The best of Miami

Miami is a bright jewel in the Sun Belt where Latin, Caribbean, and East Coast influences swirl together in an imaginative, sun-kissed culture that exists nowhere else. Perched precipitously on low land between the Everglades and the Atlantic, smack in the middle of hurricane country, the city has its bad days. Most of the time, though, the weather is near perfect. Once ribbed as the nation’s nursing home, the city is now more strongly associated with its outrageous nightlife than walkers and wheelchairs. There are an amazing variety of ways to fill the days in Miami, and you could spend weeks exploring them. But if you have just one day there, here’s what I’d recommend:

8 a.m. - 9 a.m., breakfast
Enjoy the view of the Atlantic across a pair of marble rimmed pools and a plate of eggs benedict at Ago, an upscale Tuscan joint in the celebrity-thick, ridiculously-hip Shore Club hotel.

9 a.m. - 10 a.m.
Make your way downtown then float 400 feet above it aboard Miami SkyLift, a giant, tethered helium balloon that’s good for a quick bird’s-eye view of the city. It lifts off every 15 minutes. Opening soon.

10 a.m. - noon
Wander the grandiose halls and grounds of Villa Vizcaya on Biscayne Bay. Built in the early 20^th century in the style of a Venetian palace, Vizcaya was the winter retreat of James Deering, co-founder and vice president of International Harvester. Ten acres of gardens and grottoes are laid out along Renaissance Italian and French lines, and the opulent home itself is loaded with brocaded walls, guilt moldings, chandeliers, and artworks and furnishings from the 15^th century on. This opulent mansion has served as the diplomatic seat of Miami Dade for years, and such luminaries as Pope John Paul II, Queen Elizabeth and Ronald Reagan were impressed on their tours of these grounds. You will be too.

A MORNING ALTERNATIVE
Visit one of Miami’s original and oddest tourist attractions, the Coral Castle. It was built as the bizarro home of an obsessive, tubercular, Latvian immigrant, who, upon getting jilted at the altar, flung himself into its construction. He single-handedly quarried the huge blocks of coral from which the castle’s fashioned, and did the furnishing himself: there are giant coral rocking chairs, a giant coral bed, a giant coral crib, the world’s largest Valentine – that sort of thing. The enormous Flintstone-like gate is a perfectly-balanced, 21-inch coral slab that swings open like a turnstile with a moderate shove.

Noon-1:30 p.m.
Head into the heart of Little Havana, where guayabera-clad old men slap down dominos and Versailles serves up superb Cuban cuisine (the French name notwithstanding). The combination plate is a good primer: yellow rice, black beans, fried pork, ropa vieja (shredded beef on rice), boiled yucca with garlic sauce, fried plantains, and a pork tamale. Finish off with a short, sweet, bracing shot of Café Cubano, Cuban-style espresso.

2 p.m. - 5 p.m.
Go to glittery, glamorous South Beach and tour the Art Deco District, a soft sherbet spectrum of peaches, periwinkles, and purples punctuated with neon and spread across more than 800 buildings. Start at the Art Deco Welcome Center [1001 Ocean Drive; 305/531-3484] to get oriented, then set off along the ten-block stretch of Ocean Drive, with beachfront Lumus Park on one side and streamlined architecture borrowing curves from ocean liners, rocket ships, and the more sculptural aspect of Industrialism on the other. Along the way you’ll encounter the latest Brazilian swimwear, the suggestion of moisturizers on the sea breeze, myriad meter maids, and sun-kissed South Beach party people bearing potent, fruity beverages. Walk back along Washington Avenue and stop at the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, where artifacts representing design history between 1885 and 1945 are on display, fixing the art deco movement in its greater context. When you get tired of sightseeing, plop down on the sand to take in the beach scene; or get shopping. This is a paradise for both activities.

TWO AFTERNOON ALTERNATIVES: GATORS AND HOT WHEELS

Sign up for the Richard Petty Driving Experience and strap yourself into the cockpit of a NASCAR Nextel Cup-style speed machine. You can take either the passenger seat or the wheel as you zoom around the Homstead-Miami Speedway at 145 miles per hour, flying into the turns without breaking.

Or take a half-hour airboat ride down the River of Grass, see an alligator wrestling show, then stroll along a jungle trail and inspect a Cheekee Indian village at Everglades Safari Park.

5 p.m -7 p.m. Dinner
Sit down at the Mandarin Oriental hotel for a sumptuous meal in the elegant-yet-casually-cool dinning room of Azul, where the wide-angle view of tranquil Biscayne Bay vies for your attention with the flurry of starched white chef smocks in the open white-marble kitchen. The menu features Mediterranean and Asian -inspired fare such as roast duck breast with Peking-style duck leg confit, and pan-roasted Alaskan halibut with creamy corn, bacon-wrapped French beans, and a tomato salad. For desert, have the vanilla soufflé, with your choice of crème anglaise, raspberry, or chocolate sauces.

8 p.m. - 10 p.m.
Catch a play or musical at the Coconut Grove Playhouse, aka “Broadway by the Bay.” Many a Broadway show, with many a Broadway actor, have been staged here since the Grove was transformed from movie palace to a live theater in 1956.

11 p.m. - until your collapse
Dress to impress and immerse yourself in Miami’s legendary club scene. For down-and-dirty hip-hop, with oversized beds to lounge on, and a full menu, head for B.E.D. . To swim among the beautiful people and dance with the sharks (no kidding -- the dance floor here is over a 2,000-gallon shark tank) check out Club Deep, with hip hop and R&B every night. For a quintessential party-people mega club, with ear-splitting bass lines, epilepsy-inducing strobe effects, and where the dress code seems to be “as little as possible,” try your luck in the velvet rope line at Mansion. For mingling with celebs and the good chance of getting skunked at the door, try your luck at Skybar, which has a series of sensuously appointed bar areas opening onto a tropical garden appointed with passion flower and bougainvillea. It’s located at The Shore Club hotel, where the day began.

Pauline Frommer is the creator of the new Pauline Frommer Guidebooks which will be debuting in bookstores this July.

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