Palm Springs

 Oh how pleased we were to arrive in Palm Springs, where the weather was warm, the desert scenery was gorgeous (sidenote: even the bus journey through all the windfarms was oddly mesmerising; I reckon Graeme Sydney’s art could actually be improved by adding a few of those things!) and everything was within walking distance. I know it has a bit of a reputation as a retirement village on a grand scale, but perhaps I’m old before my time, because I really liked it there. Even the Uber driver who dropped us off at Union Station in LA to catch our bus warned us that four nights would be too long, but he was wrong, I would gladly have endured at least another week of poolside happy hours, tiki bars and the retro ratpack vibe that characterised this little oasis in the desert. 

The City of Palm Springs...

....harnessing the power of wind!

A huge part of it was due to the hotel we stayed in, the Del Marcos, which was a mid-century modern dream come true (I justified the expense because hey, mid-century modern design and architecture is what Palm Springs is all about, and I wanted to live the dream). Built in 1947 by the architect William Cody, it was all orange and seafoam green, with genuine vintage furnishings, cacti gardens and a stunning pool. Best of all, it was R18, so it was actually possible to relax in the pool without screaming kids cannonballing into you, and there was a ban on talking on cellphones in public hotel areas (a continuing annoyance for me in the US; no bus trip is complete without at least one person – often multiple people – talking unnecessarily loudly about inane nonsense, sometimes for hours on end).  A complimentary amazing breakfast was served each morning until 11am, and then they had a happy hour from 4pm to 6pm, where they basically just put out jugs of sangria, wine and a cooler of beer by the pool, and you could drink as much as you wanted for 2 hours. This hotel has ruined me forever.

Someone please buy me this hotel, I'll let you all come stay...

The glorious view from our balcony

Palm trees, pool, perfection...

Yup, I could totally get used to this...

Only thing missing is kitty... And I've been getting so much sun that she's starting to freckle up!

On our first afternoon, we went for a walk and photographed some cool buildings, ate lunch/dinner (there needs to be a word for this, the late-in-the-day equivalent of brunch, which we seem to keep doing; linner? Dunch?) and undertook a much-needed visit to the laundromat. We missed the hotel happy hour that first night without realising (we would not make such an amateur mistake on the other three nights!), so went out later on and hit the town, in the form of a local tiki bar called the Tonga Hut. Strong drinks (too strong?), but friendly bartenders (a guy called Parker from a band called Say Anything gave us some good recommendations for Vegas) and eccentric bar flies with whom we got into an in-depth tattoo show-and-tell.

Take me to your architect...

Even God sounds pretty cruisy in Palm Springs

Day two was when we discovered the extent of the free breakfast (coffee, juice, fruit, cereal, bagels, eggs, yoghurt), and I decided that if this was put on for me every day, then maybe I could become a breakfast person after all. We then explored downtown Palm Springs and the design district. There were many impressive mid-century modern vintage furniture stores, but of course the prices were astronomical, and most of them also had prominently displayed signs warning that you could not take photos either. Boo. Linner/dunch was at a cool little spot called Ruby’s Diner (although it actually turned out to be a chain, which made it slightly less cool), where the servers wore candy-striped retro outfits (dresses for the girls and those little hats and bow-ties for the guys; Sam and I decided we wouldn’t mind working as servers in Canada if we could be similarly attired) and a toy train circled the restaurant on tracks above our heads. We were back at the hotel well in time for happy hour and indulged accordingly, then devoted the rest of the night to Game of Thrones and fake chicken wings (not a patch on the ones in LA, although they delivered to our hotel room, thus getting full points for the laziness factor. And it seems you can’t escape people wanting to discuss sport wherever you go; the delivery guy was Indian, and as soon as he found out I was from New Zealand, there was much animated one-sided talk of ‘cricket world cup,’ ‘two great sporting nations’ and ‘that Brendon McCullum.’ Sigh… Still, living in the US, it was probably the only chance the guy got to discuss such matters, so I nodded and smiled along with him).

Ruby's Diner; spot the train...

This cool retro building is a branch of the Bank of America. I'd never do online banking if I could go here instead!

Even the cars are cool in Palm Springs. Like Ghostbusters if it was made in the 1960s...

