-I'm in a city that harnesses a type of energy which can be found nowhere else in the world.

It's an energy sparked by an electrifying multiculturalism created by people from all over the world, who come here in order to leave their mark on it.

It's a city known for sunshine and salsa and for the feeling of freedom that only being on the water can bring, but there are also little-known gems that tell of a history that began long before.

It's the city's past, present, and future that make it more than just a famous beach.

I'm in Miami, Florida.

[ Upbeat tune plays ] I'm Samantha Brown and I've traveled all over this world.

And I'm always looking to find the destinations, the experiences, and, most importantly, the people who make us feel like we're really a part of a place.

That's why I have a love of travel and why these are my places to love.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" is made possible by... -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ♪♪ ...pedal... and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal of making sure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-To travel is to live, and at AAA, we've been passionate about travel for over 100 years.

That's why we created AAA Vacations, member travel experiences around the world.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.

♪♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, experienced on a journey by rail.

♪♪ Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

-I'm starting my time in Miami soaking in as much vibrant color as I can in the open-air gallery that is Wynwood Walls, and while murals have become more important to cities, there's no place like this.

So what I love about this place that was created is that usually with mural art it's something that you see quickly.

-Mm-hmm.

-Right, you're passing by, and you see this gorgeous painting, and you don't want to stop because you're on your way to someplace else, and maybe this isn't a neighborhood that you'd want to come back to to walk around, and this really gives us a chance to stop and really appreciate the artist.

-Right.

Usually street art and graffiti has been pushed out from the urban center, but with Wynwood Walls, we wanted to bring that in and bring it really close to people so they can interact with them and really be able to see this art form.

My name is Chantal Rodriguez, and I'm a curator for the Wynwood Walls in Miami.

I knew I loved art at a very young age, but I didn't have the talent to be an artist, so now I get to curate these amazing murals by some of the top street artists in the world.

-The visionary behind these visionaries was a man by the name of Tony Goldman, who saw the potential in a down-and-out neighborhood becoming an outdoor exhibition space that would draw visitors and artists from all around the world.

If I'm in a museum, I'm seeing collections, and I'm seeing different periods of art.

-Mm-hmm.

-And therefore I see the connection between those different periods and therefore a greater appreciation for art.

-Mm-hmm.

-Do you have that sort of layout here where we're seeing more old-school street murals, even graffiti playing a part to what appreciate now?

-A lot of the artists we have in the Wynwood Walls come from a graffiti background, and some of them are pioneers of the movement.

Actually, right when you're welcomed into the Wynwood Walls, you're seeing Futura, and he's one of the older pioneers of the movement painting trains in the '70s and '80s, so what you're seeing here is his kind of transition into abstraction.

I love working with muralists because they have a unique ability to produce art in smaller space like all studio artists and take that into a very large, massive scale like a building or 80-foot mural.

♪♪ -My name is Jean "BJ" Lucel.

This is my barbecue spot.

Bon Gout stands for good taste.

Bon means good.

Gout means taste.

Right here is fried pork shoulder.

It's called griot, and this is rice and beans with red beans.

This is fried plantain, which is also known as banan peze.

-Banan peze.

-That's what we call it.

We call it banan peze.

-Is this something that I would find in Haiti, or are you putting a Haitian spin on something that's sort of American standard barbecue techniques?

-Yes.

We are actually putting kind of like a Haitian twist on the American barbecue.

-Oh, it's a very good twist.

-Is it?

-Mm-hmm.

-Yes, it's very good and juicy.

The key ingredient to everything is epis.

-What is that?

-It's our seasoning, what we rub the meat with and what we boil the meat with.

-Jean is all smiles talking about his food, but don't ask him this.

If I asked you the recipe for epis, would you give it to me?

-No.

-The smile comes back on his face when he's talking about Mama Chef and his team in the back.

-A lot of people cook with measuring cups.

-Mm-hmm.

-Mama Chef, her measuring cup is her hand, so she could pretty much measure everything based on her hand and her eyes.

She don't have to put it in measuring cups, and it'll come out perfect every time.

-Bon Gout started as a barbecue cart only available on the weekends, but it really has its roots in community service.

Jean and his dad established their own food bank to help the people of Little Haiti.

We have a location that every Tuesday we pass out free groceries to the people that's living around the community.

-And just think about it.

You know, barbecue is a big deal in this country.

You've got Lubbock, Texas.

You've got Kansas City.

You've got Memphis and now, because of you, Miami.

-Because of me, well, not just me.

I have my team.

There's nothing here that's done by myself.

I can't do it by myself.

-But I could probably eat all this barbecue by myself.

♪♪ The Everglades is unlike any other ecosystem in the world.

