A Honeymoon in the Florida Keys from The World's Greatest Honeymoons

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• The Florida Keys •

First thing you’ll notice when you visit the Keys? The laid-back atmosphere, a million miles distant from hectic big cities and crowded theme parks.

An archipelago of about 1700 small coral islands, the Keys start just south of Miami, travel in a gradual southwestern arc to Key West, and then extend to the uninhabited Dry Tortugas. Most of the islands are uninhabited. The most-visited—Key Largo, Islamorada, Marathon, Big Pine & the Lower Keys, and Key West—are reachable from the mainland via the 125-mile Overseas Highway and its 43 bridges. Each island offers its own unique personality, along with a “custom blend” of historic museums, cultural activities, outdoor recreation, wildlife, fishing, diving and other water sports, shopping, restaurants, and nightlife (or the complete lack of it).

The Keys' endless vistas are dominated by emerald-green lagoons, deep-blue seas, nodding palms, rustling pines, and olive-green mangroves. The coastal waters of the entire chain, including shallow water flats, mangrove islets and coral reefs, comprise the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. So get set to encounter magnificent wildlife: white herons, roseate spoonbills, pelicans, sea gulls, ospreys, bright-colored fish, turtles, and much more.

Florida Keys Honeymoon Splurge: Sign on for a daylong seaplane sightseeing adventure. You'll travel from the Upper Keys out to the Dry Tortugas, about 70 miles away, landing in the waters off Fort Jefferson, largest brick building in the Western Hemisphere. After touring the ancient fortification, the Captain will provide you with snorkeling gear and soft drinks (feel free to bring along a picnic prepared by your hotel and a bottle of wine). »»Read about other honeymoon splurges around the world

The Florida Keys Honeymoon Ideas

Key Largo: The island’s star attraction is John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, the nation’s first underwater preserve, which protects 55 varieties of delicate corals and more than 600 species of fish. The Park also offers scuba, snorkeling, and glass-bottom boat excursions to the coral reef. Spiegel Grove, one of the largest vessels ever scuttled to create an artificial reef, is extremely popular with divers. Other activities include ecology tours of the Everglades, "swim with the dolphins" tours, a casino boat, boat rentals, and an alligator farm. There's a fair amount of night life, and plenty of restaurants. Perhaps the most unusual offering in Key Largo is an underwater motel—part of a submerged research station—where you can spend the night, with full amenities, watching sea creatures meander by. BTW, Key Largo gave its name to a famous 1948 movie starring that legendary couple, Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall (parts of it were filmed here).

Also see: | Lee County Coast | Miami | Miami Neighborhoods | Orlando | Palm Beach | Paradise Coast | Sarasota | Space Coast | St. Augustine |

Islamorada: The centerpiece of an island group known as the Purple Isles, Islamorada is famed as a fishing destination, offering diverse fishing and the Keys' largest offshore and shallow-water fleet. According to the International Game Fish Association, the Keys as a whole hold more sport-fishing records than any other fishing destination in the world. Ocean-goers can find sailfish, marlin, dolphin fish, kingfish, snapper, barracuda and grouper; shallow coastal waters offer tarpon, bonefish, and redfish, among other species. If you're interested in geology, at nearby Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological State Park you can view cross-sections of ancient coral and stroll trails that wind through tropical hardwood hammock.

Marathon: The geographical heart of the Florida Keys, midway between Key Largo and Key West, Marathon is a 10-mile-long city situated on three keys (Vaca, Fat Deer, and Grassy). It's home to 63-acre Crane Point, where important historical and archaeological sites contain evidence of pre-Columbian and prehistoric Bahamian artifacts, a rare tropical hardwood grove, and a museum devoted to the region's natural history. Beautiful Sombrero Beach, on the Atlantic, is a popular sun spot. From April to October, Loggerhead Turtles use the beach as a nesting site, coming ashore at night, laying eggs, and then returning to the sea. Rising at first light and strolling the beach in search of the nests is fun (needless to say, please don't touch the nests). Another good beach is Coco Plum—it's adjacent to a wetlands area. And at the Dolphin Research Center you can swim and interact with dolphins.

Seven Mile Bridge: Connecting Knight's Key to Little Duck Key, the bridge is actually only 6.79 miles long, but it's still one of the world’s longest segmental bridges. And don’t just drive across: get off at the Knight’s Key Visitors Center to walk (or take the tram) over a section of an earlier bridge to tiny Pigeon Key, with its well-preserved early Florida buildings and dandy museum chronicling the construction of the Bridge. Many of the islands have modernized over the years, but this tiny coral islet has remained largely unchanged. As locals like to say, Pigeon Key is "the Keys the way they used to be."

