Taking a staycation or hosting a visitor? See these only-in-Miami places
Hosting relatives or friends visiting South Florida? Guess you’ll need to take them around town to see the sights.
South Beach. The Everglades. Downtown.
Those are likely on your list. But we have some other ideas.
South Florida is home to interesting landmarks.
MORE: Does South Florida have any visitor attractions left? Take a look at where to go
New York may have the Statue of Liberty and St. Louis the Arch. But we have a giant Pegasus slaying a dragon and a 36-story guitar-shaped hotel.
Here’s a look at some of the area’s strangest places to take a visitor:
Car on a building
You’ll get a double-take from your visitors when you pass an office building on Biscayne Boulevard on the way to downtown Miami. It’s a full-size car on the side of the tower.
It goes back to 1983 when a Plymouth, donated by the Sweetwater Police Department, was hung on the building, then a police museum. But when that car started rusting, it was taken down, and a police cruiser donated by GM in 1995 went up in its place. It took eight hours to attach the cruiser to the three-story building on 38th and Biscayne.
In 2002, the police museum moved to a new home in Titusville, leaving the cruiser behind. But wall-climbing car was just too good to lose, and it was kept when the building became a medical center.
Pegasus
A larger-than-life statue of a winged horse fighting a dragon is at the entrance of Gulfstream Village, a casino, horse track and shopping-restaurant complex on U.S. 1 in Hallandale Beach, just north of the Aventura Mall in Miami-Dade.
The $30 million, 110-foot Pegasus arrived in South Florida in pieces from China and Germany and assembled on site in 2014.
MORE: What to know about the Pegasus
Robert is Here
Robert, as in namesake owner Robert Moehling, was there when the Redland fruit stand opened in 1960. He was 7 at the time. Robert was there for the stand’s 50th anniversary in 2010.
And Robert is still there today, selling the stand’s famous shakes and tropical produce.
You know you’re at Robert is Here when you see the landmark sign on the stand that says: “Robert is Here.”
MORE: Robert is Here is still packing in people for shakes, fruits and baked goods
Guitar Hotel
The Seminole Hard Rock’s Guitar Hotel, on State Road 7 between Stirling and Griffin roads near Hollywood, just north of Miami-Dade County, is quite the sight.
If you’re lost in the area, it’s a beacon, with light and laser shows shooting across the building every night. Inside are restaurants, casinos and a concert venue.
MORE: What to know about the Hard Rock guitar hotel
Coral Castle
A lovesick Latvian named Edward Leedskalnin built Homestead’s Coral Castle starting in the 1920s with his own hands, guided, he said, by the same physic forces that helped humans build one of the wonders of the world without modern machinery: the pyramids in Egypt.
Leedskalnin, the Miami Herald wrote in 1989, “spent most of his days and a good part of his nights excavating, chiseling and chipping tons of coral rock into a temple of love to a 16-year-old girl who jilted him on their wedding eve.”
His blocks weighed 6 to 30 tons. Somehow he put his 5,000-pound rocking throne in its place. A 9-ton, 92-inch high gate was balanced so that a small child can coax it open with the touch of a finger. He built a stone table in the shape of Florida. The water in its middle represents Lake Okeechobee. Who knew? Ed did. Supernatural.
MORE: Coral Castle is Miami’s creepiest coolest roadside attraction
Miami Marine Stadium
Imagine a stadium on Biscayne Bay to watch boat racing and concerts. This venue, along the Rickenbacker Causeway on the way to Key Biscayne, is a striking sight.
But it’s now abandoned and awaiting repair.
MORE: Miami Marine Stadium makes the national historic honor roll
Wynwood Walls
Painting on a wall? It’s not graffiti — it’s art.
In 2009, developer Tony Goldman, who revived New York’s Soho and South Beach, saw an opportunity to create a canvas for street art. Goldman helped create Wynwood Walls by using beat-up warehouse walls that became home for mural masterpieces.
Wynwood Walls opened in December 2009.
MORE: Everything you never knew about Wynwood
Stadium sculpture
A spinning symbol of the tropics once stood inside the stadium where the Miami Marlins play baseball. When the team hit a homer, the thing would go off.
New team owners moved “Homer” the statue outside loanDepot Park in Little Havana, where it is still displayed.
MORE: The moving of the baseball sculpture
Stiltsville
Welcome to a water world of homes.
These wooden party places grace the bay, with stilts planted in the bottom.
But Stiltsville isn’t what it used to be. Some of the homes were destroyed by storms and fire. Still, the remaining homes in the middle of the water is an only-in-Miami sight.
MORE: The rise, fall and future of Stiltsville