Daytona Beach Travel Guide

Daytona Beach is America's favourite family holiday destination for good reason. With 23 miles (37km) of fine grain sandy Atlantic beaches, this city is a staple attraction for holidaymakers, even during the winter months. Without moving from the beach, visitors can surf, jet ski, go boating, parasailing, fishing, bicycling, and even take a drive in a hired beach buggy. Daytona's hard-packed sands have provided for speedsters ever since the early 20th century, when British racing motorist and motoring journalist, Sir Malcolm Campbell, set and broke records motoring on the beach. Today, speeding is reserved for the world-famous Daytona International Speedway, where the annual Daytona 500 Nascar race is held.

With so much to do on the beach, it's difficult to find the motivation to move off it. Those who do are greeted with many recreational facilities and attractions in the string of towns along the intracoastal waterway and on the mainland. Visitors can try truly adventurous Floridian cuisine, such as fried gator tail, and shrimp and scallop pie at one of the many restaurants along the Halifax River. They can also head to the home of American business magnate and philanthropist, John D. Rockefeller, who by most definitions is the wealthiest American of all time, or the ruins of the first steam-powered sugar mill in Florida to understand the city's history. From archaeological sites to mini-golf, museums to haunted houses, and planetariums to chocolate factories, there's never a dull moment in Daytona Beach.