Harry Truman spent 175 days at his Little White House in Key West. His home was originally the home of the commanding admiral of the Key West Naval Base, built in 1890 and remodeled in 1948. The major portion of the base is long closed, and a great deal of it was transformed by a developer named Singh over a period of many years. It is called the Truman Annex and has close to 500 single family dwellings and additional condos and townhouses, most of which are used, I am sure, as second homes. Single family homes seem to start at about $4 million, condos at $2 million, and small townhouses at about $1.5 million. It is one exclusive neighborhood.

In fact, it is so exclusive that, to visit the Little White House, you cannot park in the Truman Annex at all, but have to find a rare space nearby or pay $30 to park on a lot about a half mile away.

The tour of the house tells you much you did not know about the house, its history and the Trumans. Did you know Truman took a shot of bourbon under doctor’s orders every morning? 

For some reason, except for one room, photos are not permitted. Here is one shot of the exterior, one of the interior, and one of the President’s limousine, a 1950 Lincoln.

Oh, yes, Harry’s piano.

We did go to the beach for a short while. There is a lot of beach on Key West, but we went to Ft. Zachary Taylor State Park, found a bench away from the beach itself, and enjoyed the rocks and the water.

Food?

Lunch was at Olive’s, a six month old, ten seat restaurant,  run by a young man from Turkey, using his grandmother’s and grandfather’s recipes. As I told Edie, my skewer of chicken was maybe the best chicken I ever tasted. We picked the restaurant because we found a parking spot. Then I looked at ratings on Google. 5.0. And his story is very interesting.

For dinner, it was Mangia Mangia, strangely called a “pasta cafe”. Our pappardelle, which we split, with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, and garbanzos was also perfect.

And yes, we still saw many chickens. But we made a new friend, as well.

This was also at Ft. Taylor. Ft. Taylor was built before the Civil War to protect Florida from a Caribbean attack. The U.S. never lost control: throughout the Civil War, Key West always remained in the control of Union forces.

Tomorrow? Our last day on Key West. It will be a little cooler.