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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, 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.
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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