Start from 29 curated places around West Palm Beach, FL, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Pistache French Bistro
A Parisian-style bistro on the north end of Clematis Street with waterfront patio views over the Intracoastal, serving classic French fare at prices that keep it a neighborhood institution rather than a special-occasion destination. The steak tartare is hand-cut, the house wine is genuinely drinkable, and the covered terrace catches the breeze off the water. Downtown WPB's most reliably civilized lunch or dinner.
Howley's Restaurant
A classic South Dixie diner operating in some form since 1950, with terrazzo floors and a tin ceiling, an honest short-order kitchen running all day, and a full bar that stays open until 2 a.m. on weekends. The fried chicken with homemade applesauce is the dish that earns loyalty, but breakfast at the counter on a weekday morning captures the whole spirit of the place. Owned by the Subculture Group, which saved the bones while keeping the soul.
Trails & outdoors
Grassy Waters Preserve: Hog Hammock and Promontory Trail
A 4.1-mile loop through the 23-square-mile Grassy Waters wetlands preserve northwest of downtown, winding across sawgrass prairies, through cabbage palm hammock, and over forested cypress domes on a combination of crushed-rock path and boardwalk. This is the most popular trail in the West Palm Beach park system for good reason: the birding is exceptional, the landscape feels genuinely wild despite the city's proximity, and the flat terrain is manageable for most fitness levels. The preserve also protects the city's freshwater supply.
Okeeheelee Park North Loop
A flat, paved 5-mile loop through Okeeheelee Park, one of the largest urban parks in South Florida at over 1,700 acres, offering easy walking or cycling past lakes, sports fields, and wetland edges where iguanas, sandhill cranes, and great blue herons are regular company. The fully paved surface makes it accessible year-round for strollers, bikes, and wheels. The park's kayak and mountain bike trails branch off for more ambitious users.
Things to do
Kravis Center for the Performing Arts
West Palm Beach's main performing arts campus on Okeechobee Boulevard, with a 2,193-seat concert hall, a 300-seat playhouse, and an outdoor amphitheater hosting everything from Broadway touring productions and the Palm Beach Opera to the New World Symphony and international dance. The venue's calendar is among the most active in Florida outside Miami. Worth checking the schedule before any visit to the area.
Palm Beach Dramaworks
A professional 200-seat nonprofit theater on Clematis Street specializing in text-driven productions of serious plays, from Chekhov and Albee to world premieres by South Florida playwrights, in an intimate house where no seat is more than ten rows from the stage. The quality of acting consistently outpaces what the city's size would suggest, and the dramaturgical seriousness is genuine. A small-theater experience worth building an evening around.
Landmarks & sights
Norton Museum of Art
The largest art museum in Florida, with a collection spanning European masters, American modernists, Chinese antiquities, and one of the country's strongest photography programs, all housed in a striking Norman Foster expansion. The permanent galleries reward multiple visits: the Chinese jade and bronze rooms are underrated, and the contemporary wing rotates in ways that keep locals coming back. A serious museum in a mid-size city, which means you can actually breathe in front of the work.
Henry Morrison Flagler Museum
Henry Flagler's 1902 Gilded Age winter palace on Palm Beach Island, a National Historic Landmark with 75 original rooms of marble from five countries, Tiffany windows, and the private Railcar No. 91 that carried the Florida East Coast Railway's founder. The building itself is the exhibit: a ceiling modeled on the Palace of Versailles, a ballroom the New York Herald once called the finest private room in America, and an archive of how railroad wealth reshaped South Florida. Cross the bridge from downtown and step into a world before income tax.