Florida

• California in a Fortnight? - California
• Frankly, my dear, you'll love it - Charleston
• Blown away by the Windy City - Chicago
• Blown away by Chicago - Chicago
• Haunted by Hemingway - Florida
• We have the keys to unlock Florida - Florida
• My Love Match with Las Vegas - Las Vegas
• The town that cloned Europe - Las Vegas
• A Chorus of Angels - Los Angeles
• LA: An actresses guide - Los Angeles
• The Stars Bite Back - Los Angeles
• Hotel of high fashion - Miami
• Miami Spice - Miami
• Alien Town: Roswell - New Mexico
• How the kids went Cajan - New Orleans
• Seta and the City - New York
• Glamour by the sea - Santa Barbara
• Celebrity Hotels - USA
• Escape to Sundance - Utah

CLAD IN GRUBBY SHORTS and baggy shirt, a youngish Ernest Hemingway, clean-shaven and holding aloft a monstrous 500lb Marlin, one of his legendary catches, was depicted in the photograph on the wall.

Beneath, Japanese tourists jostled to examine a fishing rod, custom-made in Havana and a birthing stool used by the corpulent Hemingway to sit on when fishing.

I was inside Hemingway House, the Florida home of America’s literary heavyweight in Old Town, Key West. It was not extraordinarily beautiful, without much in the way of memorabilia, but it did have an intriguing atmosphere.

The tiny carriage house studio where Hemingway worked from 6am until noon every day is much the same as he left it.

Untouched for decades

There, his old typewriter, the keys untouched for decades, sits on an old oak table. The whitewashed walls are adorned with books, while a solitary fan, useless in the face of the sub-tropical humidity, whirrs away.

Hemingway didn’t seek out a writing haven in Key West; it was purely by accident he came at 32 to this tiny island.

He pitched up from Havana with second wife Pauline to collect a car and drive north. The delivery was late, so the dealer put them up in Casa Antigua. Ernest soon discovered one or two bars and never left.

But in 1931 there certainly weren’t the 300 bars there are today - including one at which clothes are optional and gay-only bars. Sloppy Joe’s, a former warehouse, became Hemingway’s hang-out, so I wasn’t surprised to find streams of tourists sipping garish cocktails as they listened to live rock bands.

In search of something more authentic I ducked into the leafy streets to find the laidback Blue Heaven café, where Hemingway used to box and referee. Better still, I came across the brooding Green Parrot bar. It is the oldest drinking den in Key West and a former morgue, where old-timers sit alone at barstools, like extras in a tequila advert.

The solitude they enjoy was something Hemingway craved. But even in the Thirties it was hard to find. ‘I want to get to Key West and get away from it all,’ he would say to friends.

He completed A Farewell To Arms in this house – but he never really escaped. To deter visitors, he paid a man who looked like he suffered from leprosy to sit on his doorstep.

One particular female visitor paid $20 to the barman of Sloppy Joe’s for an introduction to Hemingway over Christmas in 1936. She was Martha Gellhorn, a glamorous, ambitious and talented reporter who had driven down to Key West with the sole aim of meeting its most famous writer.

As the pair sipped Papa Dobles (his significant drink of double daiquiris) Martha must have left a significant impression on the man, who preferred to drink with male buddies. For, a year later when they met again covering the Spanish Civil War, Hemingway initiated an affair.

In Martha he had found a literary sparring partner, an independent, gutsy woman so different from Pauline, the socialite, who insisted on hanging chandeliers in the ceiling of their house instead of fans, simply to impress friends.

Martha Gellhorn won her man to become the third Mrs Hemingway and she encouraged him to abandon Key West for Cuba. In less than ten years, Martha would lose him the same way she had acquired him, when a younger, pretty American journalist, Mary Welsh, was introduced to Hemingway in a London restaurant.

I had arrived after a three-hour drive south along U.S. Route 1, over the 100-mile archipelago of coral islands. The Keys are a strip of white beaches trimming pale blue water as far as the eye can see.

The first, Key Largo is the weekend destination for Miamians intent on diving, swimming and fishing. We pressed on past marinas, shell warehouses, bait shops and the Dolphin Research Centre.

Only 90 miles from Cuba, the feel of old town Key West is a mix of Caribbean, Charleston and New Orleans, whether it’s the white clapboard conch houses, palm trees, stray cockerels, cigar shops, galleries, seance theatres or voodoo dolls for sale in the oldest house on Whitehead Street.

To stay somewhere low-key with quiet luxury, Heron House, on Simonton Street is ideal.

A block from the bustle of the main thoroughfare, Duval Street, this privately-owned white clapboard inn has pretty garden rooms set in a quiet courtyard of palms, bougainvillea and orchids.

Dine alfresco on the freshest seafood

It’s safe and easy to walk or cycle, with plenty of stalls and outdoor cafes to combat dehydration. Outdoor dining is almost obligatory in restaurants where conch, stone crab and lobster are on most menus.

A favourite is Kelly’s Caribbean Bar and Grill on Whitehead Street, owned by Top Gun actress Kelly McGillis, that serves a mean Coconut Shrimp (£13) otherwise known as Key West Gold.

Look-alike competition

In summer Key West heats up for the Hemingway Days festival. There’s a Marlin Tournament, and a Papa Hemingway look-alike competition (contestants also endure Key Lime Pie eating and arm wrestling contests), while Lorian Hemingway, the writer’s granddaughter, judges a short story competition.

As for me, following in Hemingway’s fishing footsteps - I should have started saving before heading to Key West.

I discovered that while chartering a boat for deep-sea fishing is easy enough, I would need to set aside £400 a day to do so.

It does help, too, if you are physically robust. I fully expected to board any boat advertising marlin fishing, but skippers took one look at me and smirked, reminding me that a marlin is a Big Catch and I would have a whole lot of difficulty in bringing one aboard.

They pointed me in the direction of the party boats, which aren’t as dreadful as they sound. On a half-day trip with a dozen others you can catch a tan and something manageable such as yellow snapper that restaurants will clean for you.

If I wasn’t able to catch a Hemingway-style trophy fish, I decided to snorkel with a few.

Although the Atlantic is on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other, Key West did at times feel claustrophobic. This might well explain why most visitors are ready to take to the water on speed, fishing and motor boats, yachts and jet skis.

On the shore, I was disappointed to discover only pocket-sized patches of sand but, to compensate, the swimming was incredibly easy as waves break five miles out on the reef.

Plenty of boats carry tourists on half-day trips and so I joined a catamaran heading for Sand Key where, no sooner had I ducked under the water, than I was looking down on a nurse shark and barracudas.

Back on shore, I could see why Hemingway had fallen for the place. Today there may be yellow train tours rattling down every street and cruise-ships dumping 3,000 tourists for a quick run ashore, but Key West is shambling and charming.

Sure you’ll note a few drag queens and buskers but there are enough sandal-wearing old-timers who live, write, and paint here for it to remain a very real place.

Ernest would still have hated it, though.