There are also excursions to the Tortugas by seaplane

(There are also excursions to the Tortugas by seaplane.)Several boats take visitors out to see the sun setting: a spectacular show when the weather conditions are right There are a number of land- borne ways of enjoying it, too. Every evening, crowds gather in Mallory Square, just by the shore and with a great view to the west. Street entertainers eat fire and make pigs do tricks as the crowd waits for the hallowed event. A more comfortable if less atmospheric way of watching the sunset is from the rooftop bar of the Holiday Inn on Duval Street.There are so many good restaurants in Key West that it is impossible to visit them all in a week. The four-hour trip cost $300 for six of us.A longer voyage is on the Yankee Freedom ferry to the Dry Tortuga Islands, 70 miles west. The boat leaves Key West at 8am and returns at 7pm, with a stop for a swim and a picnic lunch at Fort Jefferson, a hexagonal island fort begun in 1846 and used as a military prison in the Civil War.

There are many rare sea birds to look out for, as well as the turtles that give the islands their name. The trip costs $79 for adults, $49 for children, $69 for seniors. We peered into a mangrove swamp before catching easily enough fish for our supper. They are better for lounging than bathing, because if you go into the water you have to wear sandals as protection against the coral underfoot.Our more sedentary party went out for half a day with Captain Vicki Impallomeni, a feisty seawoman who knows where the dolphins are playing and the snapper are biting. The beaches, mainly on the south side, are covered with sand regularly brought in by truck. Even if they did you would not hear them, because most evenings the place is packed with young people listening to the rock band on stage. For more authentic local colour, you will do better at the louche places nearer the harbour; the Hog’s Breath, Rumrunners and the Schooner Wharf.Other houses are worth visiting.

President Truman enjoyed coming here to play poker and escape from Washington. The officer’s mess at the naval base was converted to a holiday White House and has now been restored as it was in the 1940s and 1950s, with Truman memorabilia explained by another team of laid-back guides.When indoor activities pall, there are many other ways of enjoying the sea in Key West. Sloppy Joe’s is the most celebrated but it is no longer on its original spot. In 1937 it moved a few hundred yards to Duval Street, the city’s most lively artery.

There is still a bar – Captain Tony’s – at the old location, and this was where the writer first met Martha Gellhorn.Do not go to Sloppy Joe’s expecting a Hemingway experience, with sea dogs telling tales of doughty confrontations with giant barracuda. Just after breakfast on the morning after our house tour we recognised our guide slipping out of a bar, face glowing and no doubt well fortified for another day of coping with the likes of us.Several bars in the city vie for the reputation of being the place where Hemingway hung out. It was in Cuba, where he moved with Martha Gellhorn after divorcing Pauline, that he had about 50 of them.Hemingway was as famous for drinking as writing, and the guides try to keep up the legend. Cat souvenirs abound in the gift shop, although in reality he never seems to have kept more than two cats in this house. They were divorced not long afterwards.The garden is inhabited by scores of cats, some with six toes – a peculiar deformity inherited from Hemingway’s time. Guides in Bermuda shorts and pony- tails (tips encouraged) show you around and tell the tale of the large concrete swimming pool, which Pauline had installed as a surprise for Ernest only to find that he resented the expense. Its sense of remoteness has long appealed to authors and artists, Ernest Hemingway among them.