Miami in Layers

Flying into Miami hits you immediately.

You land, grab an Uber or a taxi, and within minutes you’re surrounded by heat, color, density, and motion. It’s one of those cities where the transition from airport to street already feels like part of the experience.

For this trip, I split my time.

Half in Brickell—Miami’s downtown core—where everything rises vertically. Tall buildings. Big business. Luxury. Restaurants, shops, energy. It’s fast, polished, and undeniably modern. Hot weather, good food, and a sense that things are always happening just out of view.

Highly recommended.

But equally important: get to the beach.

For me, the key was absorption. Spend time walking Brickell. Sit somewhere. Watch how the city moves. Check out a few spots. And yes—this is touristy, but worth it—hop on one of those buses that loop through the city. It’s an easy way to see how Miami is stitched together. Little Havana. South Beach. Neighborhoods that feel completely different from one another.

That’s really the decision you make in Miami:

Downtown or beach.

Hotels in the city or hotels by the water.

Both are great. You just have to choose how you want to split your time.

One of the most exciting things about Miami—beyond the obvious—is that it’s still evolving. Still building. Still renovating. Still becoming. It feels like a city actively deciding what it wants to be next, and that energy is everywhere.

And when you do get to the beach, it’s hard to only do beach time.

The Art Deco architecture is so present, so alive, that it pulls you off the sand and back into the city. You want to walk. You want to explore. You want to see museums, galleries, details you didn’t expect.

But don’t skip South Beach.

The light. The water. The people. The scale of it all. It’s a global hotspot for a reason. Day shoots. Night scenes. Neon, shadows, movement. There’s no shortage of moments—or images—waiting to be made.

I’ll leave this one here for now.

More to come. I brought back plenty.

Miami, Florida

Words and photographs by Tony Frantz