I didn’t have much of a plan that morning — just a destination and a full tank of gas. After all, the best trips are the ones we don’t overthink. No big plans, no expectations.
I had no idea what I was heading into. By 7 a.m., the traffic was already unbearable — testing my nerves and my patience, making me question my decision, and wonder if maybe I should’ve just stayed in bed instead.
It started with a long, restless drive. Miles of cars barely moving, others speeding past, everyone caught in the same strange rush to get nowhere fast. The city’s chaos clung to me like static, unwilling to let go.
Then, somewhere along the way, everything shifted. The traffic loosened its grip, the road finally opened up, and the view transformed. Nature appeared everywhere — and then, suddenly, water shimmered on both sides, endless and inviting.
I thought I’d feel terrified driving there but I wasn’t. The air felt lighter, the pace slower, as if I’d quietly crossed an invisible border into another world.
My first stop was Key Largo, where I pulled over for Cuban coffee — the kind that comes in a tiny cup but hits like an awakening. The kind, as one local said, that makes you bounce off the walls. Black, strong, unapologetic.
I sat there for a while, listening to the mix of accents around me, people talking in different shades of English. There was no rush, no hurry to move on — just that sense of being suspended in time, between sky and sea.
I remembered the 1948 Bogart and Bacall movie Key Largo, but this place felt nothing like it. People were calm and kind, with no tension or hint of a storm on the horizon.
The drive felt long — over two hours from the first Key to the last — but not in a bad way. Every bridge felt like a threshold, every Key its own small universe, sun-faded and slightly surreal.
Breathing in the salt and sea-soaked light at Key Fiesta
By the time I reached Key West, the air smelled of salt and old stories. Hemingway’s house hid quietly behind its tall brick fence, while chickens wandered freely, as if they owned the streets. Tourists and locals mingled on foot or by bike, moving to the same easy rhythm that wrapped the whole island in warmth.
There was something strangely familiar about it — maybe the hot air, maybe the chickens. It reminded me of my grandmother’s place in Dobrogea, where I spent my summers as a child. The same lazy afternoons, the same unhurried pace, the same feeling that time didn’t matter much.
I didn’t expect to like it this much — but I did. I didn’t expect to feel so at home — but I did.
It’s funny how the places we don’t expect much from can hit you the hardest. This one did — with its old movie echoes and the quiet whisper of a restless writer who once found his escape in this sea-soaked lightness.
Where six lanes become one — from chaos to calm, from noise to silence — where stress and tiredness melt away.