Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Downtown Miami, the city's international financial and banking center, is split between
tatty indoor shopping arcades on the one hand, and new condos and high-rise luxury hotels
in the area known as Brickell on the other. The lazy, gritty Miami River divides downtown
into north and south. Miami is defined by an often frenetic pace of growth; when you visit,
chances are the fruits of said growth will be visible in this area.
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Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts
BUILDING
The largest performing-arts center in Florida (and second largest, by area, in the USA) is
Miami's beautiful, beloved baby. It is also a major component of downtown's urban equi-
valent of a face-lift and several regimens of Botox. Designed by Cesar Pelli (the man who
brought you Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Towers), the center has two main components: the
Ziff Ballet Opera House and Knight Concert Hall, which span both sides of Biscayne
Blvd. The venues are connected by a thin, elegant pedestrian bridge, while inside the theat-
ers there's a sense of ocean and land sculpted by wind; the rounded balconies rise up in
spirals that resemble a sliced-open seashell. If you have the chance, catch a show here; the
interior alone is easily a highlight of any Miami trip.
Metromover
MONORAIL
This elevated, electric monorail is hardly big enough to serve the mass-transit needs of the
city, and has become something of a tourist attraction. Whatever its virtues as a commut-
ing tool, the Metromover is a really great (and free!) way to see central Miami from a
height (which helps, given the skyscraper-canyon nature of downtown). Because it's
gratis, Metromover has a reputation as a hangout for the homeless, but commuters use it as
well.
