4 Day Budget Road Trip Itinerary To Key West (This is How Much I Spent)

In September 2020, my family and I (4 people) took a 4 day relaxing road trip to the Florida Keys arriving Thursday morning and leaving Sunday afternoon. I know not everybody has the ability to road trip to the Keys but if you do, this blog post will give you an idea of what we did, where we stayed, and how much it all cost. 

In short, the breakdown of the costs in USD are:

It was a comfortable trip but not luxurious. We tended to do many of the free things that Key West had to offer like going to the beach twice (Smathers Beach) and went surf fishing. The highlight for me at the beach was catching a baby nurse shark that was about 4 feet long.

Besides that, we watched the sunset at Mallory Park, walked around and people-watched on Duval street. We also visited the San Carlos Theatre, learned a bit about Cuban history in the Keys and toured the auditorium. 

Most of the enjoyment in the trip was spent on eating some good food. To save some money though, we did bring a good amount of foods like fruits and some pastries to eat for breakfast. We went to Publix to buy a bit of groceries and ingredients to cook up some fish we caught at the beach. We ended up deep frying them and ate them with some lime juice drizzled on top.

It was actually very delicious and fresh since we just caught them! We also tried out the famous Kermit’s Key West Key Lime Shop for a bit of dessert, a local Cuban restaurant named El Siboney, and DJ’s Clam Shack for delicious lobster rolls and buttery, steamed clams. The food from El Siboney had large portions so we managed to eat some of the leftovers again for dinner the next day.

The hotel we stayed at was the Laureate Key West. The room sported two queen beds, a sofa couch and slept 4 people comfortably. The rooms were clean, well decorated, and even had two TVs. It was a bit surprising because we initially booked an entire Airbnb which ended up being one of the cheaper Airbnbs. However, it was actually $200 more expensive than the hotel. I highly recommend checking out the Laureate. Airbnbs may not always be the cheapest option.

One thing to keep in mind is the parking costs in Key West. They are not cheap and likely you’ll need to pay for parking pretty much everywhere you go. We only parked in the metered parking and it costs up to $4/hr. This could be a hidden cost that you aren’t accounting for when heading to Key West.

The only miscellaneous expense that we had was buying a beach tent since we forgot to bring a beach umbrella. Even in September, the Keys can be very hot and sunny so any type of beach covering will help and is well worth the money.

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At the time, the crowds on Duval Street were certainly reduced and probably about 25% of the full capacity. About a little more than half of the tourists were actually wearing masks. While we were at Mallory Square watching the sunset, virtually no one was following social distancing rules and that was probably the most crowds we saw during our stay. We tried to steer away from the crowds whenever we could. The beach, however, had very little people surprisingly. We went on Friday and Saturday and both days were not crowded at all.

This trip created some long lasting memories with my family and I. I’m glad we were able to do it relatively cheaply and safely during these crazy times. If you would like to see a detailed itinerary of the trip along with exactly where certain things are, check out the itinerary here or check out the vlog below!

If you are looking to plan your next trip, do try out the Blue Planit tool! Let us know what you think. Thanks.