The Best Places in Miami

Six championship golf courses occupy a resort that could easily have stopped there and called it a day. PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens is a full-scale luxury resort: 339 rooms, a 40,000-square-foot spa, a racquet club, and enough restaurants and bars that non-golfers can book a week and never feel like they wandered into someone else's trip. The Michelin Guide lists it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

Reservations required, a three-night-a-week window, and a bouncer who greets you like a long-lost relative: Saxony sets the terms before you've touched a drink. This late-night cocktail bar lives beneath the Faena Hotel, down a staircase into a basement of black terrazzo, gold-leaf ceilings, and Art Deco bones, with a DJ running things until 4am. The crowd arrived on purpose and dressed accordingly.

1. Difford's Guide 5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. The Pinnacle Guide 1 Pin
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Tropical Modernist design from Virserius Studio gives this Curio Collection boutique hotel a cleaner, less fussy look than the Art Deco crowd down in Miami. Rooms are crisp and contemporary with relaxed, eclectic touches. The fitness program runs to boxing classes and personal training, three restaurants include a rooftop lounge, and Michelin-starred Akira Back runs the modern Japanese kitchen downstairs.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

A freshly overhauled resort on East Atlantic Avenue, the Seagate spans a beach club, an 18-hole golf course, and a spa across Delray Beach. The 157 rooms lean into handcrafted coastal details and locally commissioned art. Michael Mina's Bourbon Steak handles the serious dinner crowd, while Mr. Seas covers the oceanside fare and the Venetian Street Hotel Bar keeps things Italian-inflected for after. The Michelin Guide has it among its selected hotels.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

The view from certain rooms takes in both Biscayne Bay and the cruise port, which tells you exactly where you are in Miami. This is a big, renovated downtown hotel that shed its conference-center soul after a recent overhaul and now pitches itself as a legitimate vacation base. Bayfront Park is right outside for morning runs, and the cultural district is walkable. A solid pick if you want downtown proximity without retreating to South Beach.

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. Spirited Awards 2024 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

The Broken Shaker, a cocktail bar with a devoted following, started the whole thing before a hotel ever existed around it. Freehand Miami is a boutique hotel on the quiet edge of South Beach where the rooms stay affordable without making you feel like you're roughing it. The patio pulls a genuinely mixed crowd, and the vibe leans more "interesting strangers on a trip" than resort-guest small talk.

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

A European hostel chain's first U.S. foothold landed in a restored Art Deco building on Collins Ave, which is either perfect or on the nose depending on your tolerance for irony. It runs from four-to-six-bed dorm rooms, bunk-style and open-air, to private kings. The design stays spare: numbered bunks, a mirror station, an accent pillow in the privates. Bring your own curtain expectations, or just don't have any.

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

A 17-story resort wrapped around an Art Deco original from the late 1930s, Loews Miami Beach spreads across Collins Avenue with nearly 800 rooms, multiple restaurants, and a pool that earns its keep in a city full of them. An Exhale Spa outpost handles the recovery side. It skews family and large groups, though the sheer scale means everyone turns up eventually, which is either a feature or a warning depending on your travel style.

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

The bayfront pool is ringed with lemon-yellow chaises where guests in bathrobes drift between a dip and the third-floor spa, moving at the precise pace of people who have nowhere to be. This Miami Beach hotel leans into the hammam, eucalyptus steam room, and garden hammocks with the conviction of a place that knows its guests are here to look serene while being seen. Pack your most performative beach read accordingly.

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

Five tiers of spirits line the back bar at Beaker and Grey, a cocktail bar in Wynwood-adjacent Midtown that pulls a crowd comfortable in nice sneakers. Uplighting catches the brickwork and warm bulbs keep everything buzzy without tipping into lounge-bar gloom. The small lounge beyond the bar has floor-to-ceiling windows that feel a touch showroom, but nobody seems to mind once drinks arrive.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The Elizabeth Taylor portrait in the lobby sets the tone: this is a hotel that takes its vintage glamour seriously without quite winking at you. A mid-century beachfront resort on Collins Avenue, Eden Roc draws on Morris Lapidus's sweeping architecture for rooms with oceanfront views, a sprawling spa, and poolside daybeds where frozen cocktails arrive at a civilized pace. The vibe skews polished rather than party-forward, which on South Beach counts as a genuine position.

