Florida

Maybe there's no question to what makes the Florida peninsula so intoxicating. Beaches as elegant and sweet as powdered sugar, rustling mangroves, warm waters: all contrive to melt our busy workaday selves. We come to Florida to let it all go – worries, winter, and reality. Some are looking for a sandy getaway of sunsets, swimming, and seafood. Others seek the tranquility of South Beach and Key West. Still more are willing to lose themselves within the fantasy realms of Walt Disney World® and Orlando's theme parks. Within Florida's semitropical wilderness, alligators prowl the waterways, herons strut through ponds, manatees winter in springs and sea turtles nest in summer. Osprey and eagles, dolphins and tarpon, coral-reef forests, oceans of sawgrass: despite the best efforts of 21st-century humans, overwhelming portions of Florida remain untamed. In a nation where natural beauty is often measured by topography, flat Florida is underappreciated by outdoors fanatics, but here you can paddle a kayak over the back of a sleeping Jurassic-era alligator, and meet loggerheads and manatees underwater, eye to eye. While many of us love Florida for its beaches and theme parks, few of us know that this is one of the most populated states in the country. And that this state is so diverse. Ranch hunters and trappers in the geographically northern, culturally Southern climes and Jewish transplants living side by side with Latin arrivals from every Spanish-speaking nation around the globe, it's hard to beat Florida when it comes to tasting the human diversity at its most colorful and vibrant way.