A Weekend Guide to Palm Springs

I spent the weekend in Palm Springs. In my nine years of living in SoCal, I had never been to Palm Springs. I only had a vague picture of the place in my head, of gold courses and palm trees (duh) and hot springs (duh). But it turned out not to be entirely how I had imagined it. There were palm trees, planted unnaturally in the California desert. There were hotel resorts that said "spa". But I actually didn't see any golf courses (I think you have to drive to them somewhere), and I was surprised to see the mountains right there, just bam! In your face. The weather was dry, nice and warm enough for a tank top during the day but not blazing hot, and quite cold at night. The downtown area was nice and laid back, with a retro old hollywood feel complete with its own star walk of fame. The main street was lined with restaurants, souvenir shops, and several icecream shops. And yes, there were quite a few senior citizens. William and I ended up playing a game while sitting outside in the sun and waiting for our food at a cafe/bar/coffee place (I know, it's redundant, but that's what it said). The rule was simple. We look towards different ends of the street and whoever spots anyone younger/same age as us first, wins. This game lasted for at least 10 minutes, and this is a busy street with constant traffic.

Aside from counting the number of people under 30 years old, we went to a little town west of Palm Springs called Cabazon to check out the outlet. I'm always hearing about this place from my friends who visit from Japan, and I was finally able to see it with my own eyes. It looked huge, but in the end it was not that much. I guess I was not in the right mood for it either. It was pretty funny to walk into Gucci and Prada with a 1 gallon jug of water and a ziploc bag filled with grapes. I did get one thing that I am very happy about from the outlet though. The pot. Yes, the one I had been dreaming about for a while, and already wrote about in this blog. There was actually a Le Creuset outlet store, so of course I had to go. After considering all the colors, I decided on a classic cherry red. Besides, they were having a sale where everything red got an additional 20% off. I ended up paying $128 for a 5.5 quart round French Oven. It doesn't get much better than this.