Experience the best of Boca Raton

Boca Raton sits on Florida's Atlantic coast in Palm Beach County, north of Fort Lauderdale and south of West Palm Beach, with beaches that look out to the Gulf Stream. The architect Addison Mizner laid out a resort here in the 1920s in the Mediterranean Revival style, with arches, terracotta roofs and courtyards, and many buildings still echo it. The name comes from the Spanish for mouse's mouth, a term used by sailors for a rocky inlet.

Mizner Park, an open-air plaza of shops, restaurants and the Boca Raton Museum of Art, is the social centre. Gumbo Limbo Nature Center has a boardwalk through a coastal forest and a hospital for sea turtles, Red Reef Park has a reef for snorkelling close to shore, and the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in nearby Delray Beach recall a farming colony of the early 1900s. Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge lies on the edge of the Everglades.

Stone crab claws, grouper and key lime pie are the local seafood tastes, alongside Cuban sandwiches. Winters are warm and dry, which is the busy season, while summers are hot and humid with afternoon thunderstorms, and the stormiest weather arrives from late summer.