3 Days in Key West: A Day-by-Day Plan With Hours, Fares and Parking

KEY WEST · THE THREE-DAY PLAN · MILE MARKER 0

The end of US-1 has a way of scrambling plans. Three days is what most visitors give Key West, and three days works on one condition: you decide before you arrive which of them belongs to the 8 a.m. boat heading west, and which two belong to a flat historic district you will barely leave on foot.

The island is built against the car. Street meters run $3.00 an hour, the Old Town Parking Garage $6 an hour or $48 a day plus tax, and the free Duval Loop bus calls at 18 stops through the same streets. Old Town is the largest wooden historic district in North America, and all of it is level.

On this page

• Is three days enough in Key West?What fits, and what gets cut
• A day 1 walking plan for Old TownMile Marker 0 to Mallory Square
• Key West’s best beach and the free busFort Zachary Taylor, $2.50 on foot
• Day 3: Dry Tortugas or the Middle KeysThe 8 a.m. ferry, or US-1 north
• Itinerary mistakes to avoidFerry timing and the parked car
• Key West on a cruise ship dayThe 2020 vote and SB 1194
• What the tickets and fees costFares for two, added up
• Sunrise and sunset by season10h49 in January, 13h33 in July
• What to skip with only three daysThe Miami drive and the Pigeon Key walk

Two of the three days are walking days in Old Town. The third is a big one: the boat west at 8 a.m., or US-1 north into the Middle Keys. Book the boat first and everything else arranges itself around it. Sight-by-sight detail lives in our Key West guide, and the seasonal picture in the best-time page.

Is three days enough in Key West?

Yes, for the island itself. Three days covers Old Town on foot, an afternoon on the best beach in Key West, one house-museum, and one full-day excursion. What it excludes is the pairing everyone attempts: Dry Tortugas and the Middle Keys. The ferry runs 8 a.m. to evening and the road north is 113 miles of Overseas Highway each way. Those two do not share a calendar square.

It suits the traveler who flies into EYW, sleeps within walking distance of Duval Street and wants a plan rather than a checklist. It suits a family chasing reef, state parks and a road trip a good deal less. Note too that the free Duval Loop does not serve the airport, so arrival and departure need a taxi or shuttle either way.

One booking decides the answer. The Yankee Freedom III leaves daily at 8 a.m. with check-in before 7:30 a.m., and it sells out weeks ahead: reserve at least a month out. Whichever date you get becomes your big day, and the two walking days fall on either side of it.

Key West Old Town on foot: day 1 of a three-day itinerary

Old Town is the largest wooden historic district in North America, and it is meant to be covered on foot or by bicycle. There are no hills to negotiate and no distances worth a car. Give the first morning to the streets themselves, going slowly, and save the ticketed interiors for day 2 when the pace has settled.

Put Mile Marker 0 on the morning route. The marker stands at the corner of Whitehead and Fleming streets, the southern terminus of a road that runs roughly 2,370 miles north to Fort Kent, Maine (published figures differ by about twenty miles, so treat it as an order of magnitude). It is a sign on a pole. People still queue to photograph it, and the queue moves fast.

The Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square runs every night of the year, weather permitting, beginning about two hours before sunset and carrying on until dusk has faded. That start time moves with the calendar: on January 15 the sun sets at 6:01 p.m., so the square fills from around four. On July 15 sunset is 8:19 p.m. and nothing much happens before six.

Parking is what turns a good day 1 into an expensive one. Meters cost $3.00 an hour. The Mallory Square lot is $7 an hour or $48 a day with a ten-hour maximum, the Old Town Parking Garage $6 an hour or $48 a day plus tax, the Key West Bight lot $5 an hour or $40 a day. Pay one daily rate on arrival, then leave the car alone for three days.

Fort Zachary Taylor and the free Duval Loop: day 2 of a Key West itinerary

Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park holds the beach most often called the island’s best, and it sits within walking distance of Old Town. Entry on foot or by bicycle is $2.50 a person. By car it is $6.00 per vehicle for up to eight people plus a $0.50 county surcharge each, or $4.50 for a single-occupant vehicle or motorcycle. The park opens 8 a.m. to sundown, 365 days a year, and the fort itself shuts at 5 p.m.

