In the US you can fly VFR at night, no flight plan and no IFR required. Visual ground reference is usually by city light patterns when there is no moon and you also use these for navigation (that's why there are all those yellow patches on your sectional). This was pretty easy in florida, the huge ominous black region on your right is the Atlantic Ocean. No steep turns here please
Almost all the airports have lighting, even untowered. You activate the lights by keying the mic on CTAF frequency and can turn the intensity up or down with successive clicks. You're on short finals when everything suddenly get darker as some other git starts clicking.
I highly recommend night flying to anyone. It definately takes a leap of faith, a power failure leaves you with few options - usually highways. And when you are on an approach you fly the VASI with those 2 whites because you know the trees are there but you cannot see anthing other than the lighting. Great craic though and definately the most fun part of my PPL training.