On day three we followed up breakfast with an extended period of pool lounging; particularly blissful as there were no other guests around for a few hours. We lay on the floaty lounger things (with handy cup holders included) and drifted aimlessly in the water to the strains of Frank Sinatra, Otis Redding and The Supremes while gazing at the palm trees and mountain views. Palm trees aside, a lot of Palm Springs kind of reminded me of Frankton and parts of Queenstown; the mountains looked remarkably Remarkable-like. I had wanted to visit Joshua Tree National Park while we were here, but all the tours online were like $200, so we sensibly decided not to do it. Then, less sensibly, over the course of that same day we should have been doing the tour, I spent $100 on a fancy vintage dress, and then Sam took me out for cocktails in said fancy vintage dress and spent $100 on those. When will we learn… I blame the hotel, it made me feel like a celebrity, so when we found this amazing vintage store called Wonderama, with the most fabulously camp sales assistant in his fifties (in fact all the stores in Palm Springs seem to be run by guys in this demographic, who all make you feel a million dollars and are much more pleasant to deal with than the too cool 19 year old snobby girls who usually inhabit such roles in most other places), I got swept up in the glamour and bought a 1960s Luis Estevez dress (no, I’d never heard of him either, but our friendly sales guy gave me a quick fashion history lesson – Estevez had been Oscar de la Renta’s assistant, and won some prestigious fashion prize when he was young – and assured me that if I ever wanted to resell it, it would not lose its value. I may just have to do that, as the dress fits me perfectly, but may not in a few weeks if I keep eating all these American-sized meals!) After pizza and happy hour by the pool, we caught the bus to another tiki bar, called Bootlegger Tiki. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall place with incredible décor (puffer fish lights!), and we were the only customers there, which may have been part of the reason we were so well attended to by the staff, and thus ended up drinking waaaaay too many cocktails (yup, the $100 worth I mentioned before). They were so good though, far superior to the Tonga Hut of our first night, and between us we tried most on the menu. Oh dear…

Puffer fish lights at Bootlegger Tiki. Terrible photography to be blamed on wonderful cocktails.

Palm Springs wanderings. The building in the background is actually a KFC if you can believe it...

New cover design for Gravemind stoner rock album...

Which leads me to the next day, most of which was spent in bed groaning. Still, never ones to pass up free alcohol, we did get up in time for happy hour, although were notably more restrained than we had been the other nights. Pool time in Palm Springs is a great hangover cure though, and we were helped along by a meal at a nearby Vietnamese place too. It was definitely time to save money though, and a good excuse for a quiet night in before the onslaught of Vegas the next day. I’m at least pleased that we avoided getting hideously drunk on the night before we had to leave though, as is usually the case. We got an Uber ride to the bus station the next day with an entertaining chap who was a US veteran who kept  insisting at every opportunity that he’d been born in 1912 and thinking it was a great joke. He said that he liked New Zealanders based on the ones he had served with overseas, and said the US and NZ soldiers would always team up to pick on the Aussies. Ah sport and war, always great topics of conversation. One of these days we’ll find someone who limits their small talk to art and music…. Still, he was a kind soul, who offered to give us his cellphone number when he saw that the bus station was literally in the middle of nowhere in the desert so that we could give him a call if our bus didn’t show up. No troubles there though, the first bus got us to Riverside to meet our connecting bus… which was then an hour and a half late. And when it finally showed up, it was one of those buses covered entirely by an ad for a movie (Tomorrowland, which is by all accounts a rubbish movie anyway; perhaps I could have forgiven it if it was Mad Max: Fury Road), which meant that we couldn’t really see out the windows very well. Enjoying the expansive views is generally one of my main reasons for putting up with all the other hassles of bus travel, particularly when it’s beautiful desert scenery, so I was a bit disgruntled, and ended up closing my eyes and listening loudly to Kyuss, so at least I had the desert soundtrack. Also, there was a guy sitting in front of and across from us who had the most well-behaved wee dog ever in a doggy-carry-case thing which made cute faces at us the whole trip, so there was at least something to look at.

All in all, Palm Springs: would trade again, especially the Del Marcos Hotel. Next time, less drinking and more nature-seeing, and maybe checking out nearby towns of Palm Desert, Indio, etc. And Dad, I see they also have a world class air museum, so if you and Mum ever want to visit, I’ll be your tour guide (my rates are cheap; a vintage dress and a cocktail should do it…)