Miami

Biscayne National Park is a liquid wilderness — 95 percent of its 173,000 acres lie beneath the surface of Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic, a mosaic of mangrove shorelines, shallow seagrass beds, and the northernmost living coral reef in the continental United States. From the Dante Fascell Visitor Center in Homestead, the park feels like a secret: a convoy of islands keys (Elliott, Boca Chita, Adams) floating in water the color of aquamarine. Boca Chita Key’s ornamental lighthouse, built by honey‑magnate Mark Honeywell in the 1930s, frames a postcard view of downtown Miami’s skyline 20 miles away. Below the keel, the Maritime Heritage Trail maps six shipwrecks — from the 1878 steamship Arratoon Apcar to the 1960s yacht Mandalay — each now an artificial reef patrolled by goliath grouper and loggerhead turtles. Paddle a kayak through Jones Lagoon at dawn and you’ll share glassy water with manatees and roseate spoonbills; slip on a mask at the reef and the world erupts in neon — purple sea fans, orange elkhorn coral, electric‑blue tangs.

Stroll along Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue and you’ll find yourself inside a pastel‑hued dream — the largest concentration of Art Deco architecture on the planet. More than 800 buildings, most erected between 1923 and 1943, flaunt porthole windows, eyebrow ledges, neon signage, and the signature “streamline moderne” curves that evoke ocean liners. By day the facades glow in sherbet tones of pistachio, flamingo, and turquoise; by night they ignite in electric neon, turning the boulevard into a living movie set. Guided walking tours reveal the district’s resurrection from neglect in the 1970s, spearheaded by the Miami Design Preservation League, and point out cinematic landmarks from *Scarface* to *The Birdcage*.

A Mediterranean Renaissance villa transplanted onto the shores of Biscayne Bay, Vizcaya is the Gilded Age dream of industrialist James Deering made manifest. The Main House unfolds as a sequence of opulent rooms — each a collage of European antiques, tapestries, and architectural fragments — while the formal gardens cascade over ten acres of meticulously clipped hedges, secret grottoes, and statuary that frame endless vistas of turquoise water. It is a stage set for a bygone aristocracy, yet its subtropical setting lends it a lush, almost surreal vitality that no European counterpart can claim.