Glide easily through stylish South Beach on the Miami South Beach Art Deco Segway Tour. The tour starts from the Viscay Hotel (960 Collins Ave. | 10th & Collins), in Miami Beach.
The Segway PT (personal transporter) is a two-wheeled, self-balancing electric vehicle. This tour offers the newest Segway on the market, the i2, which is safe, easy to ride and guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
You will meet your bilingual guide (English and Spanish) and will be issued with your Segway and safety helmet. You can practise using the machine before the start of the tour.
Set off with your guide along a route that takes you through the famous Art Deco district of South Beach, the world’s largest collection of Deco architecture. You will see the great hotels painted in pastel colors, some curved like cruise ships and embellished with portholes, others strictly rectilinear. All are reminders of a by-gone era of luxury and escapism.
Your guide will show you Casa Casuarina, also known as the Versace House. This 1930s mansion was fashion designer Gianni Versace’s South Beach home and it was here that he was shot point blank in July 1997. The house is now a fabulously expensive and exclusive private members’ club.
You will ride past Lincoln Road Mall, a seven-block shopping mecca that combines the best of 1930s architecture with trendy shopping, eclectic antique stores, avant-garde art galleries and vibrant nightlife.
And you will see the poignant Holocaust Memorial. Centerpiece of the Memorial is a 42-foot bronze arm reaching up out of the ground. It is inscribed, as if tattooed, with a serial number like those applied to concentration camp prisoners. The names of Holocaust victims are inscribed on a black granite wall at the site.
You will pass the Bass Art Museum, an important cultural destination with collections including everything from Renaissance to contemporary art.
The 2 ½ hour tour ends back at the starting point.