food is also excellent and I had a wonderful meal of ceviche made from local fish and a delicious pork shank. Mr. Misadventures tried the other house specialty, paella. And while we think Mr. Misadventure's paella is still better, it was a damn fine number two!

I am pleased to report it is still going, which after this many years is not something you can take for granted. They serve breakfast every day and dinner from 6 pm, and the kitchen calls what it does Key West cuisine, which in practice means Cuban and Caribbean flavors built on local fish. Book ahead if you are coming in winter. The same resort runs Sunset Pier, where you can go for sunset and a drink without committing to restaurant prices.

How to get to Key West

You have two realistic options, and I would now pick the opposite one to the one I picked.

• By car. About 160 miles and four hours from Miami, four and a half with stops, and roughly an hour more from Fort Lauderdale. You go the whole way down US 1, the Overseas Highway, over 42 bridges. Traffic and construction can add a lot of time, as we found out.
• By air. Key West International Airport is on the island itself with nonstop flights from a number of US cities, and you are in Old Town within about fifteen minutes of collecting your bag.

You do not need a car once you are in Key West. The island is four miles by two and Old Town is walkable end to end. If I went again, I would fly in, then rent a car for a single day to drive the good lower stretch of the Overseas Highway and hand it straight back.

Getting around Key West

Walking covers most of it. Beyond that, the Duval Loop bus is free and runs roughly every twenty minutes through the middle of the day, which is the single most underused thing on the island. Bikes and scooters are everywhere and suit the flat, slow streets better than cars do. The Conch Tour Train and the Old Town Trolley are touristy, and I would still do one on a first visit because the narration covers the history quickly. Parking near Duval is difficult and expensive, which is the other reason not to bother with a car.

The best time to visit Key West

December through April is the good stretch, which is also why it is the expensive stretch. I went at Christmas, and the weather was as close to perfect as Florida gets.

If you want the weather without the peak prices, aim for late April into early June. That is shoulder season; it is still warm, and the crowds have thinned. Avoid June through November if you can, partly because of hurricane season and partly because that is when sargassum seaweed piles up on beaches that were already the weak point. August is hot in a way that is hard to enjoy.

Key West in December and at Christmas

This is the part of my trip I would repeat without changing a thing. December in Key West means daytime highs around 78°F at the start of the month, easing to about 75°F by the end; nights around 67°F to 70°F; and barely an inch and a half of rain across the whole month. After the summer, the humidity has gone. It is genuinely the nicest weather the island gets.

What I did not properly appreciate at the time is how much the island leans into Christmas. A good chunk of it is free:

• The Harbor Walk of Lights at the Historic Seaport, lit every night from around Thanksgiving through New Year's Eve, with the lobster trap trees that are very Key West and nowhere else.
• The Hometown Holiday Parade down Duval Street on the first Saturday of December.
• The Lighted Boat Parade at the Historic Seaport on a Saturday in mid December, which you can watch for free from anywhere along the Harbor Walk.
• Lighting of the Bight, with live music and both Clauses in attendance.

The paid ones worth knowing about are the Holiday Historic Inn Tours, which take you inside decorated historic inns in the evening with food and drink, and the holiday lights run on the Conch Tour Train and Old Town Trolley. If you are coming specifically for Christmas, I'd book the inn tours, because getting inside those buildings is the only way to properly appreciate the architecture I went on about above.

The catch is straightforward. This is peak season, so hotels are at their most expensive and Duval is at its busiest. Book early and go in knowing that.

How many days do you need in Key West?

Two full days is enough to see Key West properly. Three is comfortable. We had four, and it was one day too many for us, although in fairness we spent one of them discovering a beach we should have found on arrival.

The island is small, and the main sights sit close together, so you are not fighting distances. Give yourself an extra day only if you want to get out on the water, and if you are planning the Dry Tortugas, that is a full day on its own and needs booking well ahead.

Where to stay in Key West

I stayed at what was then the Westin Key West Resort & Marina. It now trades as Opal Key Resort & Marina, so if you look for my hotel under the old name, you will not find it.

Address: 245 Front Street

It is right in the thick of Old Town by Mallory Square, and its genuine advantage is that the ferry to Sunset Key leaves from its marina, which is the private island beach I found a day before we left. That ferry is the reason to stay there. Its real disadvantage is that it puts you directly in the cruise ship view, which is why I complained.

The broader lesson from my trip is not which hotel to choose; it is to look at a harbor map before you book anything and work out what you will be looking at.

Key West FAQ

If you have been more recently than I have, tell me in the comments whether I have been unfair to the place. I am genuinely open to being argued out of this one.

How about you? Does anyone else have any Key West stories to share?

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