Things to do in Fort Lauderdale

Neighborhood · Downtown to the beach

The city's spine — a mile of galleries, restaurants and boutiques running from the New River downtown out to the Atlantic, with a landscaped riverside path connecting the museums at the western end.

Local tip: The eastern blocks are for eating and the western ones for the Museum of Discovery and Science and the art museum; between them the Riverwalk is a genuinely pleasant walk that visitors skip. Parking on Las Olas itself is a losing game — use a garage off SE 1st Avenue.

Nature · Barrier island, east of the Intracoastal

Seven miles of public beach with a famous wave-patterned promenade wall, a deliberately reinvented seafront that spent the 1980s shedding its spring-break identity and mostly succeeded.

Local tip: Go north past Sunrise Boulevard for the quieter stretches and actual parking. The southern end near Las Olas is the busy, restaurant-lined one. Lifeguard flags are worth reading — rip currents here are a genuine hazard, not a formality.

Landmark · Downtown and the Intracoastal

A working river running through the middle of downtown, with a water taxi that operates as actual transport rather than a tour — a hop-on service linking downtown, Las Olas, the beach and Hollywood.

Local tip: A day pass is the cheapest way to understand the city's geography, and it is the only sensible way to reach the beach on a Saturday. Watch for the railway bridge downtream — it drops for trains and the whole river queues behind it.

Nightlife · Wilton Manors — a separate city, two miles north of downtown

A half-mile strip of bars, restaurants and shops at the heart of one of the highest concentrations of same-sex couples of any US city, in a small municipality entirely surrounded by Fort Lauderdale.

Local tip: It is a distinct city government, so its rental rules, parking enforcement and municipal tax rate are its own — worth knowing if you are signing a lease there. Stonewall Pride in June closes the Drive entirely.

Culture · Barrier island, off Sunrise Boulevard

A 1920s plantation-style house on 35 acres of preserved barrier-island land between the beach and the Intracoastal — orchid houses, a swan pond and monkeys, held back from development by its owners for a century.

Local tip: Adjacent Hugh Taylor Birch State Park covers the rest of that undeveloped strip and has a canoe trail and a tunnel under A1A to the beach. Together they are the only place left that shows what the barrier island looked like before the condominiums.

Food · Lauderhill, North Lauderdale, Oakland Park and Lauderdale Lakes

West and north of the tourist city is where Broward actually eats — Haitian griot and legume, Jamaican patties and oxtail, Cuban ventanitas, Trinidadian doubles and Colombian bakeries, mostly in unglamorous plazas on Oakland Park and Commercial Boulevards.

Local tip: This is where the county's genuine food culture is and almost no visitor guide goes there. Go on a Sunday after church for the Haitian places; the queue is the recommendation.