Ybor City, Tampa, Fla.

Arriving in Ybor City on a Friday morning is a quiet experience. The oldest neighborhood in Tampa, Fla., offers the charm of the tropics with a decidedly American feel. With its brick-paved streets and early 20th-century cigar factories, Ybor City feels almost deserted and out of time within the context of bustling Tampa.

Get out of your car and walk down Main Street where you will meet the unapologetically friendly purveyors of The Blind Tiger Café. Stop here for a while and drink a café con leche. If you visit during the winter months sit outside and let a perfectly temperate breeze blow past you. Do not be disturbed by the clucking of chickens. Yes, chickens. These chickens and roosters are direct descendants of the birds that lived in the backyards of residents more than 100 years ago. They belong here and they know it.

If you visit Ybor City on a Saturday night, your experience will be completely different. The nightlife is wild. This is where club culture and lai- back cigar bars collide in unexpectedly pleasant ways. Eat at the Columbia Restaurant and then take a haunted tour, which will give you access to the lore surrounding this historic neighborhood.