The Pink Palace

I'm headed back down to Florida again soon, and this Kentucky snowy weather has me chompin' at the bit to git and split. There are several wonderful places I stay when in the Sunshine State, but I especially have a fondness for the Don CeSar Beach Resort, aka "The Pink Palace".

A fella named Thomas Rowe had a dream of building a Moorish-looking pink castle, and it being the days when someone could just think something up and do it, he did it. Work began in 1924 and it was completed in late 1927, with the official grand opening gala held on January 16, 1928. In the years since, everyone from Presidents to gangsters have slept here - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, Clarence Darrow, Al Capone, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who always knew the best hotels to haunt (he and Capone both adored Louisville's Seelbach Hotel.)

Rowe dubbed his dream domicile after Don César de Bazan, the hero in the opera Maritana. The restaurant at the resort is named Maritana. Evidently Rowe was seriously into this opera. Remind me to check it out, or better yet, put it on myself sometime.


I'll send you good people a postcard from the off-world colonies, and I'll file a report with the home office. Anyone wanna come with? The more the merrier. Let's twist again like we did last summer.

- - JSH