What makes it so unique?

-It's somewhere caught in between being a tropical zone and a deciduous zone.

-Okay.

-You know, more northern varieties of trees and species and tropical species can coexist, and the heat of the day draws the water up into the clouds and then creates a cycle.

It's a rain cycle, and without that rain cycle, without the standing water, Florida would be a desert and would be uninhabitable.

-Charles Kropke is an environmentalist and owner of Dragonfly Expeditions that focuses on the Everglades.

-The Florida Everglades is a very subtle place.

It's also one of the largest and wildest parts of North America still.

-And what we're on right now are tribal lands.

-This is Miccosukee homeland tribal land, and they won this by never having signed a treaty with the US government.

-Wow.

-So they're still a sovereign people.

They have their own supreme court, their own police, their own everything, administration, and they even have an embassy in Miami, the only embassy in the United States that's not in Washington.

♪♪ -A local guide and member of the Tigertail family of the Miccosukee tribe, Alex Backs, took Charlie and me to an island that had been inhabited by his family members for generations.

-My grandmother used to live on here a long time ago before everything started to get more modernized to where they had to move closer out by the road.

We still have it set up to where it kind of gives a general idea of how the natives lived out here.

She lived out here up until about 1940s or so.

-Wow.

How many people would've lived on this island with your grandmother?

-You're looking at about maybe 15 to 30 people depending on -- It could be about maybe five, six generations of one family.

-What would your grandmother have done and the people on your island in terms of eating?

-They would pretty much live off the land.

-Mm-hmm.

-They used to grow farms on these islands or nearby islands, and they would grow stuff like corn, pumpkin, squash, sugarcane.

They also would hunt around the area, white-tailed deers.

They hunt the alligators, the fish, the turtles.

Pretty much anything they could get ahold of out here to survive, they'll hunt.

Yeah.

-Alex also had a talent I had never seen before.

He can call up the alligators.

-[ Calling alligators ] ♪♪ -Does she recognize you?

-She will recognize people, especially by their sound, their voice.

Yeah.

-This is very intimidating.

Mm-hmm.

-Coming in.

-Yeah, she really is.

How long is she?

-She's close to 10 feet.

She's maybe 9 and some change.

-Wow.

-Really big.

-Really deceiving.

-Yeah, you can't tell by her face.

-Really deceiving.

So what sound are you making?

What type of animal?

-The sound I make is the noise a lot of baby gators make.

-Oh.

-They'll make that noise like a communication with each other and communication with the mother.

-As a conservationist, how is the Everglades doing?

-Well, I'm sort of the optimistic conservationist.

-Okay.

-And I think that a lot of things have actually improved.

So it's sort of like we're at an early stage of saving the Everglades, but time is ticking very quickly.

[ Insects chirping, birds calling ] ♪♪ -I always feel like when I dine out in Miami, it's like I'm going to the theater.

-Yeah.

-And I'm here to see a live performance, and the restaurants themselves are like these amazing sets that I get to walk in and really experience things, but here at Ember, you raised the bar, and you've added pyrotechnics.

There seems to be two big fire-breathing machines, monsters in this kitchen.

You've got the open grill here, and then what is that thing?

-Well, I mean, they're our toys, right?

So we're just playing with fire.

-Mm-hmm.

-It's basically a box with a fire in it.

There's no buttons.

It doesn't plug in.

It only has a flue.

So you're cooking here, and you're finishing in there.

It's probably about 800 degrees in there right now.

-My gosh.

-On its way up, too.

-Wow.

What is it about watching things, food being cooked over a fire that is absolutely transfixing?

-You just get fixated on what's happening.

You want to watch every little edge get charred, the bubbling happening.

Everyone kind of has this memory growing up of somebody grilling or their dad or their mom or somebody grilling in their backyard, and I think for the most of us, we have that connection to that.

You know, it's something that we look forward to.

-This is your fourth restaurant in four years.

-Correct.

-So what did you want to do with Ember that you didn't do with your other three restaurants?

-I actually thought of Ember before any of those other restaurants.

Something that's been, like, in my heart or in my head for a long time, and the timing, everything just wasn't right until we found this place.

-One thing you wouldn't see Dad throw on the grill is lasagna, but this is 15 layers of house-made noodles in between 15 layers of cheese cooked and put in the magic firebox.

-And then we put the ragu on the outside.

-Oh.

-Yeah.

-And what's in the ragu?

-Well, it's actually grilled maitake mushrooms or a hen of the woods.

They're gently grilled right over the wood fire, sliced up, and then folded with Bolognese, and it's actually like Bolognese puttanesca because we put olives and capers and chili flake in it, too.

