Day 29 - 30: Palm Springs

From Bear Lake we made a short 1,5 hour drive which again changed the climate completely. We found ourselves on the Californian desert, with temperatures around 33 C. Our navigator guided us to the center of Palm Springs, which was the city hall by the airport. Since this did not exactly convince us yet, we drove back to the Visitor Center to find a map of the place and find out where the action really takes place.

We talked to a woman there who provided us some really convincing sales-pitch of few local motels. Encouraged by this we took the offers and went to the first place. It was selected as one of the top 10 romantic places in the US. It was awesome! They had eight individually styled apartments/rooms, each with own patio and outdoor jacuzzi + really nice pool in the middle. By the poolside was playing music from the 40's to create authentic atmosphere.

As a getaway place to the celebrities from LA, the whole town was full of nice restaurants, shops and really fancy small boutique hotels. The guy at the hotel gave an impressive list of previous guests (vaguely enough though that we can't tell whether he was talking of the hotel or Palm Springs in general). We noticed that we are not exactly there during the high season, which meant that we got a great price on our room (less than some standard motels!) plus we were the only guests there. We spent the day reading by the poolside, swimming, and wondering how warm the tiles can get from the sun & of course enjoying the jacuzzi in the (super) moonlight. On the next morning we thought, that since we don't have any schedules, we might as well stay for another night. The next day was very similar, reading, walking around the town, eating, jacuzzi.. Not bad!

For a late lunch we went to a local belgian restaurant and had very european lunch with quiche and everything. R ordered also a beer, Hoegaarden. Gathering from the waiters "Who... What?" we concluded dutch pronounciation is not perhaps the most clear one when ordering belgian beers in the US :-)