Shaken and stirred by Palm Spring
How do you top stunning scenery and lavish luxury? With an earthquake, of course!
A family get-together for a rather important birthday shouldn’t be that difficult to organise. But when our daughter lives in London, my son in Sydney, and we are in Washington DC, this is going to be a reunion with a bit of a carbon footprint. The one thing we agreed on was it could only be one flight for everyone. So hello California.
We met in Los Angeles. Well, Santa Monica to be precise. Max and his girlfriend, Kate, arrived first at Loew’s hotel, fabulously situated on the beach next to the pier.
They took off at 9am from Sydney on Friday morning, flew for 14 hours, and arrived three hours before they departed at 6am (which I guess is slightly preferable to their return across the Pacific, when they took off on a Friday night and arrived on Sunday morning – carelessly losing a whole Saturday).
We rocked up next, having only flown across the US; our daughter, Anna, arrived last.
And after hugs and tears that we were together again for the first time in seven months, we did what families do and got competitive over who was most jet-lagged. Linda and I lost badly. Impressively no one’s head disappeared into their plate over dinner.
Next morning we set off for Palm Springs, just over 160km south-east of LA. We had a carefully selected playlist for the journey, starting with the opening number from the movie La La Land as we left the traffic jams in the city of angels; California by Phantom Planet as we got on to Route 101; and Hotel California, natch, as we drove along a dark, desert highway – although the wind was anything but cool in our hair.
When we left LA the temperature was a pleasant 23C, but by the time we had driven into the Sonoran Desert, the thermometer on the car showed it had reached a searing 41C. It was hot, dry and stunning. I can’t imagine how dull a job it must be working as a local TV weather forecaster. Palm Springs came to prominence in the 1950s as a favourite hangout for the Rat Pack of Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and assorted stars and starlets who were drawn to this desert oasis.
The Hollywood studios demanded that their ‘talent’ live within a couple of hours of the film lots. Palm Springs just about ticked the box.
So up it grew, with great, low-rise modernist houses that are still there today. Think clean-shaven men, Brylcreemed hair, a cigarette in one hand, a tumbler of bourbon on the rocks in the other – actually think Mad Men. That was how it started. There are bus tours to take you on architectural tours, and to the homes of the stars. And there are endless golf courses. I played the Thunderbird, which is ridiculously beautiful – or FAB, as Virgil might have said to Mr Tracy… We stayed at the Parker, set in the most sumptuous 13 acres of land you will find in the area. It is cool and trendy but not achingly so. I think they call it hippie chic (not to be confused with the hippy, hippy shake).
The rooms are gorgeous, the staff