MIAMI IS MAGNIFICENT

Friday 1st December 2006

Jo Woods

Lock up your libidos, ladies – pastel-suited love god Sonny Crockett returned in 2006 in a big-screen version of the classic cop show Miami Vice. Colin Farrell took on the super-suave and sockless role made famous by Don Johnson in the 1980s, while Jamie Foxx played his partner, Ricardo Tubbs.

Although the show exposed the city's seedy underbelly, with storylines focusing on drugs, prostitution and gambling, producer Michael Mann's insistence that much of it was shot in Miami was a publicist's dream, beaming images of Ocean Drive and Miami Beach into millions of homes every week.

Miami has cleaned up its act since the Vice days and now blends beach life and modern city living. Located on the steamy southern tip of Florida, the city has as many faces as it has nationalities (a third of the population is Hispanic), from the enormous skyscrapers of downtown to the Mediterranean mansions of Coral Gables and the pastel-hued houses of Little Havana.

But it is Miami Beach, connected to the rest of the city by six causeways that best sums up this vibrant city – especially the southernmost tip, South Beach.