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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Matthew Link
Aired July 20, 2002 - 09:47 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get back to our Key West desk. We've been doing Key West all -- not Key West, the keys in general. We were in Key Largo a little while ago, 60 feet below the surface.
Now let's rise above the water for just a few moments and talk about some places to visit if you want to head down that way.
Matthew Link is with "Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel" magazine. He joins us from nowhere near the keys, New York City, but he's joining to be there, right?
MATTHEW LINK, "ARTHUR FROMMER'S BUDGET TRAVEL" MAGAZINE: Yes, absolutely.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's talk about Key West, one of my favorite places. Hemingway hung out there. As a mater of fat, there's a big Hemingway thing going on there this weekend, right?
LINK: Yes, it's the Hemingway Days Festival. Hemingway wrote three of his novels down there. And it's a lot of fun. They do a mock-running of the bulls down the main street. They do Ernest Hemingway look-alike contests. It's really a great time to be down there.
O'BRIEN: And his house is so worth seeing. Have you been?
LINK: No, haven't been, but...
O'BRIEN: Oh, God, it's so -- it's so cool...
LINK: ... I'm actually headed there Monday, so...
O'BRIEN: No, you got to go to the house...
LINK: ... I will check it out.
O'BRIEN: ... and he's got this little, you know, rope bridge which he walked across to get from the main house to where he wrote. And as you know, he wrote standing up.
LINK: I -- I have...
O'BRIEN: I don't know what the significance of that is, but that's what he did. LINK: I -- I know that he wrote drunk half the time, so I don't know how he did both.
O'BRIEN: I don't know, it seems like it'd be at odds with each other. But maybe that explains his very terse prose, he was standing up, he wanted to get -- go and sit down somewhere.
Let's talk, I -- we were started at the bottom of the keys, let's go a little bit closer to Miami. We were in Key Largo a little while ago, so what's there to see in the upper part of the keys?
LINK: There's actually, speaking of under water, there's the Jewels Underwater Sea Lodge, which is a lot of fun. It's 22 feet below the surface. You need to take a scuba tank to actually get up inside of it. It's this beautiful apartment. It has a dining room, living room, fully stocked kitchen. And it's $295 per night, but that can sleep up to four people. So that's a lot of fun.
O'BRIEN: Yes, so you can just dive all day long because you're down there kind of saturated, if you will.
What about as you move down the -- you know, of course, everybody in the keys gives directions by mile markers. As you move down the mile markers, what's a good place to go?
LINK: There's a really good deal going on in Long Key right now, it's with the Lime Tree Bay Resort. And you can stay there for three nights with an unlimited mileage, Thrifty Rental Car from the Florida mainland, and it's only $163 per person. That's through Leisure Link International. It's a tour operator.
O'BRIEN: Now, anybody who has driven down the keys from Miami all the way to Key West knows that that is an arduous task. Do you recommend people try to fly there, or is it just -- obviously it depends on the destination. But what's your -- what's the rule of thumb there?
LINK: Yes, there's only two major airports, one in Marathon and one in Key West. Flying into either of them is actually pretty pricey. I recommend driving. It's about a three and a half hour drive total to get all the way to Key West, but it is one of the most spectacular drives in the entire world. You go on the Overseas Highway, a raised highway built in the 1930s, absolutely spectacular, wonderful little diners to stop and have seafood at. It's a really fun drive.
O'BRIEN: And by all means, get a convertible, right? All right.
Matthew Link with "Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel," thanks for sending us down to the keys. Next time we'll talk about Fiji, maybe, because we got...
LINK: That sounds good.
O'BRIEN: ... that Fiji thing going here this morning as well. All right. LINK: Hopefully I'll be headed down there.
O'BRIEN: Yes, it'd be all right.
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