MO Magazine Tips created by Condé Nast
The recently expanded Bass Museum of Art holds paintings by Rembrandt and Dürer, as well as 20th-century art and design from North America, Latin America and the Caribbean. Compellingly quirky, the Wolfsonian-FIU currently displays just 300 of the 70,000 items of propaganda memorabilia collected by movie-theatre heir Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Look out for works by Marcel Duchamp, Soviet teapots and King Farouk of Egypt's match collection.
Just minutes away by taxi, yet far removed from the metropolis of Miami, is Key Biscayne, the first in the chain of Florida Keys, with its quiet beaches, golf courses and the city's premier tennis facility – and the Miami Seaquarium, where Flipper is king!
Keep driving south on US1 to the other Florida Keys – Largo, Islamorada, Marathon and West – and eventually you'll be surrounded by water on both sides, not to mention local eateries such as the Cracked Conch and Pierre's.
If that's too far, instead you could head up to Fort Lauderdale's Las Olas Boulevard, a charming street of antiques stores, boutiques and restaurants.
Miami Beach's exciting and historic Art Deco District stands as a proud testament to the largely forgotten architects of the 1920s and 1930s, VH Nellenbogen, Henry Hohauser and T Hunter Henderson. Thanks to the Miami Design Preservation League, you can view a wealth of classic candy-coloured masterpieces of deco in a 90-minute walking and talking tour conducted by local historians and architects.
Bal Harbour Shops is an open-air shopping Eden stretching between Neiman Marcus at one end and Saks Fifth Avenue at the other and featuring all the designer names a dedicated shopper could wish for in between.
Meanwhile, the up-and-coming area east of Biscayne Boulevard known as the Biscayne Corridor, between 14th and 71st Streets, is undergoing a renaissance. This area is now the most burgeoning, avant-garde shopping area in Miami. As well as the city's yet-to-be-completed performing arts centre, renovation also includes converting ramshackle buildings and lots into sleek residential lofts, cafés and, of course, retail shops.
Pay a visit to Rebel for hip women's and children's clothes; and for vintage and new furniture, Industrian, where you'll find a retro-fabulous Charles Eames chair next to a piece of ultra-modern 21st-century furniture.
Without question, Azul and Café Sambal (+1 (305) 913 8358) at Mandarin Oriental, are two of Miami's best, if not the best restaurants. Azul, the city's first and only AAA Five Diamond restaurant, features spectacular vistas of Biscayne Bay.
Across the causeway on South Beach, you can dine Italian in the lamp-lit garden or the eat-in kitchen of Casa Tua, (+1 (305) 673 1010) set in a 1925 Mediterranean-style villa; the beautiful people gather over cocktails in the stylish second-floor lounge.
Famously, Joe's Stone Crab, (+1 (305) 673 0365) a Miami institution, serves the meatiest stone crabs this side of the Atlantic. Strictly no booking, it's first come, first served.
No bar in Miami offers as spectacular a view as the M-Bar at Mandarin Oriental. But for a glimpse into the fast-growing downtown Miami scene, hipsters convene at The District for its hamburgers and avant-garde DJs; and the shabby-chic Pawn Shop Lounge, a massive warehouse in which the VIP rooms are a yellow school bus and Airstream trailer.
Back on South Beach, Hollywood royalty mixes with real royalty, local luminaries and partygoers until 6am at the exclusive troika of clubs, Opium Garden, Privé and Mansion.