Miami for Couples

Miami's geography puts the sunset over the bay, which means the good seats face west from the barrier island, or west from the mainland shore with the city between you and the light.

From the water is the best version, and the cheapest good one is a sunset sail from Dinner Key in Coconut Grove. Small boats, warm air, downtown lit behind you and the sun going down over the mangrove coast. Sunset cruises from Bayside downtown do the same job with more people on board.

From the causeways. The Venetian Causeway is a chain of small residential islands with a walking and cycling path, a toll for cars and a slow speed limit, and it puts you in the middle of the bay at eye level. The MacArthur has the port and the cruise ships. Both are free.

From the mainland shore. Brickell at the mouth of the Miami River, where the working river meets the bay, is an underrated place to be at that hour and has a run of rooftop bars looking down on it. The Miami Riverwalk runs from there towards downtown.

From Key Biscayne. Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park's beach curves around to face west into the bay at the southern tip, and the 1825 lighthouse stands behind you. The park's gate closes at sunset, so time it carefully rather than assume.

Where not to be. An ocean-facing table in South Beach at 7pm. You will have a nice dinner and no sunset. Save the ocean for sunrise, which on Miami Beach is genuinely worth setting an alarm for and which almost nobody does.

Vizcaya Museum and Gardens is the obvious romantic afternoon in Miami and it earns it. A 1916 Italianate villa built for James Deering on the Coconut Grove bayfront, with a carved stone barge sitting in the water as a breakwater, formal gardens laid out on an Italian plan, and a mangrove shoreline at the edge of it. It is a National Historic Landmark. Admission is around $39 per adult, so it is not a casual stop. Go in the morning for the light on the bay side, or late in the day when the tour groups thin out and the gardens cool down. Allow two hours minimum.

Coral Gables is the walk. George Merrick built it in the 1920s to a Mediterranean-revival code that is still enforced, which is why the boulevards are banyan-shaded, the street signs are low limestone blocks that are famously hard to read from a moving car, and the entrances are triumphal gateways. The Venetian Pool, carved from a coral rock quarry in 1923 and fed from an artesian well, has caves, waterfalls and a bridge; it runs a seasonal schedule and closes for maintenance, so check before you plan around it. Miracle Mile and the streets around it hold the restaurants, and the Biltmore's lobby is worth walking through whether or not you are staying.

The Design District is the other architecture walk, and a very different one: luxury retail arranged around courtyards with serious public art, including Buckminster Fuller's Fly's Eye Dome in Palm Court. The Institute of Contemporary Art there has a sculpture garden and free admission, which makes it the best hour in the neighbourhood for people not shopping.

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, around $25 a head, is the quietest of the four: 80-odd acres of palms, cycads and tropical flowering trees with a rainforest section and lakes, and nowhere near the crowds of Vizcaya.

Miami's good evenings are neighbourhood evenings, and each one has a different temperature.

Little Havana. Calle Ocho after dark is the most alive Miami gets without a cover charge. Live son, salsa and timba play most nights at venues along the strip, several with dance floors where the standard is high and the welcome is genuine if you are willing to be bad at it for an hour. Eat first: a sit-down Cuban dinner, then a mojito, then music. On the last Friday of the month Viernes Culturales closes part of the street for a free arts festival, and that is the single best night in the neighbourhood.

Wynwood. Breweries, small bars and galleries in converted warehouses, walkable, casual, loud on a weekend. Second Saturday gallery nights are an easy, free way to spend an evening.

Brickell. Rooftops and river views, the dressiest of the mainland options, with the Metromover free until late so you can leave the car behind entirely.

Coconut Grove. The quietest and the most under-recommended. Waterfront tables at Dinner Key, tree-shaded streets, and a village centre you can walk after dinner.

Miami Beach, done properly. Skip Ocean Drive and use Española Way, Lincoln Road's side streets, and the Sunset Harbour and North Beach neighbourhoods, which is where people who live on the island actually eat.

A note on cost. Miami is an expensive dinner city and the service charge is frequently added automatically at 18 to 20 percent, particularly in South Beach and on the causeway islands. Check the bill before adding a second tip on top, which is the most common way visitors overpay here.