Ninety per cent of Miami's visitors move between three postcodes. The city that lives here is on the mainland: Haitian, Dominican, Cuban and Colombian neighbourhoods, warehouse districts turning into galleries, mangrove parks with better water than the beach, and a monastery older than almost anything in the United States. Rent a car or learn the bus map, and Miami becomes a much larger place.
Key facts
- Getting there: most of this is mainland and needs a car, a bike or a bus; the free Metromover only covers Downtown and Brickell
- Best months: mornings, before the heat and the afternoon storms
- Markets: several neighbourhood farmers markets run weekly in the cooler months — check current days before setting out
- Language: Spanish and Haitian Creole are both everyday languages here
Little Haiti
The heart of the largest Haitian community in the United States: botanicas, record shops, murals in flag colours, and the Little Haiti Cultural Complex with its Caribbean Marketplace, a building modelled on the iron market of Port-au-Prince. It hosts concerts, dance classes and markets — check what is scheduled during your stay.
Allapattah
Miami's produce district, where the city's fruit and vegetables have been wholesaled for generations, now shares its streets with the Rubell Museum, one of the world's most significant private contemporary art collections in a converted industrial building. The juxtaposition — forklifts and blue-chip art — is very Miami.
