Friday 27th March 2026
A little cloudy this morning, perhaps there’s rain in the air. Anyway, after the school run and breakfast, the sun was shining, no hint of rain now!!!
After a pile of ironing, and not all ours!!!!, we headed out. Today we are going to Palm Beach by way of Mar-A-Lago, Donald Trump’s country club and residence. After advice from Andrew we kept off the state highway and went along suburban roads, not quite as wide but still “awesome”, to use a local expression!! We drove through some particularly nice areas with properties to match; well manicured front gardens, nice drives and roadside hedges straight out of gardening magazines. We then started to get near to Palm beach itself and the properties, gardens, hedges and drives jumped up several notches; how the top 10% live, houses overlooking the ocean fetching 10’s of millions of dollars. Then we came across what at first sight looked like road-works, and a Sheriff’s car keeping watch on the traffic. Once we passed we released it was Mar-a-Lago and not road-works, it was a road closure down the side of his country club estate; not too dissimilar to where Andrew lives, but a lot more dollars to be a member!!! Because we hadn’t quite released where we were, we turned around and went back for a better “gander”. We now saw multiple Sheriff’s cars, security towers, and guards sporting guns around the gates and apparently he is not even in residence, what will it be like when he is?? We then turned around again for our third pass-by and for Christine to get a photo or two. If they have number plate recognition cameras outside, what will they think of us, 3-drive byes and pictures taken: oops!!!
We had been advised by “(Isaac) Simple Simon” to visit “Worth Avenue” the Rodeo Drive of Florida, so that’s was our destination. As we turned into this very exclusive avenue, low and behold a parking space became vacant, we were unbelievably lucky. Our AI “mentor” suggested as part of our stroll along this avenue, we head through the small passageways each side of the road as there were interesting “gems” to be found nestling up them. We did as suggested and low and behold there were “other worlds” behind the exclusive shops, including fine restaurants. It was good we had already agreed to head out tonight with Andrew and Elton for a meal, otherwise I could see us “indulging”, though we did find a small bijou cafe for a coffee and cake!!!
As we headed back to the car we saw 3-Bentley’s, a fantastic bright red Ferrari and numerous other high-end motors, in fact our hired Chevy SUV looked rather out of place in this road!!!
We now headed back to the beach to cool off and bring us back to reality; at least this beach didn’t have a big rusty drain pipe running alongside the shoreline!!!
It was an hour’s drive back to Woodfield and we were meeting up at 1600hrs, so time to leave.
Back at base we got into Andrew’s car and headed to the boxing club, yes 5-year old Elton has started to have boxing lessons and towards the end of his session he was put into the ring with another, albeit a bit bigger boy. But fair do’s, he held his end up; we’ll done Elton.
In the true spirit of showing us around, we headed back towards Delray beach, but this time along the “correct” road where we passed beautiful properties, some facing the beach or the others backing onto the coastal waterway, all with their boats at the end of their gardens: as I’ve said before, to live around here you need lots of bucks.
Once parked we were taken back in time, we went into an amusement arcade where all the machines were from the forties, fifties and sixties; we were in our element, what fun🤠🤠. After being “dragged” out we went to dinner before heading back home, quite exhausted.
Elton playing
