FLORIDA,USA
Coconut palms are a reliable sign of mild winters: in the US, the trees don’t grow in California (still too much risk of a chill), but since a Spanish ship carrying 20,000 coconuts beached itself on a Florida sandbar in 1878, the trees have thrived in the resort city that now bears their name. Temperatures of high teens or low 20s prevail in Palm Beach in winter; it gets warmer but wetter in the summer. Going back to the days of its first coconuts, the resort was a favourite winter escape for Gilded Age tycoons. Just one block back from the beach, the powder-pink Colony Hotel is a later vintage (1947), and after a tropical-hued restyling, it’s sure to banish any sense of seasonal drabness.