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami
2. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

Leopard-print stage, tartan wallpaper, red leather booths, and a baby grand with a jazz band squeezed in, all on a five-lane highway in Shorecrest. The Anderson is a craft cocktail bar that could not care less about beach-bar minimalism. One room goes full black on black; the other commits to New York kitsch so hard it loops back around to charming. The drinks, not the decor, tend to be the reason people come back.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

The scallop-shaped pool behind this Art Deco cocktail bar is what most guests are actually aiming for, which makes the bar itself a pleasantly unhurried place to land. Andre Balazs owns the Raleigh Hotel around it, which explains the crowd that looks like it wandered off a casting call. Order something with gin, find a seat, and let the Collins Avenue faithful do their thing.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

Dark wood paneling, a marble bar top, and a cross-shaped sofa planted in the middle of the room like a design manifesto, all of it underscored by 1930s ballads drifting through the sound system. This cocktail lounge sits tucked at the back of the Gale South Beach property, the quieter, more composed sibling to the hotel's other bar. The kind of room where you order something classic and mean it.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Time Out The 15 best hotels in Miami

The lounge bar inside the Mandarin Oriental sits beneath a triple-height lobby ceiling with water views and a front-row look at the bridge tying Brickell Key to the mainland. The clientele arrives with generous expense accounts and matching expectations, and the room meets them precisely there. Everything is exactly so, which is another way of saying the drinks are polished and the energy is not.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The cocktail menu at this hotel bar is organized by room, Sitting Room, Living Room, Guest Room, and Garden, which tells you most of what you need to know about the vibe. Tucked off the Albion's soaring lobby, Repour goes deliberately the other way: low ceilings, homey furniture, the feel of someone's well-curated apartment. The bartender behind it built the interior himself with family and friends, and it shows in the best way.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

The long pearl bar counter is the first thing that registers, backlit against dark wood and warm gold light, with loose rosebuds packed into displays that somehow don't look like a wedding. This is a cocktail bar inside one of Miami Beach's sleeker luxury hotels, all Asian-modernist design and reclaimed Shanghai brick underfoot. Outside, Martinis get sipped poolside under palms by people who have clearly packed better than you did.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

Oak floors, vintage chandeliers, and white marble frames set the tone in this hotel bar that anchors the lobby of a lovingly restored mid-century property. The front bar flows into the reception area in that slightly blurry way old Miami hotels used to manage, and a clubbier basement lounge called the Rec Room waits below for when you need things to get a little more nocturnal. The crowd skews South Beach, which tells you everything.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide

1. Spirited Awards 2023 · Regional Honoree · Best U.S. Hotel Bar – U.S. East

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Historic Landmark · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Yoga · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place for a First Date (Non-Restaurant) · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to Meet Single Women · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to Meet Single Women · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best View · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Beach (Miami) · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Escape · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Tennis Courts · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Skatepark · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to Take Out-of-Towners · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Pool · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Free Thrill · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Pilates Studio · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Pilates Studio · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Beach (Broward) · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Basketball Court · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to See Manatees · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Rainy-Day Activity · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to Kayak · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Picnic Spot · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Walk · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to Take the Kids · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Day Trip · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Indoor Attraction · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Outdoor Attraction · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to Go Stoned · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Rock Climbing · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Pickleball Courts · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Outdoor Recreation Space · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Dog Park · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Place to Roller-Skate · Best of Miami New Times

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.

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Cheap Thrill · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

Batch Gastropub is a casual pub in a neighborhood where most bars seem to require a reservation and a point of view. Here the main decor is televisions, plenty of them, which makes game day the natural habitat. The beer list runs deep on craft pours, the whiskey shelf is serious, and the pub fare leans burgers and wings. Happy hour and weekly trivia give the regulars a schedule, and nobody asks you to dress for the occasion.

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Brickell

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami
2. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Waterfront Bar · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

The DJ booth alone is larger than some British bars, which tells you something about the scale Blackbird Ordinary is operating at. This is a sprawling American bar, pool table competing with the DJ for the room's soul, and the unspoken rule is that you do not dance. Out back, a terrace with its own bar and an open-air cinema keeps things properly Miami. Office workers and locals find common ground here without trying too hard.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 2024 · Best Hotel Bar · Best of Miami New Times
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 2024 · Best Suburban Bar · Best of Miami New Times
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

The bar itself is barely the size of a large closet, which only explains why everyone crowds around it anyway instead of taking one of the many outdoor seats in the palm-shaded courtyard beyond. Broken Shaker is a cocktail bar tucked inside the Indian Creek Hotel, its walls and shelves so thoroughly cluttered with objects it feels less designed than accumulated. The drinks are the point, and regulars seem to treat the tight quarters as a feature.

1. Difford's Guide 4 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 2024 · Best Sports Bar · Best of Miami New Times
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami
3. Miami New Times Top 100 Restaurants

1. Miami New Times 2023 · Best Bar (Miami) · Best of Miami New Times
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Sports Bar · Best of Miami New Times
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami
2. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Chicken Wings · Best of Miami New Times

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami

1. Miami New Times 2025 · Best Wine Bar · Best of Miami New Times
2. Miami New Times 100 Best Bars in Miami