Completely updated every year (unlike most of the competition), Frommer's South Florida including Miami & the Keys is the only guide you'll need to discover the best of South Florida. Our author, a longtime resident, will show you the loveliest beaches, the hottest restaurants, the top shopping, and the most sizzling nightlife in Miami. You can take your pick from affordable art deco motels, retro resorts, or the trendiest boutique hotels in South Beach. Choose a Cuban cafe or a sleek sushi bar, a raucous stone crab feast or an elegant steakhouse.

We'll also take you down to the Keys, for fabulous snorkeling, diving, and deep-sea fishing, winding up in Key West, with its outrageous beach bars and nightclubs. The guide also includes the best of nearby Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and West Palm Beach, and an excursion to the Everglades, for amazing bird watching and a look at one of the world's most unique ecosystems. You'll even get a free color fold-out map and an online directory that makes trip-planning a snap!

This South Florida guide is somewhat more expanded than "Frommer's Florida" Guide (see my review). If you are going to visit just MIAMI, the EVERGLADES, PALM BEACH, FT. LAUDERDALE or the KEYS, then you will find this guide more compact, lighter and a bit cheaper.

The same great writing style that is in the Frommer's state guide is found in this more compact companion. The accommodation and dining recommendations are reliable and on the money. This guide lists the best restaurants that South Florida has to offer. A lodging and restaurant index would be a definite plus for this guide. As it stands now, if you have a restaurant you want to look up, you have to go through all the listings in the city you are in until you stumble across the name you seek or miss seeing it completely.

The rating system is labored and difficult to understand. The explanation of the "new star rating system" is buried in the book and not indexed. It was by quirk that I found it. Strange.

The Internet web site addresses provided for hotels could be more comprehensive considering that this is a 2003 guide. In today's world of "connectivity" you can visit the hotel sites and see the accommodations and rates prior to making reservations. And, website/email addresses are restricted to the lodging listings even though many of the restaurants now have their own websites with photos and menus and email to makes reservations.

However, there are two significant areas in this guide that could use improvement: maps and hotels/restaurants.

Regarding the maps: the maps in the guide are lackluster. More and better maps would greatly help the user.

What put this guide on top of the competing guides is the clear and enjoyable writing style of the review. The introductions of the regional areas are the best of the guides I reviewed. You will do well if you have to chose just one South Florida guide and you select Frommer's.


The Best Guidebook Ever!   November 1, 2002
This is probably the best guidebook I ever read. The author has a really good writing style and it is genuinely interesting and fun to read (not that I'm suggesting you pick it over Fitzgerald or anything, just that it's a really well-written book). Her restaurant reviews are really excellent--just reading some of them made me start to drool. And while many of the restaurant listings are for priceyish places, she does list some great, fun, authentic, and in some cases, way off the beaten track yummy places to try. I trust her opinion completely!

This is a really thorough guidebook, with good and honest hotel listings (one of the only people to vocalize what we all know--the Delano IS overrated!) and a great chapter on what to do and see if you want to do and see more than just the beaches of South Florida. The Miami coverage is awesome-- good tips on shopping, a really knowledgeable chapter on nighlife, and more.

The Everglades chapter has a hilarious essay about how the author was reluctant to go the first time, and the coverage of the Keys, Palm Beaches, Boca, etc. are just as good. I usually expect a Frommer's guidebook to be a bit stuffier than this, but as soon as I read the intro, I knew I had to try this book, and I'm so happy I did. You will be too. It rocks!


South Florida exposed   September 28, 2002
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Wow. I used to think that South Florida just meant Miami and palm trees. This book proved to me and my husband that South Florida is much, much more. I got the book on a bet with my husband, who insisted that So Flo was a lot of fun and not just laying out at a pool kind of fun. This book proved me wrong and I lost the bet, but boy was I glad to be a loser in this wager! This book is a must have for anyone who thinks that a trip to Florida can be hot and boring. Quite the contrary!! Thanks, Frommer's. We'll be back to So Flo very soon.