Besides New York and the West Coast, Miami is one of the most popular destinations in the US, and rightly so. The most famous city of the 'sunshine state' is just as breathtaking as all the series and films that were shot there suggest. I used to live in Miami for 1 year and it was one of the best decisions of my life. It triggered me the travel bug and also the feeling that no matter what I will do in life I need to see the world.

I am going to share with you the next five places you shouldn’t miss once you’re in Miami:  

1. South Beach

Although Miami is best known for its long beaches full of fit ladies and gentlemen, the city also has a good dose of culture to offer. Actually, there is no other place in the world with as many art deco buildings all put together as there are in South Beach. The building style was popular in the interwar period, but because the maintenance of art deco buildings costs a lot of money and time and the awareness of the architectural-historical value was not that great by mid-century, there are relatively few worldwide preserved copies remaining.

2. Little Havana

Little Havana is a 9 square kilometer area that the Cubans have made their homeland once they flew, their homes in large numbers from Castro, since the early sixties On the streets, both salsa music and the large wall paintings that you can see from all angles are fervently preaching the resistance against the Cuban dictator's regime, countless coffee shops where café Cubano is being served to your heart's content alternate with cigar shops and spiritual houses dedicated to the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria. A separate Cuban walk of fame on the sidewalk of Calle Ocho, the street that forms the heart of Little Havana, honors, with great stars, successful immigrants (children) as singer Gloria Estefan or actress Maria Conchita Alonso.

3. Coral Gables

The Coral Gables district is one of the very best neighborhoods in the United States. It was the project developer’s, George Merrick (1886-1942), the biggest dream to build a new city after the First World War on the Florida coast that would connect the highlights of Italian and Spanish architecture. With this largest real estate company that the world had known until then, an amount of 100 million dollars was involved. Coral Gables (which is actually only accessible by car) offers a bizarre mix of beautiful villas, but also a number of houses that are too kitschy for words. Absolute highlights in the area are the Venetian Pool, a huge neighborhood pool that was mined from a coral rock quarry in 1923 (!)

4. Holocaust Monument

Many European Jews who survived the war emigrated to America in the  40s and  50s where they found a new home in sunny Florida. They initiated a memorial that is dominated by a meter-high bronze arm (including a tattooed number) that stretches towards the sky like the last movement of a dying person. Around the arm, which lies on a kind of island in a serene pond full of lilies, there are nearly a hundred bronze, life-size naked, emaciated, suffering, and dying men, women and children.

5. The Everglades

A visit to Miami is incomplete without an airboat trip through the Everglades Park, a 600,000 hectares area of ​​  wetlands that is accessible to tourists. Indians - the original inhabitants of the area - have the right to guide tourists in most of the accessible marsh (only one-fifth of the total Everglades) and thus earn income. Whoever is lucky, gets to see the alligators in their natural habitat(although they are usually hidden and silently tucked in the reeds and under the mangroves), tortoises and tropical birds. Afterward, tourists may cuddle a baby alligator and/or eat alligator meat.

What did you do when you visited  Miami? Comment below, I am very curious!