Diversity makes Miami a unique city
Miami
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 Far and away the most exciting city in
Florida, Miami is a stunning and often intoxicatingly beautiful place.
Awash with sunlight-intensified natural colors, there are moments -- when
the neon-flashed South Beach skyline glows in the warm night and the palm
trees sway in the breeze -- when a better-looking city is hard to imagine.
Even so, people, not climate or landscape, are what make Miami unique.
Half of the two million population is Hispanic, the vast majority Cubans.
Spanish is the predominant language almost everywhere -- in many places
it's the only language you'll hear.
Just a century ago, Miami was a swampy
outpost of mosquito-tormented settlers. The arrival of the railroad in
1896 gave the city its first fixed land-link with the rest of the
continent, and cleared the way for the Twenties property boom.
In the Fifties, Miami Beach became a
celebrity-filled resort area, just as thousands of Cubans fleeing the
regime of Fidel Castro began arriving in mainland Miami. The Sixties and
Seventies brought decline, and Miami's reputation in the Eighties as the
vice capital of the USA was at least partly deserved.
Since then, though, much has changed for
two very different reasons. First, the gentrification of South Beach
helped make tourism the lifeblood of the local economy again in the early
Nineties. Second, the city's determined wooing of Latin America brought
rapid investment, both domestic and international: many U.S. corporations
run their South American operations from Miami and certain neighborhoods,
such as Key Biscayne, are now home to thriving communities of expat
Peruvians, Colombians and Venezuelans. Many of Miami's districts are officially
cities in their own right, and each has a background and character very
much its own. Most people head straight to Miami Beach, specifically the
South Beach strip, where many of the city's famed Art Deco buildings have
been restored to their former stunning splendor, all pastels, neon and
wavy lines. Though touted as the chic gathering place for the city's
fashionable faces, it's not as exclusive as you might expect, especially
on weekend afternoons when families and out-of-towners join the washboard
stomachs and bulging pecs. Make time, too, for Key Biscayne, a smart,
secluded island community with some beautiful beaches, five miles off the
mainland but easily reached by a causeway.
On the mainland, downtown has a few good
museums but little else of interest to visitors. Little Havana, to the
west, is the best spot to head for a Cuban lunch, while immediately south
the spacious boulevards of Coral Gables are as impressive now as they were
in the 1920s, when the district set new standards in town planning.
Independently minded but equally wealthy Coconut Grove is also worth a
look, thanks to its walkable center and a couple of Miami's most popular
attractions.
A good place for information and maps is
the Greater Miami Convention and Visitor Bureau, 1920 Meridian Ave.
(Mon-Fri 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat & Sun 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; tel. 305/672-1270). In
South Beach, at the Art Deco Welcome Center, 1001 Ocean Drive (Mon-Fri
10 a.m.-5 p.m.; tel. 305/672-2014), the Miami Beach Art Deco
Preservation League has details on walking tours and events.
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