The Duval Loop is free and calls at 18 stops through Old Town, which covers the ride back when the afternoon has beaten you. Frequency and span are worth a warning: one official source gives every 20 minutes from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., another every 30 minutes from 6 to 10 a.m. and then every 15 until midnight. Read the timetable posted at the stop rather than trusting either version, and remember the Loop skips the airport.

Slot the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum at opening. Walk-in visits run 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., every day, at $19 for adults and $7 for children, free under 6. The resident cats are said to descend from Snow White, the novelist’s polydactyl cat, an account that comes from the museum and nowhere else. Whitehead Street at nine, the Loop at midday, the beach for the last hours of light.

Dry Tortugas or the Middle Keys: day 3 of a Key West itinerary

Day 3 is a fork, not a menu. Dry Tortugas National Park has no road and no bridge: it lies 70 miles west and is reached by ferry or seaplane. The alternative points the other way, back up US-1 through Marathon and the Middle Keys. Both consume the whole day and only one of them needs a car.

For the park, the boat is the Yankee Freedom III. Departure is 8 a.m. daily, check-in closes before 7:30 a.m., and passengers are back in Key West by evening. The vessel sells out weeks in advance, so a month of lead time is the working minimum in any season.

The 2026 adult fare comes to about $250, and it bundles the national park entrance fee, snorkeling gear, breakfast and lunch. That is one line on the credit card rather than four, and it is the single largest number in this plan. Our Dry Tortugas guide covers the crossing and the fort in detail.

Take the road instead and you are driving part of a 113-mile highway whose mile markers count down from about 126 at Florida City to 0 in Key West. Know one thing before you set off: there is no safe place to stop on the Seven Mile Bridge. The old bridge alongside carries a restored two-mile span open to walkers and cyclists, with a car park at the Marathon end and Pigeon Key out in the middle.

The fork closes real options. A ferry day means no car, no Marathon, and a hard 7:30 a.m. deadline. A road day means paying the daily parking rate for a space you vacate at dawn and reclaim after dark, plus the drive back. It also means weather matters differently: Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 and peaks on September 10, and a canceled boat leaves nothing to replace it.

Key West itinerary mistakes to avoid

Do not book Dry Tortugas for the morning you fly home. The boat leaves at 8 a.m. and returns at the end of the day, so the two do not fit, and a crossing lost to weather between mid-August and mid-October cannot be pushed to a day you no longer have. Put the ferry on day 2 or day 3 and keep a spare morning behind it.

The other error is planning around the car. Three dollars an hour at a meter, $48 a day in a garage, and a district flat enough to cross in a pair of sandals add up to a bad trade. Park once, then walk, cycle or ride the free Loop. Reserve the car for the run to EYW or the drive back north, and see how Florida moves if the rental question is still open.

What changes in Key West on a cruise ship day

In November 2020, Key West voters approved three limits on cruise traffic: a cap of 1,500 disembarking passengers a day, a ban on ships carrying more than 1,300 people, and docking priority for lines with the best environmental and health records.

They did not survive. Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 1194, under which a local ballot initiative or referendum may not restrict maritime commerce in Florida ports, and the law was written to apply retroactively to those November votes. The city’s numbers came off the books.

For a three-day visit the practical effect is simple: no local ceiling governs how many passengers step ashore on any given morning. Plan with it rather than against it. Whitehead Street at 9 a.m., Fort Zachary Taylor’s beach in the afternoon, and the Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square, which runs nightly regardless of who is in port.

What three days in Key West costs in tickets and fees

Three paid gates carry this plan: the state park, the house-museum and the ferry. Two of its best hours cost nothing at all, since the Duval Loop is free and so is the sunset crowd at Mallory Square. Walk into Fort Zachary Taylor and you pay $2.50 rather than $6.50 for a car with two people in it.

Added up for a couple: $5.00 at the park gate, $38 at Whitehead Street, about $500 for two ferry seats. That is roughly $543 in tickets for two people across three days. Keep a car in the Old Town garage for the whole stay and add $48 a day plus tax, or $144 plus tax over three nights.

What we cannot price here: hotel rooms, restaurant meals, a slice of pie, bicycle rental, the seaplane alternative to the ferry, and the toll on the Homestead Extension of Florida’s Turnpike, an all-electronic road with no cash booths. No sourced figures exist for any of them in our files, so none are invented. The Florida cost guide handles the wider budget.

