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Chess Hall Of Fame
You'd think chess fanatics would have orderly minds and be good at scheduling, but this museum was closed both times we visited, despite coming during regular hours. So we can only tell you that the Chess HoF is located in a big white rook-like structure with a sword-in-the-stone out front (seriously), and is apparently filled with paraphernalia such as Bobby Fischer's table and ancient chess accoutrement.
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Cisneros Fontanal Arts Foundation (Cifo)
CIFO is one of the best spots in Miami to catch the work of contemporary Latin American artists, and has a pretty impressive showroom to boot. Even the exterior blends post-industrial rawness with a lurking, natural ambience, offset by the extensive use of Bisazza tiles to create an overarching tropical motif. Similar to the Arsht Center, CIFO was built near the rattier edge of Downtown with the intention of revitalizing this semi-blighted area via fresh arts spaces.
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Coconut Grove Playhouse
Miami's oldest playhouse premiered Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 1956, but was shut down during its 50th anniversary season due to major debt issues. Now the board of the theater is trying to resurrect this grande dame in conjunction with Miami-Dade's Department of Cultural Affairs; check back at the theater website for updates.
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Coral Gables City Hall
This muscular yet elegant building has been housing tedious city commission meetings since 1928. Check out Denman Fink's Four Seasons ceiling painting in the tower, as well as his framed, untitled painting of the underwater world on the 2nd-floor landing. A farmers market is held on the grounds from to Saturday, January to March.
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Coral Gables Congregational Church
George Merrick's father was a New England Congregational minister, which perhaps accounts for him donating land for the city's first church. Built in 1924 as a replica of a church in Costa Rica, the yellow-walled, red-roofed exterior is as far removed from New England as…well, Miami. The interior is graced with beautiful sanctuary and the grounds are landscaped with stately palms.
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Coral Gables Museum
Set to open in late 2009, this museum, based on its sample exhibition, should be an excellent, well-plotted introduction to the oddball narrative of the founding and growth of the City Beautiful. The collection will include historical artifacts and mementos of succeeding generations of this tight-knit, eccentric little village.
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Crandon Park
This 2-mile beach is one of the city's best, all sand and seagrass beds concealing shrimp, crabs and a coastal marine ecosystem. Within the 1200-acre park you'll find the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Biscayne Nature Center and Bear Cut Preserve. The latter is a nature study area with a mangrove boardwalk that leads to a fossilized reef overlook. Guided tram tours are available, as are daily cabana rentals with showers on a first-come, first-serve basis (around US$38 ); no overnight stays allowed.
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Cuban Memorial Boulevard
The two blocks of SW 13th Ave south of Calle Ocho contain a series of monuments to Cuban patriots and freedom fighters, which here includes the dead of the Cuban Independence struggle and anti-Castro fighters.
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Dade County Courthouse
If you end up on trial here, at least you'll get a free tour of one of the most imposing courthouses in America. When Miami outgrew its first courthouse, it moved legal proceedings to this neoclassical icon, built between 1925 and 1929 for around US$4 million. It's a very…appropriate building; if structures were people, the courthouse would definitely be a judge. Some useless trivia: back in the day, the top nine floors served as a 'secure' prison, from which more than 70 prisoners escaped.
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Deering Estate At Cutler
The Deering estate is sort of Vizcaya lite, which makes sense as it was built by Charles, brother of James Deering (of Vizcaya fame). The 150-acre grounds are awash in tropical growth, an animal-fossil pit of bones dating back 50,000 years and the prehistoric remains of Native Americans who lived here 2000 years ago.
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Design District
Proving that SoBe doesn't hold the lease on hip, this trendy area north of downtown - all but deserted twenty years ago - isn't just rebounding, it's ensconcing itself as a bastion of art and design. The Design District (www.miamidesigndistrict.net) is mecca for interior designers, home to dozens of galleries and contemporary furniture, fixture and design showrooms. Nearby Wynwood also boasts a lively arts scene.
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Eden Roc Resort
This enormous place was the second groundbreaking resort from Morris Lapidus - the first was the Fontainebleau - and it's a fine example of the architecture known as MiMo. It was the hangout for the 1960s Rat Pack - Sammy Davis Jr, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and crew - and at the time of research, was undergoing a major renovation into a resort-cum-convention center.
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Ermita De La Caridad
The Catholic Diocese purchased some bayfront land from Deering's Vizcaya estate and built a shrine here for its displaced Cuban parishioners. Symbolizing a beacon, it faces the homeland, exactly 290 miles due south; note the Cuban history mural. After visiting the villa or the Miami Museum of Science & Planetarium, consider picnicking on the water's edge or at nearby Kennedy Park (S Bayshore Dr).
