The 44 Best Things to Do in Miami
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The best things to do in Miami, according to the experts: Forbes Travel Guide, Vogue, and Miami New Times have all weighed in, and their honors are what rank this list. The Spa at Four Seasons Hotel at The Surf Club comes out on top.
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Acqualina Spa and Spa Palmera hold the next two places. Miami New Times shows up on more of this list than any other guide, with Forbes Travel Guide next.
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The spa at this storied Surfside property holds a Forbes Five Star and a spot on Vogue's list of the world's top spas, which tracks once you're inside: hushed, unhurried, a few miles north of South Beach's particular chaos. It's the kind of place where the treatment rooms feel genuinely removed from everything, and the taupe-toned quiet is, against all odds, exactly what you wanted.
The awards
- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Five Star
- Vogue Vogue: 100 Best Spas in the World
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Five Star
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Five Star
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Five Star
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Five Star
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The awards
- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Five Star
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The Self-Centered Garden, a canopied outdoor oasis of draped cabanas, sets the tone for this full-service resort spa perched at the edge of the Atlantic in a blink-and-miss-it township between Palm Beach and Boca. Sauna, steam, jacuzzi with a waterfall shower, bottomless bubbles before and after your treatment, plus a terrace cafe for fresh-pressed juices when you're ready to pretend you're healthy. Vogue named it among its 100 Best Spas in the World.
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Four Star
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Four Star
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Four Star
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- Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Travel Guide: Forbes Four Star
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A pharmacist who loved nature enough to deed his 1930s wood cottage and grounds to the Tropical Audubon Society upon his death is a hard act to follow, but the place keeps the faith. Now the society's headquarters, the Steinberg Nature Center spreads across 2.2 acres of pine rockland and tropical hardwood hammock, the latter considered critically endangered. Tours cover the cottage and the trails, and the whole thing reads as a quiet argument for what South Miami looked like before the malls arrived.
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Sand in your mat is the only real hazard at this free outdoor yoga class, which runs every morning and evening on the beach at Third Street, 365 days a year. Volunteer teachers rotate through, so the vibe shifts session to session, and all levels show up, from first-timers to regulars who've clearly been greeting the Atlantic sunrise upside down for years. Bring a towel, and tip your teacher.
The awards
- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best Yoga · Best of Miami New Times
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A few hundred classic arcade cabinets in a Miami strip mall, humming and flickering the way they did before everything moved to a screen you hold in your hand. Arcade Odyssey stocks a rotating mix of rarities alongside the expected Mortal Kombat and pinball machines, so even people who grew up on this stuff will spot things they haven't seen in years. Acting like a twelve-year-old is not just tolerated here, it's the whole point.
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Red lighting, treadmills, and the ambient sound of people pushing through intervals they'll regret tomorrow. Barry's is a boutique fitness studio where the signature classes split time between running and weight work, and the crowd skews conspicuously fit. Miami New Times gave it a Best of Miami nod, which is one way to describe the demographics. Come for the workout; the rest is incidental.
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A small waterfront park just off Biscayne Boulevard where downtown Miami sits across the water like a postcard you didn't pay for. Benches face the bay, waves knock against the rocks, and on a quiet morning it might be just you and a coffee from the strip nearby. Sunset turns the whole thing gold, which the Instagram crowd has noticed, though it's rarely crowded enough to matter.
The awards
- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best View · Best of Miami New Times
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The lighthouse at the southern tip of Key Biscayne has been standing since before anyone alive can remember, and climbing its 109 steps earns you a view that explains why people keep moving to Miami. Bill Baggs is a state park with serious birding credentials, over 260 species spotted inside its boundaries, plus barbecue grills, a cafe, and enough white sand to make the drive across the causeway feel like a reasonable life choice.
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Ninety-five percent of Biscayne National Park is water, which makes it the rare national park where the main thing to do is go under. The Florida Reef is the only living coral barrier reef in the continental U.S., and the Biscayne Maritime Heritage Trail strings together historic shipwrecks you reach by boat. If staying dry matters, a boat tour covers Stiltsville's strange stilted homes and the old lighthouse on uninhabited Boca Chita Key.
The awards
- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best Escape · Best of Miami New Times
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Doral Central Park's skatepark sits inside a sprawling 78-acre public park with kayaking, beach volleyball, and an outdoor amphitheater, which is either a lot of amenities or a very ambitious Tuesday. The concrete is fresh, the rails are properly grindy, and after school the place fills with teenagers doing exactly what teenagers should be doing outdoors. Disney Channel vibes, but the skating is the real thing.
The awards
- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best Skatepark · Best of Miami New Times
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A 15-mile paved loop cuts through the sawgrass, and at the far end an observation tower puts the whole river of grass beneath you in one sweep. Shark Valley is the Everglades entrance closest to Miami, reachable in under an hour, with trails for walking or renting a bike and enough alligators sunning on the path to make you reconsider the bike. The city evaporates fast out here, which is the whole point.
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Serious lap swimmers fill all eight lanes before sunrise, so the fit retirees queuing at the gate before 6 a.m. know exactly what they're doing. This public pool in Flamingo Park runs every day, holidays included, with Ocean Rescue crews doing dawn drills beside casual weekend floaters. A kiddie pool, lounge chairs, and hot showers round it out, and the surrounding park adds a track and outdoor gym for anyone who wasn't already tired.
The awards
- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best Pool · Best of Miami New Times
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A red-lit LED path winds through Markham Park to a small dome where volunteer astronomers from the South Florida Amateur Astronomers Association let you look through their telescopes on cloudless Saturday nights. Light pollution from six million neighbors does its worst, but Saturn's rings tend to win the argument. The volunteers outside bring their own gear and seem genuinely delighted to explain what you're seeing. Free, unhurried, and a little wonderful.
