trip report: palm beach

Earlier this year we hit a major milestone: our first three-generation girls' trip! Avvie and I flew down to Palm Beach to meet up with my mom, who flew in from Washington, DC. I'm pleased to say I've now flown solo a few times with a toddler and so far, everyone still has all of her teeth!

Palm Beach is a wonderful destination for kids for a few reasons: one, there are direct flights from a lot of East Coast cities and the airport (in West Palm) is super close to most of the hotels in Palm Beach proper. Two, the town itself, even during high season, is still pretty sleepy; you don't have to worry about errant toddlers plowing over huge groups of tourists. And three, the beach! Avvie's favorite place in the world (other than the pool, the tub, the sprinklers, the rain ... basically, water).

We chose to stay at The Colony for a few reasons. Most important: it's pink. But, for more practical purposes, it's right in the center of town, so we didn't need to rent a car to get anywhere. Plus, there's a fantastic restaurant and pool right on property, so it made it easy to tote Avvie straight from breakfast right into the water. They're also wonderfully kid-friendly: Avvie was gifted the above coloring book, colored pencils, and a pet monkey upon check-in, and everyone who worked there was so sweet to her. Also, as any design-nut will tell you, it's worth staying here for the wallpaper and carpet alone:

I often plan out my vacations nearly to the hour, but the three of us took it pretty easy during this long weekend. Our first night, we ate at the restaurant at the hotel (which is simply called, The Restaurant), where Avvie had her first taste of authentic Key Lime Pie.

She was obviously a fan.

The next morning we did a bit of window shopping on Worth Avenue, which is the main commercial drag in Palm Beach. It is shockingly clean and un-shockingly expensive. It reminded me a bit of Main St. in Greenwich, CT, in that there is such a high concentration of upscale stores in an otherwise quaint little town. Also, there are a lot of WASPs (Lilly Pulitzer started here, need I say more?). It's very photogenic:

Palm Beach is also reminiscent of Nantucket (not just because there's a lot of WASPs), in that the food in both places punches well above theirs weights. I wasn't sure what to expect of our meals in Palm Beach, but I was pretty pleasantly surprised at how fantastic everything was. I think my favorite, however, due to both the beauty of the location and the cuisine was Cafe Boulud at the Brazilian Court Hotel. We ate outside while live piano music drifted by and I had some of the best crab I've ever eaten.

I mean, look at that! We also had a pretty fun dinner at Ta-boo, Avvie gave the pizza two (saucy) thumbs up.

And of course, no trip to Palm Beach is complete without visiting The Breakers, a truly jaw-dropping luxury hotel just a short walk away from Worth Avenue. My mom and I parked ourselves on a bench while Avvie napped and it was quite lovely.