Ponce de León was on to something. In 1513, the conquistador landed near St. Augustine in search of the fountain of youth. He might have found it, too—had he waited 500 years. All over my home state, there’s a renewed enthusiasm for the unique and authentic.
Where “Old Florida” was a semiotic grab bag of calculated nostalgia (rocking chairs; “Howdy, neighbor” civility), today you’ll find a Stay Local, Buy Local approach to quality. Floridians are becoming, well, hip. On a series of road trips, I visited a few of my classic, age-old secrets—and made some fresh discoveries, too.
South Florida: Miami to Palm Beach
The first leg of any Florida road trip should begin in Miami. Curiously, as South Beach gets bigger and bigger in a starchitecture kind of way (we’re set to have seven parking garages designed by award-winning architects), my world here has become a self-curated small town of sympathetic haunts, distilled into a kind of Miami haiku.
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Art films at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, on Washington Avenue, are a blessed sanctuary from the constant low-grade frenzy of Ocean Drive, where I just heard that Gianni Versace’s mansion is being revamped yet again, possibly into another boutique hotel. I love the leafy garden at the hostel Freehand Miami ($); bright young things pack its see-and-be-seen Broken Shaker lounge for handcrafted cocktails. Amid the chain stores of Lincoln Road, the independent Books & Books is my go-to resource for the autographed tomes of everyone from Sonia Sotomayor to Salman Rushdie.
All over Miami a new order of contemporary pleasure is being built on the romance of the past. Just off South Beach, the 1930’s Fisher Island Club Hotel ($$$$) tapped Coral Gables architect Richard Heisenbottle to refashion their Vanderbilt Mansion to serve as a clubhouse. In mid-Miami Beach, South Beach pioneer Ian Schrager is set to open the Miami Beach Edition (rates not available at press time), part of his new venture with Marriott—a hotel/condo set within the old Seville Beach Hotel and featuring the design talents of John Pawson and Yabu Pushelberg. To the north, Bal Harbour Shops, an open-air institution with such upscale brands as Lanvin, is a prime venue for periodic art chats hosted by Unscripted Bal Harbour.
From Miami, I drive up I-95 to Fort Lauderdale, where some of the greatest local landmarks are Campy with a capital “C”: you can watch assorted live “mermaids” frolic in the pool through the portholes at the Wreck Bar; the Polynesian show at the Mai-Kai, rooted in the Mad Men era and full of hula skirts, ukuleles, and Samoan fire-knife dancers, is another cheering spectacle of kitsch. Tranquilo Hotel ($), the Midcentury Modern star of the North Beach area, smacks of bygone Florida.
But for me, the adjacent Bonnet House Museum & Gardens, an early-20th-century palace of whimsy by artist Frederic Clay Bartlett, will always define Fort Lauderdale; the garden alone includes a dune, mangrove wetlands, and a stand of hibiscus. All this is tempered by forward-thinking propositions like Steak 954 ($$$), at the W Fort Lauderdale, overseen by celebrity chef Stephen Starr. Here, even simple, just-caught red snapper comes as a thinly sliced raw tiradito.
About 50 miles north on I-95, a quirky place to stay is the Chesterfield Palm Beach ($$), with its Merry Old England–style lobby. I get a dose of culture at the Norton Museum of Art, currently featuring a Mickalene Thomas installation incorporating tropical Florida imagery. Afterward, I do the rounds on the renowned Antique Row, a choice stretch of South Dixie Highway. Dina C’s Fab & Funky Consignment Boutique, owned by Dina Capehart, specializes in the coveted castoffs of Palm Beach society—1960’s Pucci, 70’s Halston, and 80’s Chanel.
I order a gazpacho verde with green grapes at Café Boulud ($$$), in the courtyard garden of the Brazilian Court Hotel, then grab a drink at the HMF lounge at the landmark Breakers Palm Beach ($$$). It’s still as big a scene as it was in the Deco era, when Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Carnegies made the hotel their playground. Recently redesigned by Adam D. Tihany, the lounge is spectacular, and a portal to a different world.
The North Atlantic Coast: St. Augustine to Amelia Island
In grade school, we’d take all-hail-Florida field trips to St. Augustine to see our state’s version of Plymouth Rock: the site commemorating Ponce de León’s visit in 1513 is now, of course, an Old Florida–style theme park, Fountain of Youth.
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Nearby, in 1888, Henry Morrison Flagler opened the Hotel Ponce de León, a Gilded Age wonderment that launched Florida tourism and made St. Augustine a veritable Newport South. (The town even turned up in Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence.) Since the property became part of Flagler College in the sixties, I stay nearby at the Bayfront Marin House ($), a 15-room B&B dating back even further, to the late 1700’s.
