Full

It was necessary, on arriving in Los Angeles, to immediately unarrive in it. Due to the work schedule of the friend I am visiting, we only had one opportunity to undertake the uber-American activity of the road trip, and we had to take it immediately. And so we hit the freeways in a bright orange Nissan Versa to drive the couple of hours out to Palm Springs.

Palm Springs is a desert resort city on the fringes of the Mojave, known for its beautiful mid-century modernist architecture and spectacular mountains that loom over valley in which it’s sited.

Our hotel wasn’t one of the modernist ones – they’re too expensive – but rather a lovely sprawling Spanish hacienda style building with terracotta tiled floors and stucco walls, wreathed in red bougainvilleas and dotted with bubbling fountains. It’s the sort of place where you anticipate seeing the ghost of a Hollywood starlet murdered by her lover on a dirty weekend in 1953.

For the most part, we spent the remainder of the day simply wandering about, absorbing the charming buildings, the cute little design shops and art galleries, the neatly xeriscaped gardens (including several paperbark trees a long way from their Australian home) and the stunning mountain vistas that constantly demand one’s attention.

Later, we had dinner at a local bistro, where an overenthusiastic barmaid earned my admiration by pouring the most brimming dirty martini I’ve ever seen.

The Nerd is only doing what I would have done, given the requisite scaling.