Opposite the Pittwater shoreline at Palm Beach, at the northern tip of Sydney's Northern Beaches, this heritage-listed guesthouse keeps seven rooms above its ground-floor restaurant. The rooms are simply done — timber floors, white walls, a coastal restraint — with the best looking across the water; others open to a garden courtyard, and a loft occupies the top floor. Guests share a lounge and terrace, and meals are taken downstairs in the long-running dining room. Palm Beach itself is a spit of land between the ocean and Pittwater, a ferry ride from Patonga and a well-worn weekend retreat for Sydneysiders. The scale is domestic and the mood unhurried, closer to staying in a friend's beach house than a hotel, with the restaurant and bar as its social centre.