CITY Issue 55 - (Page 68) ROAD TRIP A NEW CHORD If the Florida Keys invoke images of fanny-packed tourists and manatee mailboxes, you’re in for a surprise. Raquel Pelzel finds 127 miles of refined, melt-your-senses luxury. Calm. quiet bay, twinkling under the sun’s refracting light that dissolves into fingers of orange and peach, and endlessly stretches across a cloudless horizon. uiet, interrupted only by clinks of glass, and the hushed faraway mumbles of conversation. Contentment, brought on from a meal of freshcaught local Florida hogfish accented by a buttery and citrus-spiked meuniere sauce. Candles fl icker behind me from tables on the two-story balcony of Pierre’s, a plantation home–cum-restaurant on Islamorada. I walk along the shore, completely fulfilled by the setting, the meal, the smell of sand and water, the sky’s post-coital glow. This is the new Florida Keys. Sophisticated and charming, revered for stylishly secluded resorts and hype-worthy food, the Keys have finally graduated from spring break–Fantasy Fest destination to a place you actuCITY 68 TY ally want to get away to. -mile chain of small islands linked by bridges, the Keys are legendary for kitsch — where else can you can visit the original frican ueen steamship and pay homage to the nine-foottall underwater bronze statue, the Christ of the byss, in one cross-highway swoop? Several entrepreneurial hoteliers and restaurateurs, however, are starting to belt out a different tune; mix in swaying palm trees with a few stellar sunsets and you’ve got a getaway worth getting to. The best way to begin a visit to the Conch Republic is with the best conch fritter, and to get them, you’ve got to know about Card Sound Road between the mainland outpost of Homestead and the first island of the Keys, Key Largo. Card Sound splits off from US- and meanders through native Florida habitat, meaning mangroves and marshes in lieu of US- ’s
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