Thursday, May 15, continued… We traveled south down the channel, taking in the scenery as the sun rose. The barrier island between us and the ocean was the infamous Palm Beach. Palm Beach was the first tourist destination in Florida, with three fancy hotels that catered to high end guests. As it blossomed into a city, it became known for wealthy and powerful inhabitants, including former President Kennedy and current President Trump. Initially, we passed mostly lower buildings that looked like houses, though we did eventually pass a cluster of larger buildings (though no hi-rises) that looked like they may be hotels.

The mainland side was West Palm Beach, which, in the early days, was purpose built by one of the hotel owners to be a blue-collar area where the hotel staffers lived. Nowadays, it’s also an expensive zip code. It had a lot of high rise towers with an assortment of other types of structures in between, as well as several marinas.