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Mat-based Pilates studio where the infrared heat is cranked up and the playlist runs Bad Bunny into Adele without apology. The aesthetic lands somewhere between Tulum spa and a very tidy minimalist bedroom, all neutral tones and Bala weights arranged just so. Group classes mix Pilates and sculpt and are built to work across levels, so no one's just decorating the back row. The sustainably sourced water bottles are a nice touch, or a very on-brand one.
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A living reef sits about 100 yards offshore here, close enough to snorkel to from the sand without chartering anything. This small coastal village north of Fort Lauderdale runs on pastel lifeguard stands, Adirondack chairs at the Beach Pavilion, and an unhurried pace that most of Florida's coast quietly abandoned decades ago. Anglin's Square keeps ice cream and tiki drinks within a sandy shuffle, and El Prado Park fills with people who seem to have nowhere pressing to be.
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The basketball courts at Legion Memorial Park were repainted by local artist Najja Moon in purples, oranges, and yellows that make every other court in Miami look like a parking garage. Two full courts, recently renovated, draw serious pick-up runs and plenty of people who just want the backdrop. In a city where most outdoor courts are institutional green or gray, these read more like public art that someone also happens to be playing on.
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An indoor forest or a digital ikebana show are about as good a reason as any to cross the county line into Dania Beach. MAD Arts is an immersive, technology-forward art museum where the installations lean experimental and the programming runs from shadow puppet dioramas to cult film screenings to small press fairs. It's the kind of place that's genuinely hard to describe to someone who hasn't been, which is basically its pitch.
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Kayak rentals sit at the edge of Biscayne Bay here, just south of Coral Gables, and a single push off the dock puts you somewhere palm trees and waterfront mansions have replaced Miami traffic entirely. The park has been around forever, and vendors keep it accessible for anyone who didn't come prepared. The city doesn't disappear so much as go quiet, which, if you've driven Miami's highways lately, feels like a small miracle.
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A two-storey guitar neck and synthesizer climb structure announces this Sunset Harbour park before you even find a spot on the grass. Named for the Bee Gee who called South Florida home, it sits between a yacht marina and Purdy Avenue with west-facing views of the Venetian Islands and the Miami skyline. Grab takeout from a nearby spot, spread a blanket, and watch the light go soft over Biscayne Bay.
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Nine miles of paved path run the full length of Miami Beach, from Surfside down to South Pointe Park, with the Atlantic on one side and a parade of Art Deco facades on the other. Street markers are embedded in the path so you can track how far you've gone, which sounds athletic until you realize the people-watching is so good you'll stop counting. Bring sunscreen and comfortable shoes; the ocean air handles everything else.
The awards
- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best Walk · Best of Miami New Times
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- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best Day Trip · Best of Miami New Times
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The Allapattah outpost of New York's Museum of Sex lands somewhere between art gallery and adult funhouse, with exhibits from illustrator Hajime Sorayama, a floor of erotic carnival games, and evenings when mermaid burlesque performers spin in a giant tank. It's unabashedly touristy, but the educational displays on human sexuality through the ages give you something to think about beyond the gift shop's souvenir vibrators, which are exactly what they sound like.
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A 20-acre rewilding project deep in Miami-Dade's Redland, Patch of Heaven Sanctuary is a nature preserve with a Zen garden, koi pond, giant Buddha statue, and a furnished joglo for sitting quietly while the city does whatever the city does. It regularly hosts retreats and forest bathing events. For Miami, where the default setting is "pave it," the existence of this much intentional stillness is its own kind of plot twist.
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An indoor climbing gym that's been beefing up forearms in West Kendall since before bouldering was a personality type. No sauna, no juice bar, no steep initiation theater, just reasonable day passes, a full upstairs gym, and walls that reward actual footwork. The community is the real draw: regulars here talk beta, not brunch. Miami New Times named it Best Rock Climbing in 2025.
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Forty-three courts spread across ten lakeside acres make The FORT one of the larger pickleball complexes in South Florida, and it also serves as the official home of the Association of Pickleball Players. Open play, skill-rated matches, private rentals, and tournaments all run here, and the après-match bar and kitchen give everyone a reason to linger. The crowd runs from first-timers fumbling their dinks to people who travel for this.
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A ten-mile linear park running beneath the Metrorail, The Underline has spent years converting concrete shadow into bike paths, basketball courts, fitness zones, art installations, and native-planted trails. The Brickell Backyard section is the busiest stretch, while the Hammock Trail pushes north into something that feels genuinely wilder. The whole thing is still expanding toward completion, which means returning visitors keep finding something new to argue about.
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Two separate gated fields, one for big dogs and one for small, sit inside this sprawling Doral dog park where weekends bring a genuinely chaotic mix of zoomies and sniffing diplomacy. A wash station handles the muddy aftermath, and there's outdoor fitness equipment plus a kids' playground, so the humans aren't just standing around looking grateful. The nearby Starbucks is two minutes away, which your dog has already calculated.
The awards
- Miami New Times Miami New Times: 2025 · Best Dog Park · Best of Miami New Times
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An outdoor roller rink on colorful tiles in the heart of Wynwood, with a DJ running old-school hip-hop and Bad Bunny and a bar nearby for the non-skaters who came anyway. It runs Thursday through Sunday and costs under twenty bucks, which is a reasonable price for the combination of nostalgia and bruised dignity. Pack socks, or be prepared to hear about it.
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Four-dollar beers on Lincoln Road, which should be physically impossible. Zeke's is a cash-only sidewalk bar that has traded under a few names over the decades but never really changed: cheap cold beer, a bag of chips for a dollar, and a front-row seat to the full Miami Beach parade passing by. The hours shift, the tap selection is unpredictable, and none of that seems to bother anyone nursing a bottle in the sun.
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