FROM Key West in the south and Pensacola up north . . . to Sarasota along the western Gulf and St. Augustine on the Atlantic shore, it's not easy to pick the Florida destination where you want to focus.

Let's highlight just a few, saving others for yet another time.

Because so much emphasis is placed on Florida's more glittering sun-seeker resorts, historical and cultural aspects of the state are sometimes overlooked. Actually it's easy to combine them and enjoy a bit of both.

Since Bermudians have access to some of the hemisphere's most acclaimed beaches on a daily basis, we're calling attention to other attractions here.

Let's start with Everglades National Park near Homestead 50 miles south of Miami and truly unique in the world. Some travellers immediately envision a maze of hazardous trails, lurking reptiles and quicksand swamps. Actually, this vast wilderness is full of surprises.

Sturdy, well-constructed elevated boardwalk trails make walking a pleasure. Imagine a sea of grass home to numerous fish . . . sloughs which harbour alligators, egrets, cormorant, anhinga . . . tropical hammocks thick with airplants, ferns and orchids . . . mahogany groves struggling for survival with strangler figs.

Don't miss self-guided walking tours along many of these trails. But also plan to see some of the park's interior via boat tour and air boats which glide across more remote regions.

We've stayed at the park's Flamingo Lodge (103 rooms, 23 cottages) a couple of times. Thirty-eight miles from the park entrance, it contains a restaurant, marina, charter fishing boat fleet and other facilities.

What next? Bermudians who live in a setting liberally sprinkled with historic forts will find St. Augustine maintains a special fascination. The Castillo de San Marcos National Monument is a massive fortification built in 1695 out of coquina, the local shell-rock. Northernmost of Spain's stronghold's in Florida and the Caribbean, it's well worth the tour.

Here again, it's possible to get a crash course of 500 years of history on St. Augustine's sightseeing trams. If, like this writer, you find it impossible to bypass an historic lighthouse, save some energy to climb the 219 steps to the top of the town's lighthouse and museum.

Perhaps you're a traveller who likes to plan a trip with a theme.

Florida has developed several worth attention. With more than 1,800 miles of coastline, more than any other part of continental US, the state has 30 lighthouses and has developed a special lighthouse trail.

St. Augustine's spiral-banded with its original Freshnel lens is oldest. That in Ponce Inlet near Daytona Beach is second tallest in America and was completed in 1887 at 175 feet. Both have restored keeper's quarters and museums.

Cape Florida lighthouse at the southern tip of Key Biscayne was rebuilt in 1847 after a Seminole Indian attack. In 1992 it withstood the attack of Hurricane Andrew which devastated the area.

Key West lighthouse was originally built in 1825 to guide ships through treacherously narrow straits between Florida Reef and the Gulf Stream. Rebuilt in 1846 after a devastating hurricane, it's close by Ernest Hemingway's House, again with a museum in the restored keeper's residence.

Florida Lighthouse Association has a web site at www.floridalighthouses.org. Also check www.flheritage.com/maritime.

Those who enjoy visiting historic homes with unusual collections and furnishings have a long list of options. Some are so world-class they're almost alone worth the trip.

Palm Beach has the Henry Flagler Museum built by the railroad and hotel magnate for his third wife in 1902. The entire Whitehall mansion is extraordinary, with the antique toy and doll collection, a real standout that especially impressed me.

was not exaggerating when it described the mansion as "more wonderful than any palace in Europe, grander and more magnificent than any other private dwelling in the world".

A construction cost of $2? million in 1902 was certainly impressive. Add $1? million more for furnishings and you get the picture. Rather remarkable for someone who dropped out of school at age fourteen to go off and make his fortune.

Already successful partnering with John D. Rockerfeller in oil, he went on to build the railroad through the Keys to Key West, as well as constructing such headline hotels as The Breakers and Royal Poinciana. Gilt-edged doesn't begin to describe its level of grandeur.

Even if you've never been to a circus, it's hard to resist the flavour of Sarasota. The Ringling Museum complex there includes tours of Ca'd'Zan, the truly unique home of John Ringling who founded Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus.

One would hardly expect the home of such an imaginative entrepreneur and master showman to be ordinary, and it's definitely not! The name is Venetian dialect for "House of John" . . . but house is too modest a term. Palace, perhaps would be more appropriate.

It was originally planned by the Ringlings to combine the facade of Venice's Doge's Palace along with the tower of the old Madison Square Garden where the circus had appeared in New York City. Architects almost self-destructed at the idea, but the Ringlings held firm and a compromise evolved.

