Miami - Florida Keys

Far and away the most exciting city in Florida, Miami is a stunning and often intoxicatingly beautiful place. Awash with sunlight-intensified natural colors, there are moments when the neon-flashed South Beach skyline glows in the warm night and the palm trees sway in the breeze when a better-looking city is hard to imagine.

Welcome to warm stretches of sunny shores and ice-cream-colored buildings! Even so, people, not climate or landscape, are what make Miami unique. Half of the population of two million is Hispanic, the vast majority Cuban. There's plenty of family fun and adventures to be had, and with all the authentic Cuban flavor, you'll think you stepped right into Havana.

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Miami

Just a century ago, Miami was a swampy outpost of mosquito-tormented settlers. The arrival of the railroad in 1896 gave the city its first fixed land-link with the rest of the continent, and cleared the way for the Twenties property boom. In the Fifties, Miami Beach became a celebrity-filled resort area, just as thousands of Cubans fleeing the regime of Fidel Castro began arriving in mainland Miami.

The Sixties and Seventies brought decline, and Miami's reputation in the Eighties as the vice capital of the USA was at least partly deserved. As the cop show Miami Vice so glamorously underlined, drug smuggling was endemic, and in 1980 the city had the highest murder rate in America.

Since then, though, much has changed for two very different reasons. First, the gentrification of South Beach helped make tourism the lifeblood of the local economy again in the early Nineties. Second, the city's determined wooing of Latin America brought rapid investment, both domestic and international; many US corporations run their South American operations from Miami and certain neighborhoods, such as Key Biscayne, are now home to thriving communities of expat Peruvians, Colombians, and Venezuelans.

Florida Keys

The Florida Keys were first inhabited by the Native American Calusa Tribe. The Calusa name means "fierce people" and tribal members once numbered approximately 50,000. At one time they controlled most all of South Florida. In 1521 Spanish Explorers led by Ponce de Leon first encountered the Calusa people, when they visited South Florida for the first time. After a long history of being passed from Spanish to British control the island was finally purchased in 1821 by John Simonton, who successfully lobbied the United States government to establish a naval base there. The city of Key West is now one of the most popular tourist destinations in the country.

The Westin Key West Resort & Marina

The Westin Key West Resort & Marina in the heart of "old town" Key West, Florida.

Our spectacular south Florida setting is situated in the west end on beautiful Sunset Pier and within walking distance of famous Duval Street.The Sunset Key West is accessible only by 24-hour daily launch service from the Westin Key West Resort & Marina. The launch ride is only about ten minutes each way.

Once the launch arrives at The Sunset Key Island, you will be transformed to another world with colorful tropical blooms of bougainvillea, hibiscus and frangipani. Your cares will slip away once you take in your first deep breath of fresh ocean air and your eyes rest on the distant blue horizon of the Gulf of Mexico.

Lying off the coast of Key West is a beautiful and secluded tropical island. Here turquoise blue water caresses a white sandy beach. Palm trees sway to the rhythm of the Caribbean beat. Gardens burst forth in colors only Monet could capture. And the sunsets literally take your breath away.

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