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Guide to Melbourne, USA - Florida
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Click to go to Flight Prices for Melbourne
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MelbourneMelbourne
More often ignored than not, Melbourne, Florida, is a city left more or less in peace while attractions further east and south take in the majority of the region's visitors every year. Roughly an hour's drive from Disney World and the world-renowned Kennedy Space Center, Melbourne is not what one would call a popular tourist center. Nonetheless, this small, cozy city is a place where suburbanites from up north can dip into a metropolis-like area without fear of being swallowed into an amalgam of congested streets, a labyrinth of skyscrapers, subway cars and graffiti, and keep to a simplistic itinerary that doesn't include more than basic, enjoyable activities fitting for any family, from domestic or international locales. It may not be equitable to Miami Beach, but Melbourne's own strip of sand is a great place to rest, wade in semi-warm Floridian waters, and get plenty of rays. Along the coast are some good eateries, but though walking the waterline may be a great way to pass the afternoon hours before heading into town for an evening of the arts, there are numerous car parks and housing complexes a few hundred feet inland, making nature walks good only near, at, or beyond the city's limits.If you're looking for a hands-off vacation destination chock-full of dazzling sights, a heavily tourism-oriented network of adventure parks, and large watersport centers, you'll be out of luck coming to Melbourne. On the other hand, those interested in getting to know a calm, collected, and laid-back city with both selective and very general tastes, Melbourne will suit such a group quite well.
When to go:
Seemingly increasingly battered by hurricanes and an all-around variety of tropical storms, Florida is definitely not the place to go if you know something big is coming. Up north, the state's cities are often more protected from the brunt of Caribbean-born churners, but there's no telling what path such occurrences will take when each annual hurricane season comes to roots in the region. Staying away from Melbourne in late summer and autumn will do one good in avoiding anything regarded as detrimental. Florida in spring, anyone?
Getting there and around:
Despite its rather lowly status among international stars such as Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach, it's fair to say that Melbourne isn't entirely lost inside the peninsula's crowd. Sporting its own international airport, Melbourne serves up a large, but picky group of travelers throughout its daily schedule. Home to an ever-increasing list of domestic and foreign clients, it certainly seems Melbourne International is on the up-and-up. While the metropolitan area's busing system does a decent job in providing public transit for many of the city's and surrounding town's citizens, the frequency with which routes are made is not, well, frequent. If you don't mind spending lots of pretty pennies, taxis are more visitor-friendly. Rental cars are available, though we only advise going about via the most private of means if you're planning to stick close to the coast.
Attractions:
We'd like to mention the fact that Melbourne is the hub for travel within the East Floridian complex known as the Space Coast, partly because the city's makeup holds a heavy emphasis on the tech world, placing Melbourne into the Top 10 of the Southeast United States' most "wired" locations, and also for its geographic standing. You can expect lots of run-ins with WI-FI-enabled cafes, and almost guarantee that those corporate email interruptions will keep on coming as well! Ah, the 21 Century, eh?
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