(Key West, Florida)...My latest travels found me in Key West and the Florida Keys. I liked it, despite it essentially being a series of mangrove swamps joined together by a thin road. I heartily recommend the restaurant Café Solé (1209 Southard, at Frances; http://www.cafesole.com) for a type of local fish called a hog snapper, moist and tasty in a relatively light cream sauce with garlic.
The manager soon was off during Key West's off season to travel around Europe. He had never been, so a map was drawn to highlight some of my favourites — Evora in Portugal; Graz in Austria; Tihany in Hungary — and he did promise to send an email on the strict proviso that he would not if he was hopefully having too much fun. I was greedy when I to finish ordered the crème brulée, but I rarely can resist this queen of desserts. The town itself is...I will use the word "evocative," especially if one keeps to one block either side of Duval St.
I was told that even on Duval St. the locals like the stores that the tourists come to, too, and I just nodded politely. Martin is a pleasant Aston Villa soccer-club supporter that I met in a bar on said street, and he still believes — I think I understood him correctly — that David O'Leary is the answer to its managerial problems and heretofore lack of success. We agreed to agree that this might be the case and hoped that one Graeme Souness never darkens the doors of either his club, or mine, West Ham United.
Our two teams play in similar colours, and we had some pointless conversation about this. It rained on the Tuesday (May 9), the first precipitation, so the hotel concierge gleefully informed me, since December. Between appointments at hotels, tourist sites and restaurants for lunches with tourism officials, I managed to do some bird-watching. The Key West Botanical Gardens (5120 College Rd., http://www.keywestbotanicalgarden.org), actually on neighbouring Stock Island, was deserted in the rain.
The garden, according to its literature, is the United States' only frost-free tropical moist forest garden, which seemed to me like three of four unnecessary qualifiers too many. I asked the volunteer at the desk if anything had been seen. I should stop asking vague questions such as this, but it is well known that the site gets visits from rare birds. On further probing, he did reply that they do receive a few sparrows by the door. In a downpour I did see a small flock of White-crowned pigeons, usually resident in the West Indies but with a few communities along the keys. The inclement conditions had the joyous result of not making these shy birds fly off the moment I walked out into the open.
Elsewhere in the Keys, I saw a Black-whiskered vireo at Dagny Johnson Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park (http://www.floridastateparks.org/keylargohammock) on Key Largo, which was polite enough to be right by the entrance. This dull bird once was lumped in with the Red-eyed vireo as a subspecies, but for some time now no more. Its "black whisker" is a line extending from somewhere betwixt beak and eye and through its cheek and was very evident, despite some bird guides suggesting otherwise.
Mosquitoes ran rampant. On Key Colony Golf Course, I saw two Burrowing owls (that's the bird photographed above), also a new species for me. This was particularly gratifying as I took a chance on seeing one there inside of at its widely known site at Marathon golf course, which was a further 15 miles from my hotel, the wonderful Hawk's Cay (http://www.hawkscay.com) on Duck Key. After all, with thoughts to Oscar Wilde, one golf course is much like any other, and all are sites of good walks spoiled.
Richie Moretti is a nice person and runs the Turtle Hospital (2396 Overseas Hwy.; http://www.turtlehospital.org) on Marathon. I had a tour. Loggerhead turtle are massive, and the rare Olive Ridley turtle will, apparently, eat anything, including volunteers' fingers. The turtles were suffering from all sorts of ailments, including bites from sharks, cuts from propellors, entanglements in fishing lines and a particularly gruesome Herpes virus called fibropapilloma. The surgery here is high tech and staffed by trained volunteer surgeons wielding laser guns. Displays showing stomach contents of dead turtles should shame us all. One included a plastic glove that looked as though it could have been plucked from its packaging yesterday.
I then had lunch at Keys Fisheries Market & Marina (at the end of 35th St., bayside, in Marathon; http://www.keysfisheries.com) with owner Joe. He has stopped complaining: about dimwitted luncheon-goers throwing french fries to the Ring-billed gulls and Double-crested cormorants; of the inability to hire U.S. citizens; of the near-impossibility of hiring Caribbean-coast Nicaraguans, of which he has the phone numbers of many who would drop everything today to work in his fish-packing plant tomorrow; and of the amount of paper products said plant and restaurant consume during a working week. The signature dish is a lobster reuben for $13.95.
It is stuffed with lobster Joe himself catches, and it is delicious. More than 10,000 have been served, a running tally being kept over the serving hatch. As nearly everyone orders this, one of his longserving attendants came up with the idea of linking names — celebrities; animals; plants, etc. — with orders. This is endearing. I was Ocelot, it being an animal day, and after 10 minutes, I heard the order for Ocelot, c'mon get it. Joe said this was particularly amusing on "celebrity" day, when the uninitiated suddenly do wonder if Tom Cruise is on the premises. Isn't Orson Welles dead? somebody else would ask, with just a hint of worry.