🇺🇸 Miami

Overview

Miami has about 450,000 residents in the city itself and over 6 million across South Florida. It is the most Hispanic major city in the United States — roughly 70% of residents are Latino and Spanish is heard more than English in much of it — shaped above all by Cuban migration after 1959. Miami Beach, across the bay, is a separate city and holds the world's largest concentration of art deco buildings, around 800 of them in one square mile.

Landmarks & culture

• The Art Deco District — Ocean Drive and the streets behind it, pastel-painted and neon-lit after dark. Guided walks explain why the buildings look the way they do; going at dusk is when the neon earns it.
• Wynwood Walls — A former warehouse district turned into an open-air street-art museum, with galleries, breweries and murals that change constantly. Free to walk; the enclosed Walls section charges.
• Vizcaya & Little Havana — Vizcaya is a 1916 Italianate villa with formal gardens on the bay. Calle Ocho in Little Havana runs on cigar shops, domino players in Máximo Gómez Park and ventanita coffee windows.

Things to do

• The beaches — South Beach for the scene, mid-beach around 40th Street for space, and Key Biscayne for calmer water and fewer crowds. The lifeguard towers, each individually designed, are a photo project in themselves.
• The Everglades — A subtropical wetland the size of a small country, an hour west. Airboat tours are the famous option; the quieter walking trails and Shark Valley bike loop show more wildlife.
• Timing matters here — Winter and spring are the reason people come — warm, dry and busy. Summer is hot, humid and stormy, and hurricane season runs June to November, peaking in September.

Gastronomy