Anyone who has lived in a coastal port knows that life there is dictated by the tides. The water floods in, bringing nutrients from the sea with it. The water flows out, depleted, to be renewed by the seemingly endless riches the ocean holds. If you live on the coast and expect to make a living from what the sea brings, you need to align yourself with the tides.
In any port city visited by a cruise ship, there exists a section of town within easy walking distance of the ship. We call it the Cruise Radius.
The Cruise Radius is much like the tidal zone, the area left dry at low tide and submerged at high tide. It results from the daily flood of cash brought by cruise ship tourists and creates an area of town quite distinct from the rest. Inside the Cruise Radius, life is dominated by the selling of T-shirts, duty-free jewelry, and cheap drinks. Ironically, the charm that initially drew travelers to an area is often completely obliterated by the Cruise Radius. And even more strange is the fact that the cruise ship passengers seem more attracted to the Cruise Radius than to the rest of the area. Fortunately for the rest of us, the Cruise Radius tends to be neatly contained by limited shore time and leaves the rest of the town relatively undisturbed.
Key West, Fla., is a town dominated (at least at first blush) by its Cruise Radius. But like most places worth seeing, you need to dig a little to find treasure.
At the local chamber of commerce, we discovered the Pelican Pathway walking tour of the city's architecture. The small town of Key West is home to more than 3000 structures on the National Historic Register, more than any other city in Florida and exploring the backstreets and cobblestone walkways in search of great architecture is a great way to see the real Key West.
Along the Pathway we passed numerous hidden restaurants, art galleries, and writer's studios, the highlight of which was the small and colorful Kalypso Gallery, just down the street from the Hemingway House. The owner of the gallery showed us where to find the real Key West treasures when he pulled a small cardboard map from behind his counter and proceeded to circle every local hotspot on the map. These were the unadvertised places, the kind of places one can only find by living there, the kind of places that would take us out of the Cruise Radius and into the heart of the diverse, beautiful and truly charming Key West.
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