A few minutes from downtown Miami and Miami Beach, North Miami is a well-located suburb with a lot of things to do close by. The local cultural heavyweight is the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), putting on thought-provoking exhibitions, and engaging the community with programs like a monthly jazz concert. I have spent a lot …
Just outside Daytona Beach, Port Orange is a much quieter city with more than 150 years of history. Things have developed quickly in the last 20 years, and when I wrote this article there were more than 60,000 inhabitants. The city is known for its award-winning municipal complex, on the shores of a beautiful pond, …
An affluent town on Connecticut’s Gold Coast, Fairfield is blessed with some alluring beaches on Long Island Sound, as well as old neighborhoods on quaint town greens. In summer, Jennings Beach is a joyous place to while away a sunny day. The shore here is visited by food trucks and there are family film screenings …
More than a century after their silk empire peaked, I still can’t talk about Manchester without mentioning the Cheney family. A big slice of the south of this city, east of Hartford, belongs to the Cheney Brothers Historic District. There you can see the great brick-built mills accompanied by 19th-century worker communities designed according to …
In Broward County, Coconut Creek was first developed in the late 1970s and is still growing, with almost 60,000 residents at the last census. The city has adopted the nickname, Butterfly Capital of the World. This comes from the wildlife attraction, Butterfly World, which opened in 1988 and has been a real local success story. …
Set between St. Petersburg and Sarasota, Bradenton is a lovable city where the Manatee River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The river and surrounding county are named after the large, slow-moving marine mammals that are one of the state’s most recognizable animal icons. Bradenton is a place that means a lot to me, with …
At the southern terminus of Amtrak’s 855-mile Auto Train, Sanford is one of the oldest incorporated cities in Florida, in a beautiful setting on the south shore of Lake Monroe. This sweeping body of water is at the head of navigation on the picturesque St. John’s River, and Sanford’s waterfront harmonizes perfectly with the lake. …
The well-to-do small town of Farmington is 10 miles west of Hartford. This place serves as the international headquarters for a surprising number of big corporations, including Otis Worldwide. What puts Farmington on the map for visitors is the Hill-Stead Museum. This industrialist’s residence has an assemblage of exquisite objets d’art, French Impressionist masterpieces and …
Located in northern Florida’s Marion County, the city of Ocala was incorporated in 1869 and currently ranks as the state’s 54th most populous city, with a population of just more than 63,000 residents. I adore the scenery in this part of the state, known as ‘horse country’ and full of grand live oaks draped with …
Recently praised by USA Today as one of the most liveable places in America, Danbury is a small city near the southern shore of the upscale Candlewood Lake. Here you’ll be in the very southern foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, with peaks rising to 900+ feet under a mantle of forest. When I think of …