After a relaxing time by the pool and heat, we borrowed some bikes, which are included at our villa. It was a short 10 minute bike ride to downtown Palm Springs, where we locked them up and went to a store with all kinds of fun merchandise. It’s difficult to truly explain its wares as it was Palm Springs – centric, but also not a tourist gift store. You could get art and architecture books, Palm Springs t-shirts, gay pride memorabilia, but also some cheeky locally-made greeting cards and mugs referencing anything from Tonya Harding to Fox News. We had a bit of fun in there and spent more than we should have.
After riding back to the Villa Royale, we showered and changed before heading back out. You see, it might have seemed logical to just stay out to eat dinner while we were already downtown on our bikes, but we noticed something about this city. There are not a lot of street lights, and it gets extremely dark at night. This did not seem like a great time to be caught on a cruiser bike in a town full of geriatrics with slow reaction times. We headed back out in a car with headlights and made the trek back to Sherman’s Deli. We ate outside with all the snow birds. Nicole sat near a woman with a cane. Behind me was a man making bizarre noises while clearing his throat. Palm Springs is an interesting community of characters. We both went with breakfast for dinner.
After returning to the Villa Royale, we ventured to their in-house restaurant called the “Del Rey.” We decided to get a chocolate lava cake for dessert and a couple drinks. This ended up costing more than our entire dinner, but we figured we were allowed to splurge a little since we essentially saved hundreds of dollars by not being able to do our other adventures to places like Norway or Poland.
After our fancy drinks, we returned to our room, where I had the least fancy drink in America — White Claw. It was my first time having one, but I figured I should try one before making fun of it. What if I actually liked it? I didn’t. It’s rubbish. I know the kids like them, but it’s quite silly. It’s basically just a La Croix with a bit more flavor.
Back in our room, we decided to use the fun setting as a film set. We shot our own film noir (like totally normal people do when they’re on vacation). It should be done in a couple days, so bring your popcorn.
passports & pepto bismol 