Jill Podehl Florida travel tours right now: When you arrive in West Palm Beach, it won’t take long before you realize that you’ll run out of time before you run out of fun places to visit and things to do. Plan your sightseeing adventures with our list of the top attractions in West Palm Beach. Usually referred to as “The Square,” Rosemary Square is an exciting Mediterranean-themed retail and entertainment center where you can literally spend all day and night without experiencing everything there is to do here. Rated one of the top things to do in South Florida, this revitalized downtown area offers a variety of fun shopping, dining, entertainment, and live music experiences. It’s also a great place to simply sit and watch an endless parade of people pass by. And yes, there’s free Wi-Fi access throughout. Discover even more info on Jill Podehl West Palm Beach, Florida.
The Ancient Spanish Monastery is famous in Miami for being one of the country’s best examples of historic religious buildings. It was built in 1133 in the northern region of Spain, where it was named The Monastery of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels. It was a home for many Cistercian monks for over a whopping seven centuries. During the First Carlist War, the monastery was seized and turned into a stable and granary. But in 1925, William Randolph Hearst, who had fallen in love with the monastery’s building and history, decided to purchase it for himself. The monastery was slowly dismantled, each stone placed in 11,000 or so crates to be shipped to America. It was a long time before the monastery was eventually rebuilt – in fact, it was after Hearst’s death! It was set up as a tourist attraction 25 or so years after its original purchase.
With a hint of 1930’s nostalgia, the beautifully restored buildings within the Art Deco District have a lot to offer on a relaxed day in the Miami beach area. Looking out to see, (a lot of them located front Ocean Drive) the pastel painted buildings pose a great place to stop for lunch of an evening meal. With its neon signs and canopy covered dining areas, the Art Deco District truly comes in its own after dark. But to truly enjoy a vacation you also need a nice place to stay.
Do you need to bath in the sun ? Miami is an amazing destination to relax. What can you do in Miami? The American Airlines Arena is the home of the NBA’s Miami Heat. It is also the main venue for large concerts and other special events, including top name singers and performers. It can hold more than 19,000 people. The structure itself, opened in 1999, has been awarded the Leed Green Building Certification for being an energy efficient building. The arena stands out prominently on Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami.
Hot Florida destinations by Jill Podehl: The Metromover is a free, driverless sky train that links several of Miami’s downtown hotels with the Metrorail. Stop off at any of the 20 stops such as the decorative Freedom Tower or the Miami-Dade Cultural Center (home of Miami Art Museum). The cars arrive every 90 seconds during peak times and every three minutes off-peak. A digital display in the center of the platform tells you where each car is heading.
New owners William Edgemon and Raymond Moss saw the potential in their purchase and spent the equivalent of 20 million dollars to move the whole structure and rebuilt it in the northern area of Miami. Its life didn’t begin here in Miami, Florida, though – it started out as a building in Spain that served as the living quarters of Cistercian monks, keeping up this purpose for over 700 years. It would fall out of this use after being seized by a revolutionary movement, which repurposed it into a stable and granary. In 1925, William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper magnate, was so impressed by the sheer beauty and wonder of the monastery that he decided to completely purchase it. Each part of it was broken apart into individual stones, packaged into over 11,000 boxes, and sent to Brooklyn, New York. Find more details at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jillpodehl/.
If art is your thing, the Wynwood Arts District is a perfect spot to explore the eye-opening world of street art. Find it at Wynwood Walls – an outdoor museum dedicated to the artform – and throughout this hip neighborhood. Or, pay a visit to the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) to peruse its collection of contemporary art of the Americas, housed in a stunning building overlooking Biscayne Bay in Downtown Miami that was designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron. Right next door, you can see amazing sights at the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, which houses both an aquarium and a planetarium. You’ll never run out of things to do in Miami, no matter what tickles your fancy, how much you have to spend, and who you’re traveling with.
