Miami, Florida

Miami owes its modern existence to Julia Tuttle, the only woman to have founded a major American city, who in 1896 convinced railroad magnate Henry Flagler to extend his Florida East Coast Railway south by sending him fresh orange blossoms to prove the region had survived a devastating freeze. What followed was a century of reinvention — from a sleepy frontier outpost to the glamorous Art Deco playground of the 1930s, the Cuban exile capital of the 1960s, and today's cosmopolitan crossroads where Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States converge in a single, sun-drenched metropolis.

The city's character is written in its architecture and its light. South Beach's Art Deco Historic District preserves over eight hundred pastel-hued buildings from the 1920s and 1930s, their neon signs illuminating Ocean Drive after sunset. Across Biscayne Bay, the Design District and Wynwood Walls have transformed warehouse blocks into one of the world's most vibrant open-air galleries of street art. Coral Gables, with its Mediterranean Revival mansions and the legendary Biltmore Hotel, channels old-money elegance, while Little Havana's Calle Ocho pulses with domino parks, cigar shops, and the aroma of café cubano.

Miami's culinary identity is inseparable from its immigrant soul. Cuban sandwiches — pressed layers of roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles, and mustard on Cuban bread — are a civic institution, best consumed at Versailles restaurant on Calle Ocho. Ceviche from Peruvian-Japanese Nikkei kitchens, Haitian griot (fried pork), and stone crab claws at Joe's Stone Crab on South Beach round out a dining scene that is genuinely hemispheric in scope. The Coconut Grove farmers' market on Saturdays offers tropical fruits found nowhere else on the American mainland.

The Everglades, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, begin just thirty minutes west of downtown — a primordial landscape of sawgrass prairies, mangrove forests, and alligators. Key Biscayne, ten minutes across the Rickenbacker Causeway, offers pristine beaches and the historic Cape Florida Lighthouse. The Florida Keys stretch south toward Key West, a three-and-a-half-hour drive that crosses forty-two bridges over turquoise water.

Miami is the cruise capital of the world, its port handling more passengers than any other on earth. Lines serving Miami include Azamara, Carnival Cruise Line, Cunard, Explora Journeys, Holland America Line, MSC Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises, Princess Cruises, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Seabourn, Silversea, and Virgin Voyages. The port is the primary gateway to Caribbean and Bahamas itineraries, as well as transatlantic and South American voyages. Year-round warmth makes Miami a perennial embarkation favourite, with November through April offering the driest and most comfortable conditions.