Friends from Ohio are in town, so yesterday I drove them up to Palm Beach, where they had never been. We crossed the Royal Palm Bridge onto the island and drove straight to The Breakers. We strolled through the lobby, gazing up at the vaulted ceiling, to the breakfast room, with its frescoed ceiling and view of the ocean.
Back in the car, we headed to Whitehall, the mansion Henry Flagler built for his wife, and took a stroll along the side to marvel at the giant kapok tree. Its leaves – seemingly a thousand or more – were dark green, and I noted how it looks even more impressive when it’s leafless.
From there we drove to Worth Avenue. In the rare book shop the small cards that give the prices of the books also carry a quote from the text, so people who can’t afford them (like us) can still get a sampling of their contents. Ducking down Via Mizner, we found the tombstone of Johnnie Brown, the “Human Monkey.”
Before leaving the island we drove south along the ocean until we came to Mar-a-Lago, the beautiful mansion built in the ’20s by the American socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post. It had been years since I’d seen the property, and now an enormous American flag hung from a flagpole.
