Miami travel guide
Where to stay, the best time to visit, what a day costs, and the traps to skip.
Things to do in Miami, planned over three days
Best time to visit Miami
• a note or something on ✦ an occasion worth the trip
Winter, the real Miami: dry, sunny, mid 70s to low 80s, stone crab in season and the Everglades at its best, at peak prices.
Late spring, the locals' favourite window: warm sea, humidity not yet oppressive, winter crowds gone and prices stepping down.
Summer: hot, wet and cheap, with afternoon storms, the Everglades at its worst, possible sargassum and Miami Spice value.
Autumn reset: rains break, humidity drops, stone crab season reopens on 15 October and rates stay sane before winter.
What's on
- Art Basel / Art Week early December
The global art market takes over Wynwood and the Beach, thrilling and jammed, with the most expensive hotel week of the year.
- Art Deco Weekend January
Ocean Drive festival celebrating the Deco district.
- Miami Marathon January
The city marathon weekend in January.
- Coconut Grove Arts Festival February
Major arts festival in Coconut Grove.
- South Beach Wine & Food Festival February
SOBEWFF, the city's biggest food weekend, with tasting tents on the sand.
- February boat show February
A city repricing weekend; book hotels early.
- Calle Ocho March
Little Havana's giant street festival closing the Carnaval Miami run.
- Ultra March
Major electronic music festival; the whole city reprices for it.
- Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix May
At the Hard Rock Stadium circuit, a second city repricing weekend after Art Basel.
- Miami Swim Week late spring
Runway shows and pool parties take over the Beach hotels, a fun week but rooms on Collins get pricier.
Worth the trip for
Best things to do in Miami
Vizcaya Museum & Gardens
A 1910s Italianate villa on the bay with formal gardens and Venetian style interiors, best before the heat builds.
Máximo Gómez Park
The heart of a self guided Calle Ocho walk, with domino games, ventanita coffee, cigar rollers and live music nearby.
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Miami's flagship contemporary museum in a striking bayfront building, focused on art of the Americas with bay terraces.
Wynwood Walls
The ticketed mural compound at the centre of Wynwood, best paired with the free murals on the streets around it.
Art Deco Historic District
More than 800 Deco buildings along Ocean Drive and Collins, best seen as architecture in morning light.
South Pointe Park
The locals' South Beach park at the southern tip, with a pier, calmer beach below 5th Street and the best Beach sunset.
Shark Valley Visitor Center
The wildlife first Everglades visit, a 15 mile loop by bike or tram with alligators along the road in dry season.
Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park
Quiet Atlantic beach, bike paths and the 1825 Cape Florida Lighthouse, twenty minutes from Downtown but a world apart.
Where to stay in Miami
South of Fifth / South Beach
first trip, all-round base
The iconic, most walkable base in the metro, with beach, Deco and restaurants and no car needed, calmer in SoFi.
Mid-Beach / Faena District
beach splurge without the scrum
Wider, calmer beach and destination resorts, with a free beach trolley to South Beach and more actual rest.
Brickell
mainland base, food and city trips
The densest cluster of good mainland restaurants and rooftop bars, with the free Metromover at your door and no beach.
Coconut Grove
couples, families and a slower trip
Miami's oldest, leafiest neighbourhood, with bayside parks and village scale cafes, quieter and more residential at night.
Coral Gables
old-Miami elegance, with a car
Mediterranean Revival streets, the Biltmore and the Venetian Pool, safe and beautiful with a suburban rhythm.
Wynwood / Edgewater
young groups who do not care about the beach
Breweries, murals and late bars with thin hotel stock, and streets that change character block by block after dark.
Think twice about
- Ocean Drive, roughly 5th to 15th
The city's noisiest blocks with tourist trap pricing on your doorstep, plus spring break checkpoints and surge parking in March.
- Downtown CBD / Flagler Street core
The office core empties after business hours, street homelessness is visible and concentrated, and deserted blocks are the norm late.
- Overtown, Liberty City, Little Haiti and Allapattah as lodging bases
Residential neighbourhoods with almost no hotels, few late night options and long rides to the beach. Visit Little Haiti and Allapattah for food and art by day.
- Airport / Blue Lagoon / Hialeah corridor
Fine for a layover night but car dependent and not walkable, so every day starts with a commute through Miami traffic.
Best restaurants in Miami
Boia De
A tiny strip mall dining room cooking Italian leaning, Miami inflected food, with one star and no scene.
Joe's Stone Crab
Since 1913, the stone crab institution: chilled claws with mustard sauce in season, hash browns and key lime pie.
Stubborn Seed
The starred tasting menu room of Top Chef winner Jeremy Ford, a block from Joe's in SoFi.
Ariete
Michael Beltran cooks his Cuban heritage through French technique, with pressed duck for two as the signature.
Sanguich de Miami
A modern ventanita counter on Calle Ocho where every part of the Cubano is made in house to spec.
Versailles Restaurant
Open since 1971, Cuban Miami's town square: ropa vieja and croquetas inside, politics over cafecitos at the coffee window.
Café La Trova
A serious Cuban kitchen of empanadas, croquetas and lechon in the same room as a celebrated cocktail bar and a live band.
