Miami Beach, Florida is a mecca for sun-worshiping tourists who flock to this slender barrier island situated between the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the mansion-lined shores of Miami, Florida's famed Biscayne Bay. These are separate cities, you see, each with its own identity, and while compatible with each other, both compete aggressively for tourism dollars.

Miami Beach got its start when a Quaker farmer, John Collins, and entrepreneur Carl Fisher of automobile headlight fame, bought land on one of the small barrier islands across Biscayne Bay from Miami in 1913. Within two years the pair had begun building a bridge back to the mainland, and dredging was underway to create more land on which to build. Their names are immortalized in Miami Beach, with Collins Avenue, one of the main drags and Fisher Island, one of Miami Beach's more exclusive neighborhoods.

In the 1920s and 1930s, a group of predominantly wealthy Jewish businessmen built a string of small hotels along the island's Atlantic beachfront, adopting the new American architectural style of Art Deco. Today, Miami Beach is world-renowned for its colorful, sometimes severe-looking Art Deco boutique hotels, most of which were revitalized in the 1990s as the island's South Beach strip began to develop. Just 4 miles across Biscayne Bay from Miami, the city has only seven square miles of land area and a population of only 87,900. The business of Miami Beach is almost exclusively tourism and hospitality-related and high-rise luxury housing.

Frequently called "the billion dollar sandbar," median priced homes in Miami Beach start at $334,000 and, depending upon where on the island you're looking, as high as $2.3 million. Many of the high rise condominiums that forest the shoreline of Ocean Drive like steel and glass trees, are second homes for wealthy Americans and Europeans who spend time in Miami Beach when the warm trade winds of the Gulf Stream begin to blow. In the shadows of these skyscrapers are places with magic names like Bal Harbour where Gucci, Cartier and Christian Dior shops flourish or Surfside where the yachts tie up and at the far end, Key Biscayne, probably one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the world. And, of course, South Beach, where hedonism reigns supreme and devotees seek the celebrity lifestyle of fashion designers and movie stars, some of whom maintain estates on the island. It even has its own diet, "The South Beach Diet," fashioned by a Miami Beach doctor.

Miami Beach maintains its own city government, separate from mainland Miami, along with its own police and fire departments. Schools are members of the Miami-Dade County Public School System. It is home to the famed Miami Heart Institute, the Holocaust Museum memorializing the deaths of Jews during World War II, the Mount Sinai Medical Center and Casa Casaurina, the Art Deco home of the late fashionista Gianni Versace, which is now a private club and available for parties at a smart $10,000 a day rental.

So, while only a thin sliver of land, Miami Beach has the worldwide recognition of being a playground for tourists, an enclave for weathy residents and a place where sun, fun, good food and good times easily come together.