Seaplane from Miami to Palm Beach

Worth Avenue runs from the lagoon to the ocean and it is a short walk from the town docks, so most parties do it first rather than last. The interesting part is not the shopfronts. It is the vias, the small courtyards that run off the avenue behind archways and are easy to walk past without noticing.

Via Mizner is the one that started them: about eighty five yards of it, cut through to Peruvian Avenue one block north in 1923 by Addison Mizner, who went on to design sixty seven buildings on this island alone.

His first was the Everglades Club at the west end of the avenue. Construction began in July 1918 as a convalescent home for wounded soldiers, the war ended a few months later and it opened in February 1919 as a private club instead.

Everything that came after on this street followed from that one building. A party that wants a table rather than a shop books a fly and dine day and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

The ocean is on the far side of the island from where you land, which on this island means a walk of a few minutes rather than a drive. The hotel that defines that side opened on 16 January 1896 as the Palm Beach Inn.

Guests kept asking for the rooms down by the breakers, so it was renamed The Breakers for the 1901 season. It burned in 1903, was rebuilt, burned again on 18 March 1925 and came back in 1926 as the Italian Renaissance building that still stands: modelled on the Villa Medici in Rome, 569 rooms on 140 acres of oceanfront.

Midtown Beach on South Ocean Boulevard is the public stretch in the middle of the island and the closest one to the avenue. Say if the party wants the beach rather than the town when you send the date, because it changes the ground transport rather than the flight.

Palm Beach exists because one man brought a railway here and his house is still standing at the north end of the island on the lagoon side. Whitehall was completed in 1902 as Henry Flagler's home and is now the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, a National Historic Landmark open to the public.

It sits directly on the Lake Trail, so it is the one thing on the island you can reach on foot from the water without arranging anything at all. It is also the shortest explanation of the island a guest will get. The railway, the hotels and the winter season all came from the same decision and the town grew around them .

The Lake Trail is a paved path along the lagoon shore, about five and a half miles of it and it is the best thing on the island that costs nothing. It starts at Lakeside Park beside the town docks, runs north past the backs of the houses and the Flagler Museum and finishes just beyond the Sailfish Club at the top of the island.

The water is on your left the whole way and the city on the mainland is on the other side of it. Bicycles are rented on the island rather than carried on the aircraft. Most parties ride it one way and take a car back, which is worth arranging before you land rather than at the dock.

The Lake Worth Lagoon is the sheltered water behind the barrier island, about twenty one miles long and up to a mile wide, open to the Atlantic at the Lake Worth Inlet at the north end. It is the reason a float arrival works here at all.

The town marina sits at the west end of Australian Avenue and its berths run along the Australian, Brazilian and Peruvian docks, each named for the avenue it sits at the foot of, with the Royal Palm dock added in the most recent rebuild. Worth Avenue is a few minutes on foot from the head of those docks.

If a boat is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at a pier. That is a yacht transfer and a dock pickup covers the case where the boat is already in the marina.

The public golf on this island is a par three course laid out on the narrow strip between the Atlantic and the lagoon, which is a piece of ground almost nowhere else in Florida can offer. Eighteen holes from eighty one to two hundred and eleven yards, three sets of tees on each, half of them along the ocean and half along the Intracoastal.

Raymond Floyd redesigned it in 2009 and it is still a municipal course, open to anyone who books a time. Clubs travel within the payload for the aircraft on the day rather than as a fixed allowance, which is the one thing worth naming early. The baggage guidance explains why a float aircraft counts weight instead of bags.

Two of the quietest places on the island are within a few blocks of each other on the lagoon side and neither one charges anything to walk into. The Society of the Four Arts was founded in 1936 and its campus on the Intracoastal holds a gallery, a concert hall, two libraries and gardens that are open seven days a week at no charge.

Bethesda-by-the-Sea on South County Road keeps its gardens open daily in the same way. They are the answer to the hour between lunch and the return leg and they are the reason a Palm Beach day does not have to be a shopping day. Anything the party wants built around them goes to custom requests.

The island has about nine thousand full time residents and roughly twenty five thousand people in the winter season, which runs from November to April. Those are the months when the tables are booked, the hotels are full and the road up from Miami is at its worst, which is exactly when the flight stops being a luxury and becomes the shortest way here.

Out of season the island is quiet and the water is just as usable. A date inside that window is worth sending early rather than late. A proposal, a milestone or a wedding gets the return leg moved to the light and the packaged version of the day is the Palm Beach getaway day trip.