Lightner Museum in St. Augustine is set inside the former Hotel Alcazar. Image credit: Kossoff/Shutterstock

Melting into Miami

The serene islands of Sunset Key (left) and Wisteria Island lie off the island of Key West in the Florida Keys. Image credit: Nancy Pauwels/Shutterstock

Changes in Latitudes

Peer beneath the sun-washed veneer and Florida reveals itself in layers. A multicultural home to more than 22 million people, with more than 1,300 miles of coastline, you’ll come for the vitamin D and gorgeous beaches, and discover a state that never takes itself too seriously – where you’ll find new surprises from coast to coast.

In Miami, the state’s spirited, living-in-the-moment energy is so palpable it very nearly lilts on tropical breezes. Florida’s most international city, it is known for its Art Deco heritage and global art scene. The city’s intriguing duality is dished up in a jet-set lifestyle that plays it casual, too – in flip-flops, bikinis, and board shorts – on the kind of palm-lined beaches that define postcard panoramas. Start your visit in South Beach along Ocean Drive, a veritable open-air museum of Art Deco architecture best explored on foot with the salty breezes of the Atlantic Ocean tousling your hair. An over-the-top cocktail at a beachfront café offers a moment of pause in the shade as well as the chance to watch the parade of people and sports cars that slowly crawl by. Grand views await a few blocks away at the lovely beach at South Pointe Park. Here, enormous cruise ships bound for islands in the Caribbean float past a jetty where onlookers wave adieu.

Even a Floridian can’t help but feel transported when heading south of Miami to where the highway peters out in a sun-splashed daze. The state is at its most otherly in the Florida Keys, a series of coral islands strung together like pearls by a series of bridges sweeping southwest from Miami. Roll the windows down to let the ocean and Florida Bay breezes in, find a low-key waterfront haunt for a fresh grouper sandwich or some conch fritters, and finish the day on a sweet note with a slice of the islands’ iconic Key lime pie. Fishing charters depart for offshore pursuits of the big ones – mahi-mahi, marlin, and more – from marinas in Islamorada and Marathon. You can stay on dry land while watching giant tarpon dramatically leap from the water to snag a sardine from your fingers at iconic roadside stops in the Florida Keys, such as Robbie’s. .S. Highway 1 ends near the southernmost point in the continental United States in Key West, a four-mile-long island full of artists, sailors, and dreamers that Hemingway once famously called “the greatest place in the world anytime, any day.” Wade into the water at the beach within Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park, backed by a National Historic Landmark and Civil War era fort. Then consider a siesta under the shade of a towering Norfolk pine. Bars abound along Duval Street, known for the “Duval Crawl” bar-hopping ritual. But quieter moments await pedaling a bike through the backstreets of Key West’s Old Town, Bahama Village, and Rooster Row, where feral chickens roam.

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Miami Beach is dotted with iconic, colorful lifeguard huts. Image credit: Fokke Baarssen/Shutterstock

Local writer Terry Ward celebrates Florida’s cultural attractions, wildlife encounters, and easy, breezy charms

The Sunshine State

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The 2.6-mile-long Tampa Riverwalk runs along the Hillsborough River. Image credit: Jon Bilous/Alamy Stock Photo

Florida’s gold coast continues north of Miami through the lovely seaside community of Delray Beach – busy with kitesurfers and backed by lush groves of sea grapes – to Palm Beach, where the state’s most gilded stretch awaits. Railroad tycoon Henry Flagler first developed the barrier island buffered by the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth Lagoon in the late 19th century, after finding it had the perfect winter climate. Today, the social season extends year-round for the wealthy living in Venetian-style oceanfront mansions designed by Addison Mizner and his contemporaries, which you can drive past and ogle along South Ocean Boulevard. It’s a pleasure to pedal a bike along the island’s Lake Trail, skirting the lagoon and lined with banyan trees and palms. Detour onto Worth Avenue, where couture shops lure for luxury shopping and you can wander into hidden courtyards of bubbling fountains and secret cafés. Just across the Flagler Memorial Bridge in West Palm Beach, Clematis Street brims with independent boutiques, restaurants, and bars. Riviera Beach, to the north, beckons with more beautiful beaches and is known for the unexpected snorkeling trail at Phil Foster Park, accessed from a parking lot along the Intracoastal Waterway. In just ten feet of water that turns crystal clear at the change of the tides, look out for seahorses and other marine wonders.