Key West itinerary by season

Daylight rearranges the plan more than temperature does. On January 15 the sun rises at 7:11 a.m. and sets at 6:01 p.m.: 10 hours 49 minutes, which puts the beach and the sunset square in direct competition. On July 15 it runs 6:46 a.m. to 8:19 p.m., 13 hours 33 minutes, room for the museum at nine, the water at three and Mallory Square at six. Average highs are 75.8°F in January and 90.2°F in July, and every climate figure here comes from NOAA’s 1991-2020 normals for station USW00012836, Key West International Airport.

Fixed hours behave differently across the year. The fort closes at 5 p.m. while the park stays open to sundown, so a January visitor loses the fort and little else, a July visitor gains three extra beach hours. The ferry’s 7:30 a.m. check-in falls 19 minutes after a mid-January sunrise. Rain follows suit: 3.3 January days record at least 0.10 inch against 6.8 in July, and the sea averages 76.5°F in January versus 88.7°F in July (Open-Meteo marine data, mean of daily maxima 2015-2024).

What to skip if you only have three days in Key West

Skip the drive down as a sightseeing day. Miami to Key West is about 155 miles and close to four hours without stops, six to eight if you use the Keys properly, so an arrival day spent on US-1 is an arrival day gone. Fly into EYW if the calendar is this tight. Skip the two-mile old-bridge walk at Marathon and Pigeon Key too, unless the road north is your day 3.

Cramming has a price list. Miss the 7:30 a.m. check-in and about $250 a head sails without you. Hold onto a car so you can dash up the highway and you are paying $48 a day for a parked vehicle. Arrive at Fort Zachary Taylor at 4:30 p.m. and you get the beach but not the fort, since one closes at five and the other at sundown. Two walking days and one committed day beat four half-finished ones.

The last word

Choose day 3 before you choose anything else, because the 8 a.m. ferry is the only immovable object in Key West and it sells out a month ahead. Then let the island do what it does to schedules. Somewhere between the marker on Whitehead Street and the crowd forming at Mallory Square there should be a slice of key lime pie, reported to have been invented here in the late nineteenth century and made official state pie in 2006, built on sweetened condensed milk because fresh milk and refrigeration barely reached the Keys before the 1930s. We have no price for it. Order it anyway.

Sources & data for this guide

• Mile Marker 0 location and distance to Fort Kent, Maine · Atlas Obscura + Key West travel guides · checked Sep 10, 2026 · published figures give 2,369 and 2,390 miles, so we round to about 2,370
• Parking rates: meters, Old Town Garage, Mallory Square and Bight lots · City of Key West Parking Department · checked Sep 10, 2026 · rates change
• Old Town as the largest wooden historic district in North America · local guides + City of Key West · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Fort Zachary Taylor hours, fort closing time and entry fees · Florida State Parks · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Hemingway Home hours, $19 / $7 fares and the Snow White lineage · hemingwayhome.com · checked Sep 10, 2026 · the cat ancestry is the museum’s own account, the only source we found
• Yankee Freedom III departure, check-in and 2026 adult fare · drytortugas.com · checked Sep 10, 2026 · 2026 fare, subject to change
• Dry Tortugas access, 70 miles west, ferry or seaplane · National Park Service · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Duval Loop: free, 18 stops, no airport · City of Key West + Car-Free Key West · checked Sep 10, 2026 · the sources disagree sharply on frequency and hours, so we give the range and send you to the posted timetable
• Sunset Celebration timing at Mallory Square · sunsetcelebration.org · checked Sep 10, 2026
• November 2020 referendum and SB 1194 · Florida Politics + Seatrade Cruise · checked Sep 10, 2026 · the ship threshold is more than 1,300 people
• Overseas Highway mileage, Turnpike electronic tolling, Seven Mile Bridge and Pigeon Key · Florida Turnpike + AARoads + Florida Rambler · checked Sep 10, 2026 · drive times indicative
• January and July normals, precipitation days · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991-2020, station USW00012836 · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Sunrise, sunset and daylight length on the 15th · sunrise-sunset.org, converted to America/New_York · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Sea surface temperatures · Open-Meteo Marine API, mean of daily maxima 2015-2024 · checked Sep 10, 2026
• Hurricane season dates and the September 10 peak · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 10, 2026
• We hold no sourced figures for hotel rooms, meals, bicycle rental or the seaplane, so this guide does not price them · hours and fares change, confirm with operators when you book.