The rooftop pool at Gansevoort South, Miami.

South Beach and the Gansevoort South

The trick, of course, is to pretend you’re not looking. So you reapply sunscreen, sip your cocktail, lean back against the mod poolside loveseat and flip lazily through your magazine. But you’re not reading a word, of course. You’re staring—secretly—at everyone. How can you not?

It’s the whole point of being in the model-swirling, music-thumping, scene-making fabulosity that is the 26,000-square-foot rooftop pool deck of Gansevoort South (2377 Collins Ave., Miami Beach; 305/604-1000; standard double room begins at $395).

This two-year-old property is the newest extension of New York’s Gansevoort Hotel, whose signature cool minimalism—and rooftop pool deck—is favored by A-listers, reality TV stars and style-makers. You’ll find that crowd here, too (is that a Kardashian sister who just walked by?), thanks to dad-and-son developers William and Michael Achenbaum’s successful exporting of their Meatpacking District–based hotel brand 1,000 miles down the coast to gloriously decadent South Beach.

The sun-and-fun, 24/7 celebration of youth and beauty that is South Beach elegantly informs every floor of this luxury property in the area’s on-the-rise north end. Its 334 very large rooms (at an average 700 feet each, they’re bigger than most NYC apartments) are boldly designed with hibiscus-yellow, aqua and magenta details.

Each offers a “wow” view of the pool plaza below and the Atlantic beyond. The lobby introduces its own dramatic counterpart to the rooftop pool: a hypnotic 17,000-gallon shark tank. Inside, 2-foot-long Pacific-tip sharks and 27 species of fish glide the tank’s 50-foot length, again and again and again.

But the real action is upstairs, and so we gather again on the 18th-floor, palm-tree-lined pool deck the next sunny Miami morning.

You’re wondering: Is it all too cool, too young, too much—or is it ridiculously fun?

It’s ridiculously fun. It’s authentically South Beach. It’s walking into your own reality TV show for a weekend of R&R and voyeuristic escape.

At night we go to dinner at Philippe, on the 23rd Street side of the Gansevoort. Phillipe Chow, the proprietor chef of Manhattan power eatery Mr. Chow, brings his signature haute-Chinese cuisine south from New York.

We order and enjoy the crunchy duck salad and shrimp spring roll appetizers and sea bass in white-wine sauce entree. The portions are enormous (two people can easily split one entree), and the place is hopping. Tables are jammed with locals and hotel guests dressed to the nines, and the noise level is almost deafening. The newest outpost of STK restaurant had not opened while we were there earlier this summer, but has set up shop this fall.

Also on property is Bustelo Café, offering a jolt of Cuban java whenever you need to get your South Beach mojo working.

The next morning, we say adios to the rooftop pool and check out. We’re tanned, rested and have made nary a dent in our reading material. And that’s when our reality TV getaway comes full circle.

As we settle our bill and walk out the door for our weekend’s finale, Nina Garcia, Project Runway’s famously tough fashionista judge, makes her entrance into the lobby, gliding past the shark tank and toward the elevator, presumably going up, up, up to fabulosity.

Getting There

Daily nonstop flights to Miami are available on American Airlines and United Airlines from Washington Dulles Airport, and on American Airlines from Reagan National Airport.