| Encompassing a broad and fertile expanse between the
east and west coasts, most of central Florida was farming country when
vacation-mania first struck the beachside strips. From the 1970s on,
this picture of tranquility was shattered: no section of the state has
been affected more dramatically by modern tourism, and the most visited
part of Florida can also be one of the ugliest. A clutter of freeway
interchanges, motels and billboards arches around the small city of
Orlando , where a tourist-dollar chase of Gold Rush magnitude was
sparked by Walt Disney World , the biggest and cleverest theme-park
complex ever created. The rest of central Florida is quiet by comparison,
and, north of Orlando particularly, rural towns like Ocala typify the
state before the arrival of the highways and of vacations spun around "attractions."
Florida's east coast , facing the Atlantic Ocean,
runs for more than three hundred miles north from the northern fringe of
Miami. The palm-dotted beaches and warm ocean waves bring to reality the
sun-soaked playground of popular imagination. However, the first fifty
or so miles lie deep within the sway of Miami, with one city offering
little to distinguish it from the next. Despite its outdated party-town
reputation, Fort Lauderdale these days is a sophisticated yachting
center. Boca Raton and Palm Beach to the north are even more exclusive,
their Mediterranean-Revival mansions inhabited almost exclusively by
multimillionaires. North of here, the coast is still substantially
unspoiled, although the Space Coast , centering on the Kennedy Space
Center , and Daytona Beach both go all out to draw the crowds. The one
genuinely characterful town in the entire stretch is St Augustine ,
still recognizable as the spot where Spanish settlers established North
America's earliest foreign colony.
By car, the scenic route along the coast is Hwy-A1A , which sticks to
the ocean side of the Intracoastal Waterway , formed when the rivers
dividing the mainland from the barrier islands were joined and deepened
during World War II.
Fiction, films and folklore have given the FLORIDA
KEYS - a hundred-mile chain of islands that runs to within ninety miles
of Cuba - an image of glamorous intrigue they don't really deserve.
Instead, this is an outdoor-lover's paradise, where fishing, snorkeling
and diving dominate. Terrific untainted natural areas include the
Florida Reef , a great band of living coral just a few miles off the
coast. But for many, the various keys are only stops on the way to
fascinating Key West . Once the richest town in the US, and the final
dot of North America before a thousand miles of ocean, Key West has lush,
Caribbean-style streets with plenty of congenial bars in which to waste
away the hours, watching the famous spectacular sunsets .
Wherever you are on the Keys, you'll experience distinctive cuisine ,
served for the most part in funky little shacks where the food is fresh
and the atmosphere laid-back. Conch, a rich meaty mollusc, is a
specialty, served in chowders and fritters. And as for the Key Lime Pie,
the delicate, creamy concoction of limes and condensed milk bears little
resemblance here to the lurid green imposters served in the rest of the
country.
Traveling through the Keys could hardly be easier. There's just one
route all the way through to Key West: the Overseas Highway (US-1 ). The
road is punctuated by mile markers (MM) - starting with MM127 just south
of Miami and finishing with MM0 in Key West.
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, and you'll be expected to speak at least a few
words - and news from Havana, Caracas or Managua frequently gets more
attention than the latest word from Washington, DC.
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. As the cop show
Miami Vice so glamorously underlined, drug smuggling was endemic; as
well, in 1980 the city had the highest murder rate in America. 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 US 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.
The City
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.
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.
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Vacation Rentals in Miami |
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Rubbing hard against Alabama in the west and Georgia in
the north, the long, narrow Panhandle has much more in common with the
states of the Deep South than with the rest of Florida, and city
sophisticates have countless jokes lampooning the folksy lifestyles of
the people here. Hard to credit, then, that just a century ago, the
Panhandle was Florida. At the western edge, Pensacola was a busy port
when Miami was still a swamp. Fertile soils lured wealthy plantation
owners south and helped establish Tallahassee as a high-society
gathering place and administrative center - a role which, as the state
capital, it retains. But the decline of cotton, the chopping down of too
many trees, and the coming of the East Coast railroad eventually left
the Panhandle high and dry. Much of the inland region still seems
neglected, and the Apalachicola Forest is perhaps the best place in
Florida to disappear into the wilderness. The coastal Panhandle , on the
other hand, is enjoying better times and, despite rows of hotels, much
is still untainted, with miles of blindingly white sands.
In three hundred miles from the state's southern tip
to the border of the Panhandle, Florida's west coast embraces all the
extremes. Buzzing, youthful towns rise behind placid fishing hamlets;
mobbed holiday strips are just minutes from desolate swamplands.
Surprises are plentiful, though the coast's one constant is proximity to
the Gulf of Mexico - and sunset views rivaled only by those of the
Florida Keys.
The largest city, Tampa , has more to offer than its corporate towers
initially suggest - not least the exemplary nightlife scene at Cuban
Ybor City and the Busch Gardens theme park. For the mass of visitors,
though, the Tampa Bay area begins and ends with the St Petersburg
beaches , whose miles of sea and sand are undiluted vacation territory.
South of Tampa, a string of barrier-island beaches runs the length of
the Gulf, and the mainland towns that provide access to them - such as
Sarasota and Fort Myers - have enough to warrant a stop. Inland, the
wilderness of the Everglades National Park is explorable on simple
walking trails, by canoeing, or by spending the night at backcountry
campgrounds with only the gators for company.
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from $60.00
USD