My first order of business? Fun. The 1883 museum Villa Zorayda is a completely nutty one-tenth-scale replica of a section of the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain; next door, edgy vinyl-record shop Tone Vendor (81-D King St.) sells efforts by local Indie-R-Us bands such as Environmental Youth Crunch. For dinner at the Floridian ($$), I order fried pickles and shrimp-and-sausage pilau, a Minorcan dish (Minorcans have been in the area since 1767).
North on Highway A1A toward Jacksonville Beach, the Florida House Inn has a Mermaid Bar peddling Mermaid Slap rum cocktails. Off Amelia Island Parkway, the Omni Amelia Island Plantation Resort ($$) just installed an infinity pool that slips into the infinity of the Atlantic. Down the road at Salt ($$), in the Ritz-Carlton, chef Rick Laughlin prepares theatrical “adventure menu” dinners served in a glass-enclosed room inside the kitchen: Croatian sea salt infused with peels of Florida citrus is paired with Key West pink prawns.
Jacksonville has the ineffable hipness of Portland, Oregon: the gritty downtown area is dominated by the aroma of roasting coffee from the Maxwell House factory, which is topped with a red-and-yellow neon sign. Local Bold City beer is served at the Burro Bar; Burro messenger bags, some made from recycled materials, are available nearby at the Letter Shop, where three older High Fidelity types are discussing Susan Sontag. The final stop: Sweet Pete’s, the local version of Willie Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, for the heedless bliss of all-natural hand-pulled taffy and a bag of gluten-free chocolate-dipped pretzels.
The Florida Keys: Islamorada to Key West
For me, every road trip to Key West truly begins with the road itself, U.S. Highway 1, a fabled trail that winds its way from Fort Kent, Maine, to Key West, mile-marker 0. In Islamorada, the Moorings Village & Spa ($$$) is the uptown end of Keys retreats and, better yet, provides convenient access to M.E.A.T. ($), a new smokehouse and taproom featuring an enormous elk head mounted on the wall.
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Not that long ago, the Keys were all fried fish, generic beer, and steel-drum bands churning out “Yellow Bird.” True to its name, M.E.A.T. serves everything from house-made bacon to duck-fat-fried french fries, accompanied by craft Florida beers like Monk in the Trunk Organic Amber Ale.
In the early 1900s, the islands of the Florida Keys were linked together by Henry Morrison Flagler, who brought his Florida East Coast Railroad south with the now-gone Over-Sea Railway. At mile-marker 47, more than 400 workers for the original Seven Mile Bridge lived on Pigeon Key, which remains the prettiest—and perhaps the most upstanding—attraction in the Keys.
At mile-marker 28.5, off Little Torch Key, I take the motor yacht shuttle to the classic Little Palm Island Resort & Spa ($$$$) for a nicely calibrated lunch of grilled snapper and—of course—Key lime pie. It’s worth the effort: tiny, endangered Key deer, which live only in the Florida Keys, swim over from an adjacent island, milling among the outdoor dining tables like skittish exotic pets.
In Key West I check in at Cypress House Hotel ($), then immediately leave to breathe in some local atmosphere. West Martello Tower, an eccentric garden in a Civil War oceanfront fort, never fails. Ditto the antiques shopping at Duck & Dolphin Antiques (601 Fleming St.), with finds including a Regency-era secretary once owned by the Duchess of Kent.
Brunch is a big deal in Key West, a town dedicated to stretching out life’s little indulgences. On Sundays, it runs until 3 p.m. (no surprise) at the restaurant 2 Cents ($$$), half a block from Duval Street on Appelrouth Lane. The bartenders work major looks (1950’s glamour-gal dresses accented with Bettie Page stylistic conceits) and dance to rocker-girl hits like Nena’s “99 Luftballons.” An order of truffle fries is essential.
The Gulf Coast: Apalachicola to Naples
Going west on I-10 across the Osceola National Forest, North Florida feels like the Deep South, particularly in Monticello, a tiny town with perky placards, saying things like "Faith, Trust and Dixie Dust," for sale in various shops. On State Road 65, passing through the Apalachicola National Forest, the road meanders by the town of Sopchoppy (where the sign reads "Sopchoppy And Easy Living Go Together").
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Highway 98, adorned with the Ho Hum RV Park and driftwood-encrusted shacks, hugs the Gulf of Mexico. It’s possible to take 98 almost all the way through the Florida Panhandle to Pensacola and on to Alabama. But to me, there’s no reason to go past Apalachicola, which is so eerily perfect it almost feels Photoshopped: the town is one big charm bracelet of antique stores and quaint B&B’s like the 1905 Coombs House Inn ($).
