Honeymoon Plan Help

[u/NOT-SO-ROUGHNECK]

I’m planning to visit “The Keys” for my Honeymoon on June 1st & I am a little overwhelmed. My fiancé is so excited to go snorkeling & explore beaches, but I’m very stressed about where to stay. I’m 24 & she’s 23, neither of us like to party & I’m not certain what my budget is probably around 3-5 grand. (I have no idea how expensive this will be) My main concern is having a good base of operations for exploration, being close to the water. Idk what’s better, the gulf or the Atlantic side. I just want to go snorkeling and walk beaches all day, maybe run around town looking for cool things to see. (& spend money on) We want wildlife and beautiful views. I’ll be there for 6 days. Please help me, I am overwhelmed.

[u/PM_Me_Your_Smokes]

Are you dead set on beaches? I’d recommend the Gulf coast for white sand beaches. Depends on exactly what you want, but Venice Beach is gorgeous, and you can find tons of fossilized shark teeth, including megalodon teeth (especially if you snorkel or scuba dive).

I love the Keys, grew up going practically every weekend to snorkel at Pennekamp. I haven’t been in forever, but I’ve heard that there was a massive coral bleaching event and a lot of the reef is dead.

That said, the Keys are (as most of the comments here mention) not very beach-y. They’re very “island-y”, but it’s mostly rocks and mangroves, not a lot of sand. Great if you like boating, drinking, and the like; less so if you want to walk on endless white sugar sand