Less Well Known Miami Destinations

By Author: Steve Robinson
Total Articles: 468
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While it is commonly known that there are plenty of cheap travel options to visit Miami, including cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, cheap auto rentals, discount travel packages, and cheap vacation packages, few tourists are aware of select Miami destinations that are well worth visiting.

Beaches and bars are what most tourists associate with Miami.
Tourists who decide to explore the city are usually surprised by the great differences from one neighborhood to the next. The History Miami museum offers tours of Art Deco office lobbies and “Cuisine and Culture” walks.

The city’s diversity can be appreciated by going from Coconut Grove to Coral Gables, and from Little Haiti to Little Havana. Just by taking a walking tour of downtown Miami you will be exposed to a wide array of architecture with an impressive bay front park.

The following are Miami destinations well worth visiting most visitors are unaware of:

• The Venetian Pool is a public pool that offers loggias, porticos, cave-like grottos, and lookout towers. The pool was created in 1923 from a coral rock quarry. ...
... Its developer wanted to construct a Mediterranean style community so Venice was chosen as the theme for the lagoon.

Striped pillars and a Venetian style bridge enhance the pool’s Italian feel. This 820,000 gallon aquatic facility is the only pool listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

• The Neptune Memorial Reef is an underwater cemetery right off Key Biscayne and is the largest man made reef ever built. It was designed to give the feel of an Atlantis style Lost City with columns, statues, and ornate structures places on the ocean floor. The project, still under construction, will ultimately cover 16 acres and will house cremated remains along with plaques.

The Neptune Society created the reef and believes the memorial will eventually be the resting place to over 100,000 people. While families visit the reef on a regular basis, the site also attracts recreational divers and marine biologists. The Reef is free and accessible to all visitors.

• The Ancient Spanish Monastery is a 12th century monastery originally built in northern Spain. The structure was purchased in 1925 by William Randolph Hearst, and dismantled stone by stone and shipped from Sacramenia, Spain to Miami.

Hearst’s financial problems resulted in the stones sitting in crates in a New York warehouse for 26 years until they were purchased by two entrepreneurs. The monastery was rebuilt in 1953. Currently the monastery is home to an Episcopal church and is a popular wedding venue.

• The William Wagner House is a traditional frontier home located in the city’s Lummus Park and is the oldest known house in Miami Dade County. The house was built in the 1850s when hardly anyone was willing to live in the area. Back then the region was isolated and mosquito ridden. Experts view this house as a historic jewel.

• Coral Castle is billed as a creepy monument to love. This is an unusual sculpture garden created by a Latvian immigrant who was jilted by his fiancée the day before their wedding. The groom to be then started a lifelong quest to create a monument to his beloved.

Between 1923 to 1951 he carved over 1,100 tons of coral rock by himself, according to legend. Some believe that the job required supernatural powers. It remains a mystery how a builder standing 5 feet tall weighing 100 pounds was able to create and move the giant towers, obelisks, a crescent moon, a sun dial, and working rocking chairs, all of which were made out of stone. He died without ever revealing how he did it.
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