Tours in Miami

Miami is two places separated by water, and the causeways between them are half the experience. On the mainland, Downtown and Brickell make up the financial city, glass towers over Biscayne Bay, with Bayside on the water below. West of them is Little Havana, where Calle Ocho keeps the cigar shops, the coffee windows and the domino park. North is Wynwood, a warehouse district repainted wall by wall into an open-air gallery. Across the bay, Miami Beach is a barrier island, and its southern end holds one of the largest concentrations of 1930s Art Deco anywhere — some 800 protected buildings in about a square mile, most photogenically along Ocean Drive, with Lincoln Road cutting across for the shopping. South of downtown the Vizcaya villa keeps its Italianate gardens on the shoreline, and Key Biscayne sits offshore with the lighthouse and the quiet beaches.

The water is the main category and comes in every format: bay cruises past the island mansions, sailing catamarans, jet skis, speedboats taken privately, and combinations that put a bus tour and a boat into the same afternoon. On land the city rewards a guide more than people expect — the Art Deco district, Wynwood and Little Havana all have stories that are invisible if you just walk through them. Nightlife is sold as a product here, with club packages, open bars and transport included, which is a sensible way to handle a night out on South Beach. And a good deal of what gets booked in Miami actually happens outside it: the Everglades an hour west and Key West four hours south, both leaving from the city in the early morning.

Practical. High season is November to April, when it is dry, warm and fully booked; summer is hot, humid and inside the June-to-November hurricane season, and the afternoon downpour is a daily event rather than bad luck, usually passing within the hour. Sales tax is added at the till, hotels add a resort fee on top of the room rate, and tipping is not optional: eighteen to twenty per cent in restaurants, often already added for larger parties, and five to ten dollars a head for a boat crew or a guide. Parking on South Beach is the standard local complaint and the causeways crawl at rush hour, so tours with hotel pickup save more time here than in most cities, and rideshares beat a hire car unless you are leaving town. Spanish is the first language of large parts of Miami and nobody minds which one you use. Everything on the water is exposed — there is no shade on a catamaran — and boat trips are called off for wind, usually on the morning itself.