Palm Beach's Brazilian Court

Brazilian Court

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The season hasn’t kicked off yet in Palm Beach, but with the fall weather so perfect, who needs another reason to visit this elite island? I recently checked into the intimate Brazilian Court, a meticulously kept boutique hotel hidden behind South Florida’s tropical foliage on a narrow street. This is a great location because you can walk to Worth Avenue for shopping and the Atlantic Ocean for the beach.

The courtyard is a botanical garden of sorts, and I half expected to see signs identifying the royal, areca, foxtail, Senegal date, coconut, travelers and banana palms that corral this patio. During season it becomes highly coveted for its dinner seating. Café Boulud—chef Daniel Boulud’s restaurant—is housed in the hotel. (You’ll want to order his short ribs if you’ve never tried them.) Rooms here are outlined with polished dark wood that defines ceilings with beams, doorways with arches and windows with plantation shutters. Not one for Jacuzzis, I found the room’s super deep tub hard to resist and it’s always a good way to kick off the weekend—soak away the week’s stress.

Saturday I took a brisk walk to Whitehall (aka the Flagler Museum), the extravagant home Florida’s titan of industry, Henry Morrison Flagler, built for his third wife. A Gilded Age beauty, it is an example of industrial progress—rather than painting the ceilings like Michelangelo did in the Sistine Chapel, the celestial scenes were painted on canvas and attached overhead. The drawing room, unlike the ballroom where gold leaf adorns the plaster ornamentation, was detailed with aluminum leaf. At that time in history the process to extract aluminum economically was not perfected, so aluminum was as expensive and as precious as gold. 

Tags: boutique hotels | Brazilian Court | Flagler Museum | Palm Beach | Whitehall