During our holiday in 2007 we visited the Florida Keys. We booked in advance for a 3 night stay at the ragged edge resort on Islamorada.

We chose the keys as we wanted to be somewhere peaceful and quiet on the actual day of our wedding anniversary rather than the hustle and bustle of New York (which we had visited a few days earlier) and somewhere we had not visited before.

We drove from Miami to the keys and had been used to the 2 and 3 lane Highways and Interstates now we were on US 1 a single lane road behind a slow moving truck loaded with construction materials.

It was our own fault. We hadn’t taken much notice of the distances involved in driving too and through the keys.

We just assumed we would drive out of Miami, cross a few bridges and arrive at our destination shouldn’t take us long, wrong.

It’s like most things in America everything is on a big scale and the distances between the keys and therefore the bridges linking them are no exception.

 When we arrived at our destination a feeling of dejavu came over us both (not for the first time on this holiday). Before we got the Florida bug our annual family holidays were to a Greek island and that’s were we felt we were, on a Greek island. The buildings looked as though they belonged in Greek holiday resort.

Our accommodation, the ground floor of a 2-story villa, was no more than 30 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. The view was breath taking and instantly reminded us of a small Mediterranean village fishing port.

The tranquillity was a world removed from New York and the theme parks you associate with Florida. We spent a lot of our time talking to vacationers and taking walks around the island.

We visited Key West not a short drive but well worth the journey.

 We had intended to find a restaurant on the day of our anniversary but as we had spent the day relaxing and had one or two drinks by the time we decided to take ourselves off to a restaurant neither of us could be bothered to drive.

We decided to walk to the nearest bar and check out the menu.

The pub we came across had the un-reassuring name of Chilly Willies and appeared not to fall into the category of the type of venue Carol had intended to celebrate her wedding anniversary.

How wrong we were. The food was excellent, some of the best we had ever eaten and the service was second to none.

 If you want to see a totally different side to Florida and want nothing more to do than relax and chill out then I can thoroughly recommend the Florida Keys.

Brian Pearson