2 Days in Palm Beach, Florida (January 2026)

We spent two days around Palm Beach and Jupiter, Florida to escape the winter cold.

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

Ever since I studied abroad in South Korea in the summer of 2024, I’ve been trying to write blog posts for the little things I do, even if it’s going across town for a fun little day. When I was studying abroad in Busan my Korean teacher would show us these Naver (a Korean search engine) blogs random people would make documenting visiting parks or bakeries, and I loved that energy.

I think the Internet is a cluttered place, so even if no one reads this at the end of the day, it’s a cute little time capsule for as long as we have electricity—or my credit card stops paying for this domain. Today’s post comes from a trip that was planned quite a bit ago, as a year and a half ago the family was all together for a family reunion.

It was such a swell and fun time, then someone brought up that my uncle in Florida should host the next family reunion. That got the ball rolling for a family reunion in the Palm Beach area, although many of us couldn’t make it, the ones who could made the best of the situation at hand.

And man, we had no idea we had picked a holiday weekend. Flight prices were insane—from the Baltimore/D.C. area to Palm Beach it was clocking in at about $600 for a Southwest flight with layovers, not even nonstop, but we were incredibly lucky when an American Airlines flight popped up for $245. We booked our seats immediately when that came out.

But we made it there, and had such a great time! Here’s what we did outside of the quality family time we spent with our relatives the night of the reunion.

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Manatee Lagoon and the Mounts Botanical Garden are must-sees in the Palm Beach area.

We did these two activities on the second day of our trip, as the first day we pretty much arrived into town early in the afternoon, ate (more on what we ate in the food section of this post!), then hung out with our family into the evening. But on day two, we had a designated fun family day until the afternoon, when the food prep began, and these were two activities we had wanted to do.

We started the day at Manatee Lagoon, arriving right at 9 AM. There was literally a line to get in there, but we were able to find a parking spot even though it was a Saturday morning and good weather. When we left though the lot was kind of full, so it might be worth showing up early if you want to get in and out easier without circling the lot.

Manatee Lagoon was, indeed, full of manatees. There’s a center where you can read and learn more about the manatees, but the main attraction are the manatees themselves. All of this is free, by the way. The manatees tend to hang out in a specific area next to the factory, as the pumped out water there is warmer.

They come up to the surface for air, which is when their full bodies are visible. We spent about thirty minutes at the lagoon just looking at them, but after that we got into our cars and headed to the next destination: Mounts Botanical Garden.

At Mounts we spent about two hours admiring all of the plants and decor they had up. It’s right next to the airport, so you can get some beautiful shots of the planes flying over the scenic gardens. If I lived around here, I would definitely get a membership and just sit and read a book on the grassy sections of the garden where people could access.

Jupiter, Florida is full of restaurants, views, and places on the water worth exploring at least once.

We spent the second half of our day out in Palm Beach visiting Jupiter. After going to the botanical gardens, my aunt suggested a bar called Square Grouper overlooking the Jupiter Lighthouse. We all headed there, looking at some of the nice houses that we spotted along the way, and then we ended up in the town of Jupiter.

This was definitely an upper class area, but there were a ton of nice bars. More on what we ate and drank below, but after our lunch break, we headed over to the Jupiter Lighthouse. It’s $15 to access the lighthouse and go to the top. It’s about 134 steps total to the top, but they reminded me of the churches in Europe—they were steep and definitely built in like the 1700 or 1800s.

Regardless, the view from the top makes it worth climbing up the lighthouse. You can see the ocean and the entire town, which makes for some beautiful pictures. You can also walk to the waterfront while in the lighthouse area, after visiting their tiny museum about the history of the lighthouse. There was also a cute map of all of the lighthouses in Florida, and now I want to visit them all!

Our day ended there, as my aunt wanted to go back and prep the food for that night, so we headed back to the hotel to rest before going to our relatives’ place.

When in Florida, soak up the sunshine, eat Cuban food, and find a good bar on the water.

Something I always find fun about Florida, even though I don’t think I would personally live there, is going to find unique or scenic places to eat while out and about.

On the first day, when we flew in, we ate at Don Ramon’s, which is a Cuban spot I found while doing research on places to eat. I ordered the ropa vieja with plantains, black bean soup (which was pretty much just liquidy black beans), and yellow rice—it was absolutely delicious. The rest of my family ordered the garlic shrimp dish, which they all also enjoyed.

It was served with a side of buttery sweet bread as a free complimentary appetizer, and I sipped on a Cuban coffee while we waited for our food. It took about thirty minutes before our food came out, but it was all hot and delicious—you could tell it was made fresh and that’s why it took so long.

The only other place we ate at besides my relatives’ house was Square Grouper, which I wrote about before. We didn’t order a full meal there, instead opting for chips and a mango salsa with a side of fries. Both of these were really good, and I ordered a Key West ale. I thought it’d be more fruity; it wasn’t my favorite beer I tried recently.

I’d definitely go back to that waterfront area and eat at another restaurant there in the future. There were a lot of good smells when we were walking past them to get to Square Grouper. I also want to try other Cuban restaurants when in town, too.

And that’s a wrap on this trip! It was quick in and out, but we had a great time overall.

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