Palm Beach for the Weekend

Two nights at the Eau Palm Beach Resort & Spa in early July. No occasion. No event. Just one of those weekends where G looked at me on a Thursday and said "we should go somewhere" and by Friday afternoon we were checking into a resort 45 minutes north of our apartment.

The Eau sits on a stretch of Palm Beach oceanfront that feels like it belongs to a different tax bracket than Fort Lauderdale. Because it does. Palm Beach is old money and the Eau knows exactly what it is: a beach resort for people who want to be taken care of without being bothered. The lobby is bright and airy with art that someone actually curated (not the generic beach prints you see at most Florida resorts). The rooms face the ocean and the balconies are deep enough to actually sit on with a book. We checked in around 4 PM on Friday, dropped our bags, and went straight to the beach. The Eau has a private beach setup with loungers and umbrellas that the staff arranges for you without asking. You just show up and someone's already put towels on chairs. It's that kind of place.

Friday night we ate at the hotel restaurant because we didn't feel like getting in the car. The Eau has an oceanfront restaurant called Angle that does a seafood-heavy menu with a raw bar. We sat outside. The sound of the waves was louder than the music, which is how you know the balance is right. G ordered oysters and a glass of Sancerre and I had a burger that cost $32, which is objectively too much for a burger and was also really good. We were in bed by 10. That's vacation.

Saturday was the pool day. The pool area at the Eau runs quieter than most Florida resort pools. Cabanas, a bar that serves food all day, and a crowd that skews older and calmer than what you'd find at a South Beach pool party. Nobody's playing music from a Bluetooth speaker. Nobody's doing bottle service. People are reading actual books. It's wonderful. We claimed two lounge chairs around 9 AM and didn't move until 3 PM except to eat lunch at the pool bar (fish tacos, frozen cocktails, food that tastes better when you're wet and the sun is out) and to rotate the chairs to follow the shade. G has a system for this. She tracks the sun like a sundial and adjusts the umbrella angle every 45 minutes. I've learned not to question the system.

The spa at the Eau has won basically every award a hotel spa can win and it earns them. G disappeared into it for about three hours on Saturday afternoon and came back a different person. The "Self-Centered" garden is a pre-treatment area with hot and cold plunge pools, a reflection pool, and a wall of candles that looks like it was designed for Instagram but actually predates Instagram by several years. The cold plunge alone is worth showing up early for. I went in for a massage on Sunday morning. The therapist asked what pressure I wanted and I said "whatever you'd do if I stopped talking and fell asleep." She appreciated the clarity. I fell asleep. It was excellent.

Saturday night we ate at Buccan on South County Road. Small plates, creative menu, packed room. We didn't have a reservation because this was a spontaneous trip and getting a Saturday reservation at Buccan requires more foresight than we'd exercised. We got lucky at the bar. Two seats opened up right as we walked in. The bar is where you want to be anyway. It's more fun than the dining room and you can watch the kitchen work. The tuna poke tacos are what everyone starts with and they're right to. The short rib with polenta was the best thing on the table. We also ordered a burrata that came with some kind of peach and chili situation that G ate most of because she has a strategy where she orders for the table and then eats the best dish before I realize what's happening.

Sunday morning we walked the beach before breakfast. The beach at the Eau is wide and clean and in July the water is warm enough that you don't do the slow-entry thing. You just walk in. We swam for 20 minutes, floated for another 10 while G debated out loud whether we should move to Palm Beach (we should not, we cannot afford Palm Beach, but the fantasy is free), dried off, ate breakfast at the hotel (the buffet is solid, the eggs Benedict is the order), and then drove into town.

Worth Avenue is Palm Beach's version of Rodeo Drive. Chanel, Gucci, Hermès, all the names. We didn't buy anything. We walked. G pointed at things in windows. I nodded. This is a routine we've perfected over years of travel. She shows, I agree, nobody's credit card gets hurt. The architecture along Worth Avenue is Mediterranean Revival and the courtyard passages between the buildings (called "vias") are actually beautiful. Tiled floors, fountains, bougainvillea climbing the walls. One of them had a jewelry store where the pieces in the window didn't have prices, which is how you know you can't afford them. Worth the walk even if the stores aren't your thing.

We got lunch at Pizza Al Fresco in one of the vias on Worth Avenue. Outdoor tables, thin-crust pizza, a glass of wine. Nothing revolutionary. Just a good lunch in a pretty courtyard on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes that's the whole review.

The drive back to Fort Lauderdale took 50 minutes and felt like returning from a different country. Palm Beach operates at a pace and a price point that makes the rest of South Florida feel like a different state. Two nights was the right amount. Long enough to reset, short enough to not start calculating what the weekend cost.

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