Sunny's Steakhouse
A new wave steakhouse built around a banyan tree, with a raw bar, martini service and pitchers of cocktails.
Best bars in Miami
Café La Trova
A 1950s style Cuban bar with a live Trova band and tuxedoed cantineros, and some of the best daiquiris anywhere.
Broken Shaker
A garden pool cocktail bar at the Freehand that helped start Miami's craft cocktail era and still draws the industry.
Outdoor things to do in Miami
Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne
A championship public course through mangroves and lagoons, the only public course on Biscayne Bay.
Blue Monster at Trump National Doral Miami
Miami's tournament test, a Gil Hanse reworked layout with water everywhere and a famous water guarded 18th hole.
Biltmore Golf Course
A 1925 Donald Ross design renovated in 2018 under the Biltmore tower, golden age golf at a saner tariff than Doral.
Tigertail Airboat Tours
A small Miccosukee family run airboat operator on the Tamiami Trail, with guides who grew up in the Glades.
Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours
A small Miccosukee run airboat trip down the Tamiami Trail, a calmer alternative to the big bus airboat docks.
Oleta River State Park
Florida's largest urban state park, with mangrove paddling to Sandspur Island and a well known mountain bike trail network.
Biscayne National Park Institute
The park's own boat trips to reef snorkelling, shipwrecks and island stops at Boca Chita Key and Elliott Key.
Thomas Flyer
A family run private sportfisher out of Bayside since 1981, reaching Gulf Stream game fish water on a half day.
Best hotels in Miami
1 Hotel South Beach
A full block of beachfront with an adults only rooftop pool, big rooms and a calmer feel than the party hotels.
Faena Hotel Miami Beach
Five-star maximalist luxury on quiet Mid-Beach sand, with a real theater and cabaret program in house.
The Setai, Miami Beach
Serene Asian inflected luxury with three courtyard pools on Collins and some of the most polished service in the city.
Freehand Miami
A Deco hostel hotel hybrid one block from the beach, with private and shared rooms, a pool courtyard and Broken Shaker.
Kimpton EPIC Hotel
Big bay view rooms with balconies and two rooftop pools, walkable to Brickell restaurant row and the Metromover.
EAST Miami
A design forward urban hotel at Brickell City Centre, with the Sugar rooftop bar on the 40th floor.
Mr. C Miami - Coconut Grove
The polished Grove boutique overlooking the bay, putting you in Miami's most pleasant morning neighbourhood.
Mayfair House Hotel & Garden
The reborn Grove architectural curiosity, a jungle courtyard atrium hotel with a village location.
Is Miami expensive? What a day costs
| Budget | $140 a person |
|---|---|
| Classic | $260 a person |
| Splurge | $550 a person |
A day of food, drink, sights and getting around, before the room
What to book ahead
- Shark Valley Visitor Center: a few days ahead
- Faena Theater: weeks ahead
- Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne: a few days ahead
- Blue Monster at Trump National Doral Miami: weeks ahead
- Biltmore Golf Course: a few days ahead
- Tigertail Airboat Tours: a few days ahead
- Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours: a few days ahead
- Biscayne National Park Institute: weeks ahead
- Boia De about 30 days out, plus Sunny's, Stubborn Seed, Ariete, Hiden and Mandolin courtyard on weekends.
- Joe's on Resy in stone crab season, and Vizcaya and PAMM timed tickets on Art Week and holiday weekends.
- Everglades small group tours in winter, and hotels for Art Basel week, the February boat show, Ultra and the Miami Open.
Is Miami safe?
- Main visitor areas are well patrolled and busy; keep phones and wallets secure in crowds and on Washington Avenue.
- After dark, do not wander the Downtown CBD, blocks toward Overtown, or north Wynwood and Allapattah edges on foot.
- Never leave anything visible in a parked car; smash and grabs target rental cars at beaches and trailheads.
- Swim near lifeguards for rip currents, treat sun, heat and Everglades mosquitoes as logistics, and never approach alligators.
- Check your government's current travel advice before you go.
Miami travel tips: tourist traps to skip
- Ocean Drive restaurants with photo menus and a special cocktail pitch; eat a block or three inland instead.
- Beach chair and umbrella setups on South Beach that can approach 100 dollars for two chairs and an umbrella.
- Bayside Marketplace as a destination rather than a boat departure point.
- Club nights at LIV or E11EVEN without doing the bottle service maths first.
- Pop up immersive Instagram museums and millionaire home boat tours as a core day.
- Wynwood Walls as the whole Wynwood visit; the free streets around it are the meal.
Getting around Miami: public transport and more
- Treat the bay as a border and plan Beach days and mainland days separately.
- The free Metromover loops Downtown and Brickell, and Metrorail links the airport, Coconut Grove and Coral Gables to Downtown.
- Free trolleys run in Miami Beach, Coconut Grove, Little Havana and Wynwood.
- Rideshare is the default cross causeway move, with real surge pricing during events and rain.
- Rent a car only for Everglades, Key Biscayne or Coral Gables heavy itineraries, and price in parking.
Who Miami suits
| Solo travellers | Good |
|---|---|
| Groups of friends | Great |
| Couples | Great |
| Bachelor parties | Great |
| Families | Good |
| Bachelorette parties | Great |
Make Miami your trip
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