Comments (0) Best Weekend Getaway - 2010

Boca Raton Resort

Private clubs like the Boca Resort take their cachet seriously, and much of it depends on exactly who gets turned away at the gate. That would be me and you: variously known as the hoi polloi, the unwashed masses, the riffraff. Under normal circumstances, it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to stroll under the resort's Mizner-designed archways. Or to bask beside its private swimming pools or under its waterfalls, to pick at fish tacos and sip its bloody marys under a seaside umbrella. But we're in a recession, and even Boca Resort — which is owned by Waldorf Astoria — has felt the pinch hard enough to permit a thin stream of commoners. For an affordable price ($109 a night at presstime), you're entitled to every luxury the resort routinely showers on its members. That includes a staff for whom no request is too niggling (inevitably fulfilled with brisk friendliness); some of the best sushi in South Florida at Morimoto's casual little bar; eyefuls of nearly nude girls in their early 20s who sunbathe and flirt at the Resort's Beach Club in droves; a full spa stocked with excellent massage therapists, a Turkish-style bath, and lots of sweet-smelling products; and a tiny taste of what it would be like to be rich enough to spend $110 on a mani-pedi without blinking. One Saturday night is enough, unless you've just won at Lotto (arrive early and leave late on Sunday afternoon). A door to a locked and guarded room has temporarily opened a crack: Enter while you can.