Which cruise-ship excursions are worth the money and time?Īdding to Key West’s charm are the wild roosters and hens that roam the city, dodging traffic and walking through open-air restaurants and neighborhoods like they own the place.Silversea is the ultimate ultra-luxury luxury liner.Madagascar boasts plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth.

Here’s how you can see South America by sea.

Sandhill cranes rule the roost in Nebraska each spring.

Free-range roosters are a common sight in Key West. In the Historic District, beautiful vintage wooden homes with intricate gingerbread trim, side-hinged louvered shutters and covered balconies are painted in pastel shades and are surrounded by lush foliage. It’s a charming, colorful place in more ways than its past. In the 1800s, the city enjoyed thriving salt manufacturing, fishing and shipwreck salvaging industries. Key West once served as a base of operations against pirates.

A mock sea battle between the Conch Republic and the Coast Guard takes place during the fictional republic’s 41st anniversary celebration. You can walk down the streets of Key West carrying an alcoholic beverage and no one cares as long as it’s in a can or a plastic cup (no glass, please).

While the Conch Republic never materialized as an actual country, it still exists as a state of mind, symbolizing Key West’s, offbeat, nonconformist nature where the locals enjoy an anything-goes lifestyle supported by a healthy tourist industry. Today, the city of Key West has turned this event into an annual weeklong party that celebrates the birth of the Conch Republic. Infuriated Keys residents seceded from the union to protest being treated like a foreign country and the massive traffic jam that temporarily cut them off from the rest of America. Forty-one years ago, on April 23, 1982, a Border Patrol blockade of the Florida Keys in search of drugs and undocumented immigrants led to the birth of the Conch Republic.

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