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Española Way
In the evening, stroll down Española Way , a trés European strip lined with restaurants and cafés representing most of the romance-language-speaking countries.
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Fairchild Tropical Garden
If you need to escape Miami drivers, consider a green day in the country's largest tropical botanical garden. A butterfly grove, jungle biospheres and gentle vistas of marsh and Keys habitat, plus frequent art installations from folks like Roy Lichtenstein, are all relaxingly stunning. But Fairchild has a serious purpose: the study of tropical flora by the garden's more than 6000 members.
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Fisher Island
One day Carl Fisher purchased this little island and planned on dying here. But as is wont to happen, the millionaire got bored. When William K Vanderbilt II fell in love with the place, Fisher traded the island for Vanderbilt's 250ft yacht and its crew. Things were like that in those days. Vanderbilt proceeded to build a splendiferous Spanish-Mediterranean-style mansion, with guest houses, studios, tennis courts and a golf course.
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Fontainebleau Hilton Hotel & Resort
How over the top is the Fontainbleau? Well, when Brian De Palma needed a place to sign off Scarface , he decided this would be a good place for Al Pacino to snort a mountain of coke and slaughter an army of Colombians. Ya gotta be grand to warrant that kind of cinematography, and this iconic 1954 leviathan, another brainchild of Lapidus, is certainly that.
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Freedom Tower
The 'Ellis Island of the South' served as an immigration processing center for almost half a million Cuban refugees in the 1960s. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, it was also home to the Miami Daily News for 32 years. The top facade is one of two surviving area towers modeled after the Giralda bell tower in Spain's Cathedral of Seville - the second is at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables.
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Fruit & Spice Park
Been Lonely Planet-ing around Australia, Africa or Southeast Asia? Welcome back. Set just on the edge of the Everglades, this 35-acre tropical public park grows all those great tropical fruits you usually have to contract dysentery to enjoy. The park is divided into 'continents' (Africa, Asia, etc) and admission to the pretty grounds includes a free tour; you can't pick the fruit, but you can eat anything that falls to the ground.
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Gold Coast Railroad Museum
Trainspotters will undoubtedly choo-choo-choose to put this attraction near the top of their itinerary. Sorry. Ralph Wiggumisms aside, over 30 antique railway cars await here, including the Ferdinand Magellan presidential car, which Harry Truman stood on when he held the newspaper with the erroneous headline 'Dewey Defeats Truman.' Train rides and model train building sessions are also available.
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Gusman Center For The Performing Arts/Olympia Theater
The Arsht Center is modernly pretty, but the Olympia is a one of a kind classic. You know how the kids in Hogwarts can see the sky through their dining hall roof? Well the Olympia recreates the whole effect sans Dumbledore, using 246 twinkling stars and clouds cast over an indigo-deep, sensual shade of a ceiling.
Read more about Gusman Center For The Performing Arts/Olympia Theater
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Haitian Heritage Museum
Miami has the largest community of Ayisens in the world outside Haiti; come here to learn their story. The museum aims to be a comprehensive mosaic of Miami's Haitian community and draws off the collection of the Diaspora Vibe Gallery, which hosts consistently excellent Caribbean and Latin American artists. At the time of our research, you really needed to call ahead to get inside, so make sure you make an appointment before you visit.
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Haulover Beach Park
Where are those tanned men in gold chains and speedos going? That would be the clothing-optional beach, hidden from condos, highway and prying eyes by vegetation at the north end of this 40-acre park. There's more to do here than get in the buff though; most of the beach is 'normal' and constitutes one of the nicer spots for sand in the area (also note the colorful deco-ish shower 'cones'). Recreational boaters shouldn't miss Urban Trails Kayak Rentals.
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Hialeah Park
Hialeah is more Havanan than Little Havana (more than 90% of the population speaks Spanish as a first language), and the symbol and center of this working-class Cuban community is this grand but endangered former racetrack. Although Seabiscuit and Seattle Slew once raced here, the last race was held in 2001, and since then a fight's been raging to keep this gem from being paved over.
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Historical Museum of Southern Florida
It takes a special kind of history to create the idiosyncratic character of a place like South Florida, and it takes a special kind of museum to capture that narrative. This place, located in the Miami-Dade Cultural Center, does just that, weaving together the stories of the region's successive waves of population, from Native Americans to Nicaraguans. It's particularly interesting for kids.