An East Coast Amble

Life in Miami beats to a line-up of year-round events that lure an international crowd, including gatherings aimed at the global art world, such as December’s Miami Art Week and the Art Basel fair, music festivals, and springtime’s Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix. You can slow right down to island time along Calle Ocho in Little Havana, the heart of Miami’s Cuban diaspora, where exiles in guayabera shirts and new arrivals from the isla sidle up alongside reggaeton stars for a cafecito at the city’s most famous Cuban restaurant, Versailles. Add to that Miami’s mix of world-class museums along Biscayne Bay, the galleries in Wynwood and the Design District, and Biscayne National Park – which protects coral reef and mangrove environments within eyeshot of downtown’s skyline – and a visitor could stay entertained here for weeks.

Start your visit in South Beach along Ocean Drive, a veritable open-air museum of Art Deco architecture best explored on foot

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Tampa is the largest city along Florida’s Gulf Coast, an ever-expanding metropolis anchored by a burgeoning downtown lifestyle district, Water Street Tampa, which hugs the Hillsborough River and Tampa Bay. The city brims with upscale dining and nightlife as well as urban parks that host music festivals and the famous annual pirate parade during the Gasparilla street party in January. Across the glittering expanse of Tampa Bay, street art is everywhere in St. Petersburg and a different vibe prevails at galleries, museums, flea markets, and the contemporary new pier. That you can have urban attractions so close to some of the country’s most coveted white-sand beaches is the cherry atop this part of Florida’s perennial appeal. In Clearwater Beach and St. Pete Beach, it’s not uncommon to see dolphins cruising offshore during a sunrise or sunset stroll. Wealthy seaside enclaves to the south along Florida’s Gulf Coast have their own allure for visitors, including world-class museums like The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art fronting Sarasota Bay and Naples’ storied shopping and dining promenade, 5th Avenue. Wild nature is always within reach here too, though. A quick detour inland from Naples along Alligator Alley – which cuts across the state’s middle section of swamplands and marshlands to Miami – first arrives at the Gulf Coast entrance to Everglades National Park. Visitors board boats to access hidden reaches of this vast, untamed wilderness that author and environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas famously called the “river of grass.”

Gulf Coast Discoveries

At its heart in Orlando, Florida was once a land of orange groves and agricultural fields as far as the eye could see. You can still catch the scent of the sweet nectar in the air come February and March, when the delicate orange flowers blossom. But most people come to Orlando for the programmed fun promised at its many theme parks, including those at Walt Disney World Resort and Universal Orlando (in May 2025, Universal Epic Universe will open as the city’s biggest theme park debut in decades). Orlando offers surprising moments in quieter urban neighborhoods removed from the theme-park corridor and closer to downtown, like lake-lined Thornton Park and Winter Park, home to museums, botanical gardens, and boutique shopping. Even in busy and touristy Kissimmee, serene moments in nature await in the flooded cypress forest at Shingle Creek, where you might spot wading birds and even alligators during guided kayaking eco tours.

Orlando’s Diversions

Even in busy and touristy Kissimmee, serene moments in nature await in the flooded cypress forest at Shingle Creek

Lined with palm trees and lit up with neon lights, Ocean Drive is the main thoroughfare through South Beach. Image credit: Sean Pavone/Alamy Stock Photo

The Panhandle – the narrower stretch of land to the north of the peninsula that stretches westward toward the states of the Deep South – promises a Florida apart. You’ll first hear it in the drawls of the people who are from here, an accent more syrupy and Southern than elsewhere in the state. The pace in these parts slows, too, to a delicious crawl. Sunday drivers take their time along Scenic Highway 30A, a 24-mile stretch of Gulf-front road with shimmering Gulf of Mexico views and vibrant seaside communities like Inlet Beach and Rosemary Beach, where cobblestone streets are lined with cafés and the architecture conjures the Dutch West Indies. Grayton Beach State Park, nearby, is home to a unique geological feature – coastal dune lakes that are found only here and a few other places on Earth, including New Zealand and Madagascar. By the time you arrive nearly all the way west in the state, in Destin, you’ll notice the waters skew more emerald than the sapphire hue symbolic of Florida’s east coast. Billowing white dunes at Henderson Beach State Park make for a striking backdrop for a day spent shelling or sunbathing, and deep-sea fishing adventures appeal to every type of angler. Come sunset, of course, there’s only one thing left on the day’s agenda – to find a seat facing the water for a view of that golden orb sinking in the sky. It’s a fitting moment, if ever there was one, to raise a glass and toast to the very good fortune of having found yourself in Florida.

The Promise of the Panhandle

The iconic Seven Mile Bridge connects Knight’s Key in Marathon to all of the other islands in the Florida Keys. Image credit: David Lyons/Alamy Stock Photo

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The 2.6-mile-long Tampa Riverwalk runs along the Hillsborough River

Miami Beach is dotted with iconic, colorful lifeguard huts

Lightner Museum in St. Augustine is set inside the former Hotel Alcazar

The serene islands of Sunset Key (left) and Wisteria Island lie off the island of Key West in the Florida Keys

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