You can legally drive on Daytona's 20-mile stretch of sandy beach

A quintessential, slightly tawdry Florida beach town, Daytona Beach is lined with T-shirt shops, amusement arcades and strings of motels on every arterial road.

The town is well-known as the home of the Daytona 500 stock car race, a number of annual biker rallies and as also Florida's leading Spring Break destination, but it's real forte are its 20 miles of firm white sand beach on which you can legally drive.

This turns the beach into a cross between a carnival and a main street, with the flurry of entertaining people-watching including locals and college kids in bathing suits parading suped-up vehicles.