Delray Beach Fl: A Gold Coast with a Venice Touch
Delray Beach Fl: A Gold Coast with a Venice Touch
Delray Beach could be considered as an epicenter of the Florida Gold Coast, so called because of the multitude of millionaires and multimillionaires living in this coastal area that includes Delray Beach, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach and West Palm Beach. One of the common “streets” of this area is not really a street, but the Inter-coastal Waterway.
Each of these towns has it’s own flavor and conventional “streeted” down town and shopping area full of boutiques, restaurants, cafes, galleries and the sort, but the Inter-coastal has it’s own uniqueness and one can tour it a couple times daily on one of the open tours on one of the Delray Yacht Cruises. These cruises depart a couple of times and head south from Delray Beach.
We recently experienced one of these cruises on a beautiful Sat afternoon on the Lady Delray. This was about a 4 hour cruise.. 2 hours south, a turn around, and 2 hours back. During that time, one can have full bar service brought to your seat or table, as well as a small but decent snack menu with sandwiches such as blackened mahi, hot dogs, etc.
Why the reference to Venice? Because off the main waterway there are canals both east and west, and each of these are lined with homes and boats or yachts. As our tour guide pointed out, as these are more private, in some respects they are more desirable rather than living on “the main drag”.
As to why the reference to the gold coast, even the modest condominiums carry sticker prices over $1MM and when you see some of the private homes, it’s not unusual to hear of one that is listed at, or just sold, for over $5Mil. And they are not the exception; these are the rule! And ironically, many of these are “second homes” or occupied only a few weeks a year.
The tour guide is quite knowledgable about the area and pointed out on our cruise where just the window treatment of one of these homes cost over $70,000!
Most of us probably will never have the opportunity to live in one of these magnificent homes, but it’s sure an interesting thing to experience. Would you recognize any of the developers or residents? Is the name Donald Trump familiar to anyone? Other names you’ll hear of owners include major sports and entertainment celebrities.
When in South East Fla on your East Coast Vacation experience, block out a half day to experience this lifestyle of the rich and famous in Delray Beach, Fl.