-Oh, my God.

You know that delectable, crispy, charred corner piece that everyone wants?

You get that in every piece.

-First sauce is going to be our fondue, and it's made with five different cheeses but mainly Gruyère, and a lot of people don't know that each cheese reacts differently at a different temperature, so we keep that in mind when we make it.

♪♪ And then this is our maitake Bolognese that we made.

You'll get a little bit of heat from the chilies.

-Mm-hmm.

-And then each mushroom, because we don't cook it too long, it's still pretty fresh in texture, still has a nice bounce to it.

Bon appétit.

-I've never been so happy in my life.

♪♪ ♪♪ That is so good.

-We accidentally ran out once.

That won't ever happen again.

-About an hour outside of Miami, Florida, is the town of Homestead.

Its unique microclimate made it the location of what could be the most unique public park in the United States.

Is this a fruit?

Is this an herb?

-This is the sausage tree.

-Are you making that up?

The Fruit & Spice Park has 500 varieties of fruits, nuts, and spices from around the world.

James Stribling is a horticulturalist and the park's director, but it wasn't always a park.

-It was originally founded so that the people that were coming to the area and homesteading would be able to learn what could grow here because we're unique in extreme South Florida that we can grow things that the rest of the country can't.

-Bananas are grown elsewhere in the US, but taking a stroll through a forest of 50 varieties of banana trees is definitely unique.

-The ones you see in the grocery store, that's just one variety.

-Okay.

-Pretty much around the world, it's the same one.

That's a commercial variety.

-We all get the same banana which is, to me, just devastating to know that there are so many other bananas to try.

-And this is not a tree.

Those are all leaves that go all the way to the bottom, and the flower stalk comes all the way from the root right out the middle and hangs down.

-So it's not a tree.

-It's an herb.

-A banana is an herb?

-Yes.

-Wow.

At the Fruit & Spice Park, stalks of bananas are put out for tasting, and the rules are, any fruit that's fallen from a tree is fair game for snacking, too.

There are daily workshops to sink your teeth into and trees that are meant to be hugged.

-This is one of the biggest, most beautiful denizens of our Africa section, the baobab.

-The baobab.

-Baobab.

It's the tree of life... -Okay.

-...because they can live over 1,000 years... -Oh, my goodness.

-...sometimes 2,000.

Yeah.

-How old are these?

-These are only about 70 years old.

-They're babies.

-So we'll come back in another 1,000 years or so... -Oh, my gosh.

-...and have a look at what they're like.

-Trees, I've always felt, give off an energy like they are a presence.

-Definitely.

-Yeah.

-And this is one that you really need to be a tree hugger to feel the energy of the tree.

That's why this one is bigger than the rest because this is the one that gets the most hugs.

-This one gets the most hugs?

-This one gets the most hugs.

-Well, I'm going to have to go and hug all the other ones now, Jim.

-You go hug the trees.

-I'm a tree hugger.

I love trees.

-Just feel that.

-Yeah.

Oh, my goodness.

It's like an ancient animal.

Oh.

I think it just hugged me back.

-That's it.

-Wow.

♪♪ Miami is a city of singular people and places, and there's no other place like this in Miami.

I'm in a museum, a performing art space, and a bar.

-With Roberto in that little boat were 14 Cuban paintings which he would not leave behind, even for his own life.

-No, not my life, it's the painting.

The painting is my mission.

-The Coast Guard did save Roberto and the paintings, and in the United States, his collection grew.

There are paintings that are religious in theme, pastoral in theme.

Are they all Cuban artists?

-Yes, all Cuban art, and 80% is 1800 to 1959.

-Thanks to Roberto, Cubaocho has one of the largest privately owned Cuban art collections in the world, but he does have a favorite.

-"La Rumba," 1937, this painting is Cuba.

The girl in the center, she's America.

She going to Cuba in 1920s, and she liked the music, and she danced, and everybody, look and see their face.

Everybody is very happy for the American girl dancing rumba.

You don't have this instrument, you don't have Cuban music.

-[ Singing in Spanish ] ♪♪ -When was the last time you saw dancing in a museum?

Very Miami.

♪♪ ♪♪ -And at Cubaocho, the art collector plays the trombone.

♪♪ ♪♪ Miami is a city that was built on fearlessness.

It's a quality that is out on display, but there are still hidden gems found on quiet streets.

The Black Precinct Museum tells the story of another brand of courage.

-It was an actual precinct that was strictly designed for black criminals, and then it came into play where you actually had black officers pushing us right into what we know and we celebrate as our First Five.

-So you started out with five.

-Five, 1944, September 1st.

