Back to the land – two days in a row! This time we went for a cycle ride around Palm Beach, the other side of Lake Worth from West Palm Beach. It is the residential area where the wealthy have their holiday homes, many with private beaches on the Atlantic coast.  

 It is also where we found the Flagler Museum (the same Henry Flagler previously mentioned in St Augustine). This residence was built in 1903 for Flagler’s his third wife, by the same architects as built the Ponce de Leon Hotel. It was hailed by the New York Herald as "more wonderful than any palace in Europe, grander and more magnificent than any other private dwelling in the world." It is quite nice, but they had clearly never been to Versailles .......

More impressive was this fantastic Kapok tree in the grounds, where all the plants were allowed to ‘grow unaided’. This particular tree is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry – 21^st century fame!

We returned to West Palm Beach through Flagler Park which you can see from the boat.  There we found a Christmas display of sand sculptures with Sandi, the 600 ton Christmas Tree taking centre stage.

We also found an underwater Christmas Grotto .................

All the palm trees in the park have fairy lights up their trunks but these ones were part of a light show choreographed to favourite Christmas songs - disco trees! Actually it was fairly impressive although may seem less so after a few nights as our compulsory entertainment.