In the morning, from the veranda of my room at Water Street Hotel & Marina ($), I watch fishing boats puttering on the river. Apalachicola oysters are still harvested by hand with wooden tongs and shucked at processing operations along the waterfront. Along with crab cakes and grilled fish, oysters are eaten raw at restaurants like Up the Creek Raw Bar ($$), where you’ll see a manifesto of sorts on the wall: “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”
Apalachicola is just real enough—the ideal Florida town—so it’s not surprising that a sales clerk grimaces when I confess to being from Miami, as if the mere mention was a radioactive concept: “Oh, I’m so sorry for you.”
From Apalachicola, heading east and south on Highway 19/98, endless vistas of forest end abruptly north of Tampa, with the usual chain of drugstores and strip malls conceding to the great, good grace of Weeki Wachee Springs, where local women dressed as mermaids have put on shows since 1947. On occasion, manatees will swim into the spring, echoing their movements.
Tampa, like Jacksonville, is an urban revelation of DIY cool, commencing with the patinaed Ybor City area. At my hotel, the Don Vicente Historic Inn ($), a group of young women are setting up an old-school-themed bridal shower, with oranges and trinkets for place settings. A stroll around Ybor City uncovers vintage store La France (1612 E. Seventh Ave.), with 50’s organza dresses and coin purses adorned with old Florida postcards.
The Tampa Museum of Art is bathed in a luminous glow orchestrated by artist Leo Villareal when I drive by, en route to dinner in the emerging neighborhood of Seminole Heights. At the Refinery ($$), an intelligent farm-to-table menu includes braised hog jowl and shrimp hush puppies with butternut squash. The place for dessert: Bern’s Steak House ($$$), done up in acres of gilt and sin-red walls. Of the design a staffer notes, “We were going for Palace of Versailles, but it’s more like New Orleans bordello.”
The next day, lunch at BT ($$$)—a French-Vietnamese restaurant owned by BT Nguyen—is a fitting prelude to the drive south along I-75 to Naples, the Gulf Coast equivalent of Palm Beach. Naples is all about the clang and clamor of money, from the recently upgraded Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club ($$) to the club-level suites at Inn on Fifth ($$$$). The most fun place in town is the high-concept Peace, Love, & Little Donuts, situated in a gas station and serving such “groovy donuts” as “Saigon cinnamon,” proving that even in tony Naples, some of the best things in life are also the cheapest.
Art and Design in Florida
This month Art Basel Miami Beach returns once again, the 12th installment of an arts celebration that has seized the attention of the pop universe. Also on our culture calendar: the opening of the Perez Art Museum Miami, designed by Herzog & de Meuron and inspired by Stiltsville—the atmospheric collection of shacks off the coast of Key Biscayne (stay at a Bal Harbour–area hotel for free admission to PAMM and three other museums).
![Pink Snails Miami Art Basel]()
In Fort Lauderdale, Flagler Arts & Technology Village is a neighborhood of downtown warehouses transformed into studios and galleries.
Meanwhile, in Tampa, a civic initiative called Lights on Tampa has noted artists—such as Chicago-based Tracey Dear—illuminating local landmarks after dark. See them all along the Tampa Riverwalk.
Literary Florida
Key West was once the go-to bolt-hole for Tennessee Williams, Robert Frost, and Ernest Hemingway. Stop by the Hemingway Home & Museum to visit the author’s Spanish-colonial house (note the many six-toed cats, supposedly descendants of Hemingway’s own pet, and his 18th-century walnut desk with three secret compartments). Today’s writers flock to the island in January for the annual Key West Literary Seminar. This year’s theme is “The Dark Side,” exploring the noir part of life—never in short supply in Florida—with writers such as Joyce Carol Oates.
Locavore Florida
Our two can’t-miss experiences for farm-to-table foodies: Near Naples in Collier County, Lara Collier—yes, she’s a relative of the region’s legendary entrepreneur Barron Collier—hosts alfresco dinners on her organic farm ($$). South of Miami in the Redlands, Paradise Farms($$$$)—a chef favorite for its edible flowers and oyster mushrooms—organizes regular brunches and dinners with visiting chefs (most recently Julie Frans of Miami Beach’s Essensia).
Cost Key
Hotels
$ Less than $200
$$ $200 to $350
$$$ $350 to $500
$$$$ $500 to $1,000
$$$$$ More than $1,000
Restaurants
$ Less than $25
$$ $25 to $75
$$$ $75 to $150
$$$$ More than $150
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