-City of Miami, all white police officers.

-Yes.

-These five men started off.

-Yeah.

-Sadly, none of these five men are with us today, but the Black Precinct Museum does have an exceptional docent.

-I am Lieutenant Archie McKay.

I worked for the city of Miami 26 years.

I began in 1954, and I retired in 1980.

People didn't want black police officers.

-Mm-hmm.

-White officers didn't want them.

Many of them didn't, but they excelled, and the city hired more, and the city hired more, and the city hired more until they hired me.

-Truly this was a example of what community policing is and was.

They knew the community.

They knew the people in the community.

They knew families, and so when they were making their arrests, there was nowhere the criminal could run, you know?

-The museum tells the story of not only the officers but how the whole building was used for the booking, jailing, and even judging of the criminals.

-Typically you could sit about six to eight criminals or suspects in this one holding cell.

-Tight quarters.

-Tight.

It was never meant to be comfortable, of course.

-A comfortable stay?

No.

But at least with the precinct being located here, a fair one.

-Wow.

-Yeah.

-Whatever training I got was on-the-job training and training among ourselves.

The day I got out of school, the first call that I received was a childbirth, and I remember them telling me about the finding a cord and everything and washing it with the alcohol and tie the umbilical cord and all this kind of stuff, but I did it.

I did it.

Being a police officer gave me an opportunity to do what I dreamed about doing, and that was being a social worker, helping people.

-Our mission is to use the water to help people with disabilities and disadvantaged kids improve their independence, education, and quality of life.

-If you need me to do anything, I have zero sailing experience, Harry, so just make it obvious.

-I will let you know.

I'm Harry Horgan.

I'm the cofounder of Shake-A-Leg Miami.

After I graduated from college, I fell out of a truck and broke my back, resulting in paraplegia from the waist down, and life changed in an instant.

We're going to have to tack.

-Oh, wow.

Harry founded Shake-A-Leg over 30 years ago and now has 10 sailboats, kayaks, and even a ship all to accommodate a wide range of people with disabilities.

Sailing is challenging beyond belief.

It is mentally challenging, physically challenging.

Why is this something that is good for people who already have physical and emotional challenges?

-Well, it puts you out in nature and then the thrill of being able to, look it, no motors.

There's a competitive side and the camaraderie.

Sailing is a team sport, so you can -- With the right team, no matter what your disability is, you can go sailing.

-Is there anyone whose disability is so challenging they can't be on this boat?

-We have what's called VACC Camp, and they bring kids on ventilators.

-So a breathing apparatus, that is helping them breathe.

-Breathing apparatus, and they have the respirators right alongside.

The boat is designed that it's not going to capsize so because it has a big heavy keel.

-Okay.

It's really adapted for the people you're taking out.

Programs that you have are so rare compared to the amount of people who would love to have them.

You know, you think about the community of people who consider themselves disabled.

They travel, but they also then travel with their family members, so there are millions upon millions of people who just need something like this.

-I'm glad you see that, and our whole thing is inspiring a person with a disability to believe they can do more than they thought, and if they have a dream, it's possible.

You just have to go after it.

-Miami is a special place.

We have so much art and beautiful culture surrounding us.

There's also great diversity in our food, neighborhoods, and music.

-So if you get down to Miami, you need to come out and see the Everglades.

There's no better time.

It's a moment right now where the Everglades are endangered, but we're still able to save them, so coming out here would allow you to see what's worth saving.

-Are you going to Miami?

You going to Little Havana.

Little Havana is Cuba, is the life, is music together.

Everybody is very happy for beautiful experience in Little Havana.

-Miami is the most accessible city in the United States, and we want to invite everyone with a disability to come on down, experience its beauty, and let's go for a sail.

-When a city's energy is created by the incredible diversity of its people, when those people, past and present, show you what it's like to be fearless, when that fearlessness can be felt by all who visit, that is when we share a love of travel, and that's why Miami, Florida, is a place to love.

-For more information about this and other episodes, destination guides, or links to follow me on social media, log on to placestolove.com.

Samantha Brown's "Places to Love" was made possible by... -We believe watching the world go by isn't enough.

That's why we climb... ♪♪ ...pedal... and journey beyond the beaten path, on storied rivers, with a goal of making sure that every mile traveled turns into another memory.

You can find out more at amawaterways.com.

-To travel is to live, and at AAA, we've been passionate about travel for over 100 years.

That's why we created AAA Vacations, member travel experiences around the world.

Learn more at AAA.com/LiveTV.

♪♪ -All the untamed beauty of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, experienced on a journey by rail.

♪♪ Rocky Mountaineer, proud sponsor of "Places to Love."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