The Best Places to Stay and Do in Miami
Sections
- Eat , off. Turn on 547 Only Eat
- Drink , off. Turn on 114 Only Drink
- Stay , on. Turn off 79 Only Stay
- Do , on. Turn off 44 Only Do
Tap to add or drop a section. At least one stays on. All sections
-
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.
The awards
-
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
-
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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
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
-
The awards
-
The awards
- Miami New Times 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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards
-
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
-
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.
The awards
-
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.
The awards