Not unlike William Randolph Hearst, who imported European treasures by the shipload for his California San Simeon creation, the Ringlings imported shiploads of doorways, balustrades, columns, arched tinted windows, tiles and a treasury of decorations for their architectural wonder on Sarasota Bay.

Roof tiles from Barcelona, Spain . . . marble squares for the Great Hall purchased in Belgium. Chandeliers by Tiffany, Flemish and English tapestries, elaborate gilt furniture from estates of Vincent Astor and Jay Gould. Lace bedspreads and pillows collected on Marble Ringling's travels. Overwhelming is an inadequate description. Obviously no expense was spared. But Will Rogers said to Ringling when he unveiled a portrait of himself: "It doesn't look like you. You've got your hand in your own pocket."

And that's just the house. We haven't even talked about the art and circus museums, both equally dramatic. All this built by a man who began his show business career at age 16 as a singer and dancer at a weekly salary of $1.50 plus expenses for room and board. At the height of his success, he was one of the 20 richest men in the US.

famous, but certainly far less flamboyant, is the home of another famous Florida residence, also very worth a detour. Thomas Alva Edison, arrived in Fort Myers in 1886, building a home on fourteen acres along the Caloosahatchee River.

His office is also there, along with his laboratory, a museum showing many of his 1,100 inventions and the opportunity to tour all of them. The botanical gardens where Edison collected plants from around the world is also an education. A master horticulturist, his beloved garden contains more than 1,000 plant varieties.

In 1916 his good friend and fellow entrepreneur Henry Ford moved next door, and it's now possible to tour both of these estates. Both had humble beginnings, very limited grammar school education (Edison only three months of formal schooling), but their brilliance certainly shines through on these tours.

It's appropriate that the home of such a famous inventor be different . . . and it is. Edison drew up the plans, had them built in prefabricated sections of spruce in Maine. They were then transferred to Fort Myers on four sailing schooners and erected in 1886.

Today the interior remains just as the Edison's left it . . . a very comfortable lived-in homeyness, not the palace-like residences of Flagler and Ringling. It's warmly Victorian with broad, 14-foot-wide verandas.

Original carbon filament light bulbs made by Edison around 1910 were still in use in the living room during our visit. Always an innovator, even his swimming pool built in 1900 was reinforced with bamboo and still holds water. He installed underground wiring in the gardens back in 1895, because he considered overhead wires unsightly, and it's still operational.

When he first built, Fort Myers was accessible only by a boat that sailed there monthly. So a guest house was necessary for visitors like Harvey Firestone and John Burroughs who usually stayed a month. Even luxury cars in the museum are unusual . . . a 1908 Cadillac Opera Coupe, 1936 Brewster limousine and 1907 prototype model T presented to Edison by friend and neighbour Henry Ford.

For 20 years Ford updated that original car with his latest innovations because Edison was so attached to his beloved "Tin Lizzie", he didn't want a new model, even when Ford offered to replace it with a Lincoln. There's also an early La France steam fire engine.

Edison arrived in Fort Myers he was 38 years old, seriously ill from years of overwork and grieving the death of his wife. Doctors insisted he move to a warm climate to restore his health. It certainly helped because he lived to 84 with many more inventions to his credit.

Edison's second wife, Mina, donated the entire estate to Fort Myers. It includes the laboratory where he and his staff worked and is exactly as he left it.

In the last years of his life, Edison's doctors ordered him into a wheelchair. Ford, 16 years his junior, was still a bundle of energy. But he also purchased a wheelchair so the two could go riding around together.Another historic site, but one with a very sinister past, is the 200-year-old Kingsley Plantation between Amelia Island and Jacksonville at the northern tip of Fort George Island.

by Zephaniah Kingsley, he was a slave trader who arrived here in 1814. Married to a former slave from Senegal, West Africa, his wife acquired both land and slaves and ran the plantation while her husband was absent.

At one time, it had 60 slaves cultivating sea island cotton. By 1831 Kingsley had freed many of the slaves and moved to Haiti. Today his plantation home is a museum and 23 of the original 32 slave cottages remain. Made of oyster shell concrete, locally called "tabby", one of them is restored as it would have been two centuries ago.

Rangers are on hand to answer questions about the plantation and discuss hardships of life on that plantation and others like it.

Even if it's your intent on your Florida trip to hang loose, settle into a lounge chair or take off in a golf cart, try to set aside some time to visit a few of these very unusual sites. All are one-of-a-kind, so fascinating they'll not soon be forgotten.