He even opened a restaurant and nightclub named after one of his biggest hits, Margaritaville, at 424a Fleming Street, Key West (001 305 292 1435).KEY FESTIVALSThe Keys are renowned for their festivals: for listings see /calendarofevents. Here are two that sum up Key life. Each year in July, Hemingway Days, a festival devoted to the writer, culminates in a “Hemingway look-alike contest”, said to attract competitors from all over the world.Florida’s answer to New Orleans’ Mardi Gras is Key West’s zany annual Fantasy Fest ( ); this year’s event runs from 22-31 October 2004. Expect outrageous parades, contests and raucous festivities.KEY NOTESFor more information call the Florida Keys and Key West Development Council (01564 794555; ). The most useful guidebooks are Time Out’s Miami, Orlando and the Florida Keys or Lonely Planet’s Miami and the Florida Keys. TRAVELLERS’ GUIDENo airport in the Keys could handle direct flights from the UK. Miami is the obvious jumping-off point, with direct flights from Heathrow on British Airways (0870 850 9850; ), Virgin Atlantic (0870 380 2007; ) and American Airlines (08457 789 789; ). Fares for non-stop flights to Miami in September and October start at £453 return with British Airways: November and early December from £320.Key Largo is little more than an hour’s drive away from Miami airport, and Key West less than four hours.If you don’t want to drive yourself, Greyhound buses (001 214 849 8100; ) run four times a day between Miami airport and Marathon and Key West.

Or fly via Miami to Key West on American Airlines for about £30-£50 more than the BA fare.You can build your own fly-drive package by combining a competitive air fare and good car-hire rate; try Holiday Autos (0870 400 4447; ). But specialist travel agents may be able to beat this with special “package” air fares.For a more formal inclusive trip, several operators have programmes to the Keys. For example, British Airways Holidays (0870 24 33 406; /holidays) offers seven nights at Hawk’s Cay Resort from £799 per person based on September departures, or £200 less if you travel in the first 11 days of December 2004. Prices for the Cheeca Lodge are £829 and £644 for the same date periods. These rates include flights on BA from Heathrow to Miami, car rental and accommodation without breakfast.

Or consider a two-centre package combining the Keys with Miami; Virgin Holidays (0871 222 1232; /holidays) has an impressive three nights at the Winter Haven in South Beach and a week in Key West, departing in late October or November, for £713 including flights from Heathrow on Virgin Atlantic, accommodation and car rental.. “From the outset, Dal?as attracted to industrial culture and as early as the 1920s extolled film, photography and advertisements,” says the curator of Dal?nd Mass Culture, the new exhibition starting next month at St Petersburg’s Salvador Dal?useum. Destination of the week: Salvador Dal?n Sunshine City
“From the outset, Dal?as attracted to industrial culture and as early as the 1920s extolled film, photography and advertisements,” says the curator of Dal?nd Mass Culture, the new exhibition starting next month at St Petersburg’s Salvador Dal?useum. Beginning on 1 October and running through to 30 January next year, it covers the surrealist’s time in the US in the decade before the Second World War.

Dal?orked in Hollywood and later on the New York World’s Fair of 1939.The museum (001 727 823 3767; ) opens 9.30am-5.30pm daily except on Thursdays (when it opens until 8pm) and Sundays (when it opens at noon). Admission is $13 (£8), though you can save a couple of dollars on this by downloading a voucher on the website, or by turning up after 5pm on Thursday, when the price is $5 (£3).St Petersburg, on the Gulf Coast of Florida, calls itself the Sunshine City because the sun fails to shine on an average of only five days a year.Bargain of the week: Amtrak’s Rail Sale America’s national railroad corporation, Amtrak, is desperate for customers to stem its heavy losses. Anyone hoping to combine a trip to Florida with a visit to the cities of the North-East can capitalise on this by checking out the Rail Sale offers on its website, amtrak. This offers absurdly cheap tickets in limited numbers for specific journeys. This week, for example, one-way seats between Washington DC and either Tampa or Miami are available for $37 (£22) and $42 (£25) respectively.Florida is also covered by the good-value USA Rail Pass: East. This week, prices for the pass fell to $210 (£125) for 15 days or $270 (£160) for 30 days. This covers every Amtrak line east of Denver, including those in Florida..