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Florida's east coast , facing the Atlantic Ocean, runs for more than three hundred miles north from the northern fringe of Miami. The palm-dotted beaches and warm ocean waves bring to reality the sun-soaked playground of popular imagination. However, the first fifty or so miles lie deep within the sway of Miami, with one city offering little to distinguish it from the next. Despite its outdated party-town reputation, Fort Lauderdale these days is a sophisticated yachting center. Boca Raton and Palm Beach to the north are even more exclusive, their Mediterranean-Revival mansions inhabited almost exclusively by multimillionaires. North of here, the coast is still substantially unspoiled, although the Space Coast , centering on the Kennedy Space Center , and Daytona Beach both go all out to draw the crowds. The one genuinely characterful town in the entire stretch is St Augustine , still recognizable as the spot where Spanish settlers established North America's earliest foreign colony. By car, the scenic route along the coast is Hwy-A1A , which sticks to the ocean side of the Intracoastal Waterway , formed when the rivers dividing the mainland from the barrier islands were joined and deepened during World War II.
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