Key West Gay Culture

The Mel Fisher Maritime Museum is at 200 Greene Street in Key West, about 0.1 miles from Duval Street. Its main exhibit is the 1622 Fleet, with gold, silver and coins recovered from the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de Atocha, which Mel Fisher and his crew found in 1985. Other exhibits cover the slave trade, including the Henrietta Marie, a slave ship that sank in 1700, as well as pirates of the Caribbean. Conservation lab tours show how recovered artifacts are preserved.

The museum is open daily from 10 a.m., with the last ticket sold at 4 p.m., so it works as a daytime stop before an evening on Duval Street.

The Hemingway Home & Museum is at 907 Whitehead Street in Old Town Key West, about 0.1 miles from 801 Bourbon Bar on Duval Street. It’s the house of Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize-winning author, and it displays mementos from his life, including photos and a wall display of his fishing boat, the Pilar. Cats live on the grounds, and some are descendants of Snow White, a six-toed cat a ship’s captain gave Hemingway.

The museum is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for walk-in visits, and guided tours are also offered.