A Local’s Guide to the Best Things to Do in Palm Beach

There are two versions of Palm Beach. The one visitors see, and the one residents live. This guide is the second one, the experiences that make people who live here reluctant to ever leave.

The Lake Trail

The Intracoastal Waterway runs 5.5 miles along the island, and the real social activity of this town happens on this trail between 6 and 8am, where people interact with their friends and colleagues in person or by foot and bicycle and see familiar faces every day. Many of the conversations that take place here develop into friendships, business partnerships, and dinner invitations that continue for years. Spend just one week at 7am on the Lake Trail and you will start to grasp how this island operates.

Mid-Town Beach

The local beach at the end of the avenue, on the southern stretch of the island, is not a tourist destination. There are no big events or crowds, just great beaches with clear blue water and people who live on the ocean nearby walking over for a swim. In a town that can experience real congestion during season, this kind of peacefulness is a rare treasure.

Where Residents Actually Eat

The only businesses that survive here are those that make you feel like you belong. Ta-boo has been on Worth Avenue since 1941 because they know your order. Every Thursday, Buccan draws the same crowd because it offers something just slightly beyond what you expect. You can start the day with breakfast and stretch into an afternoon of leisure at Le Bilboquet, off Via Encantada. Keep a list of places like these in mind:

• Buccan South County Road. James Beard-nominated. Always full, deservedly so.
• Café Boulud The Brazilian Court. Daniel Boulud, quietly exceptional.
• Ta-boo Worth Avenue since 1941. They know your order.
• Le Bilboquet Via Encantada. The lunch that becomes an afternoon.
• PB Catch Simple, excellent seafood. No theater required.
• The Polo Room The Colony. Old-school glamour, still the room to be seen in.
• Tuto Mare South County Road. Italian seafood, lively and unpretentious.
• Ambroeus Royal Poinciana Way. Milanese café culture, perfect for people-watching.
• HMF The Breakers. The steakhouse for a proper night out.
• Henry’s Royal Poinciana Plaza. The lunch spot where half the island ends up.

A morning coffee in Palm Beach

The Society of the Four Arts

Founded in 1936, the Society has been the island’s cultural anchor ever since, offering a year-round program of visual arts, music, performing arts, and literature, plus public gardens where you can sit and reflect after a show. The Norton Museum of Art, just across the Intracoastal Bridge in Palm Beach, rounds out the experience with Art After Dark on Friday evenings. These are not occasional outings. They are the rhythm you build a year around.

Private Club Life

The clubs on this island are not about prestige. They are the backbone of the community’s structure. The Bath & Tennis Club was founded in 1926, and the Everglades Club and the Sailfish Club, on the Intracoastal, followed. For new residents, choosing the right club matters as much as choosing the right neighborhood, and our advisory team helps with both.

The Worth Avenue Nobody Photographs

Past the storefronts, you will find the vias. Narrow, draped in bougainvillea, designed by Addison Mizner in the 1920s. They open into hidden courtyards with the best espresso on the island, afternoon light that is hard to leave, and small art galleries showing work you will not see anywhere else. On Worth Avenue, the right pace is slow. That is the point.

The Weekend on the Water

A water taxi to Peanut Island. A long weekend in the Bahamas from a marina twenty minutes away. A Saturday morning cruise on the Intracoastal with no plan at all. After six months on the island, the waterway becomes the focal point of every weekend.

The Flagler Museum

Henry Flagler built this island with railroads and hotels, and Whitehall, his 55-room mansion completed in 1902, became its centerpiece. It is the only Gilded Age house of its kind in the country, and one of the finest examples of an early 20th-century estate anywhere. Visit on a weekday morning when it is quiet, so you can take in each room, see Flagler’s restored railcar, and appreciate the work that built something this grand out of nothing.

None of this is confidential. It is simply how life looks once you live here. The walk you take every morning becomes part of your routine, as does dinner at Buccan every Thursday. Palm Beach is hard to describe without experiencing it, but once you have, it gets a lot easier to explain how it actually feels to live here.

Engel & Völkers Palm Beach

Our advisors are not just experts in the market. They are locals who understand the community from the inside. If you would like to learn more about Palm Beach, we are happy to share the parts of the island that tourist guides tend to miss.