Miami Beach

Photo credit: Greater Miami CVB

A week in Miami is not unlike watching an episode of, say, Access Hollywood with a little CNN thrown in for good measure. Miami: the city to which J-Lo fled when she and Ben Affleck were on the outs; the place where the paparazzi camps out for days hoping to catch a glimpse of something or someone fabulous; the place where former President Bill Clinton kibitzes with the head of a top modeling agency at a St. Tropez-ish beach club; where Janet Reno throws a politically driven dance party at a South Beach nightclub. And that's just a small sampling of the surreal, Felliniesque world that exists way down here at the bottom of the map. Nothing in Miami is ever what it seems.

What used to be a relatively sleepy beach vacation destination has awakened from its humid slumber, upped its tempo, and finally earned its place in the Palm Pilots of cutting-edge jet-setters worldwide. But don't be fooled by the hipper-than-thou, celebrity-drenched playground known as South Beach. While the chic elite do, indeed, flock to Miami's coolest enclave, it is surprisingly accessible to the average Joe, Jane, or José. For every Phillippe Starck-designed, bank-account-busting boutique hotel on South Beach, there's a kitschy, candy-coated Art Deco one that's much less taxing on the pockets. For each Pan-Mediterranean-Asian haute cuisinerie, there's always the down-home, no-nonsense Cuban bodega offering hearty food at ridiculously cheap prices.

Beyond the whole glitzy, Entertainment Tonight-meets-beach-blanket-bacchanalia-as-seen-on-TV, Miami has an endless number of sporting, cultural, and recreational activities to keep you entertained. Our sparkling beaches are beyond compare. Plus, there's excellent shopping and nightlife activities that include ballet, theater, and opera (as well as all the celebrity-saturated hotels, restaurants, bars, and clubs that have helped to make Miami so famous).

Leave Miami, be it for the Keys, the Gold Coast, or the Treasure Coast, and you'll expose yourself not only to more UV rays, but to a world of cultural, historical, and sybaritic surprises where you can take in a spring baseball game, walk in the footsteps of Hemingway, get up close and personal with the area's sea life, soak up the serenity of unspoiled landscapes, catch the filming of CSI: Miami or a big-budget Hollywood flick, and much more.

Forget what you've heard about South Florida being Heaven's Waiting Room. That slogan is as passé as the concept of early bird dinners (which you can still get -- they just no longer define the region). In fact, according to some people, South Florida is heaven. So what are you waiting for?

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Photo credit: Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau

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