Local Comfort Food: What else could it be but Florida's state pie, the Key Lime Pie? Nearly every single restaurant in the Keys makes this goodie, with as many variations as there are eating establishments (the New York Times once referred to Highway 1, from Key Largo to Key West, as the "Key Lime Pie Trail"). The basic recipe calls for lime juice, egg yolks, and sweet condensed milk topped with swirls of meringue and baked in a simple graham cracker crust. There are, of course, endless variations—but a true Key Lime Pie must be made with the small, yellow, tart, uniquely-flavored key lime, not the bigger green Persian lime. Even if you're not a dessert person, you've got to try the pie once while you're here so you can go home and say you did. »»Check out other comfort foods in the USA and around the world

Big Pine Key & The Lower Keys. These islands are noted for lush vegetation: get prepared for loads of bougainvillea, orchids, frangipani, hibiscus, as well as banyan and mahogany trees, sea grape, mangrove, and all kinds of tropical fruit trees. Visit Bahia Honda State Park, whose ocean-side Sandspur Beach was once voted the nation’s second-best beach (or try bay-side Calusa Beach, with its see-through turquoise waters and white coral sand). The 84,000-acre National Key Deer Refuge protects not only the endangered miniature Key deer, which grow to be only about 2-½ feet tall, but also 22 other endangered or threatened species of plants and animals, 5 of which are found nowhere else on the planet. Big Pine, No Name, and other Keys host the 124,000-acre Great White Heron National Refuge—a fabulous place for wildlife observation and photography (you'll have to rent a boat or take a guided tour to get here). Among many spectacular dive sites hereabouts: a submerged 210-foot island freighter, the Adolphus Busch, is now an artificial reef, providing habitat for sea creatures and fun for divers.

Key West: The final stop on the Overseas Highway, Key West is where the land meets the sea amid 19th-century charm and contemporary attractions. America's southernmost city—closer to Cuba than Miami—it's a quaint place with palm-studded streets, historic hundred-year-old gingerbread mansions, and a relaxed citizenry who call themselves “conchs,” just like the mollusk.

Two-thirds of the Keys' population resides on this island, so there's much to see and do. Mallory Square, on the historic waterfront, is action central; surrounding attractions let you pet a live shark at the Key West Aquarium, wander through the shady Sculpture Garden, go shopping for fabulous shells and jewelry, munch on conch fritters. You’ll definitely want to stick around for the famed nightly Sunset Celebration, complete with jugglers, tight-rope walkers, fire eaters, and that glorious setting sun.

Everybody seems to enjoy Key West's Mel Fisher Maritime Museum. A longtime island resident, treasure-hunter Fisher recovered more than $400 million in gold and silver from a 17th-century Spanish galleon that sank 45 miles west of Key West. Some of the galleon's gold bars, emeralds, doubloons, and pieces of eight can be seen here, as well as numerous artifacts from local shipwrecks. You might also give the Pirate Soul Museum a whirl—it contains genuine pirate artifacts, including an actual swashbuckling sword used by Blackbeard himself.

Key West is known far and wide for its nightlife. Restaurants abound—most featuring terrific local seafood like conch chowder, stone crab claws, Florida lobster, shrimp...and, of course, you must finish your meal with a slice of that Key Lime Pie. Culturally oriented? Theater, musical concerts, symphony, and other entertainments await your visit. Or perhaps, like many who come here, you prefer to party. If so, you're in luck: the "Duval Crawl" is a popular phrase used to describe evening jaunts up and down the island's main street while sampling the numerous bars and clubs.

Speaking of Duval Street, it's a daytime treat as well, boasting a huge number of shops, galleries, restaurants, and even a few attractions. Visit the island’s oldest house (1829), with its authentic period furniture, outdoor “beehive oven,” and garden filled with banana and lime trees. Walk among hundreds of living butterflies at the Butterfly & Nature Conservancy. A block off Duval is the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum, where you can see descendants of the author’s six-toed cats and peek at the study where he wrote some of his greatest works, including A Farewell to Arms.

Dry Tortugas: For an adventure you’ll always remember, hop a high-speed ferry from Key West for the 70-mile trip to Dry Tortugas National Park (seaplane excursions are also available). The islands were first discovered in 1513 by Ponce De Leon, who named them in honor of the huge number of sea turtles (tortugas) he found there; the word "dry" was added later, acknowledging the islands' lack of fresh water. Far from civilization, the Tortugas host a fabulous collection of seabirds, including the aptly-named Magnificent Frigatebird. Ferry trips here are an all-day affair. After exploring handsome Civil War-era Fort Jefferson (on the National Register of Historic Places), you’ll have lunch on a beautiful beach, and then spend the afternoon kayaking, snorkeling, or just soaking up the beauty of this remote paradise.

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Photos: Visit Florida (Couple on the Beach, Florida Palm); National Park Service (Dry Tortugas); Florida Keys News Bureau with Bob Care (Key Largo Dive), Bob Krist (Islamorada Bonefishing, Bahia Honda, Key Lime Pie), and Andy Newman (Seven Mile Bridge, Key West Harbor).