Aerial of the Vintage Club in Palm Desert

Golf paradise in California desert

From Palm Springs to Rancho Mirage to Palm Desert to Indian Wells to La Quinta, it’s one long stretch of gorgeous golf environments populated with a million palm trees. Then, of course, you have the car dealerships that crowd Hwy 111 that include all the high-end marks from Mercedes to Aston Martin to Rolls Royce to Ferrari. Sprinkle in a generous number of Starbucks and grocery stores along the corridor and you can find anything you could possibly need and dozens of things you don’t need.

The whole string of little cities is heavenly, if you like palm trees, that is. They symbolize paradise and serenity. Plus, they are always green. There’s an amazing variety of species but the super tall ones with a crown of vibrant green fronds evoke a luxurious atmosphere to me.

I always laugh when people say, “Oh, you’re going to The Desert?” Well, I live in the desert in Scottsdale, so, yes, I’m going from the desert to THE desert.

Palms of the Coachella Valley

However, there is much more lush green grass here since the Coachella Valley can draw water from a massive underground aquifer. The early developers tuned into the appeal of a ribbon of lawn-like golf holes threaded through a real estate community to produce a winning formula.

Like the iconic Magnolia Lane of Augusta, magnificent palm trees lining an entrance signifies you are someplace special. Even the shopping mall builders have adopted this visual language because they know how enticing it is.

Coachella Valley palms

The stars at The Vintage Club

The temperatures are just right for outdoor dining and music at night.

The stars at The Vintage Club were mesmerizing along with extraordinary wine and food. I asked our hosts what are those two extremely bright stars…is one of them Venus? “No, they are probably satellites.” Oh. That’s amazing. I had no idea those bright points of light could be visible while we were dining al fresco.

The dry desert air was crisp and cool but several moveable heaters circled our table and directed enough warmth to make drinking an extraordinary red wine go down that much smoother.

Besides visiting with old friends who we haven’t seen in over eight years, how would I know I was in California? How about experiencing my first earthquake!

We were having dinner with a lovely couple at Ruth’s Chris and just as I felt the tremor in my feet, the water glasses on the table started shaking. Our friends as well as everyone else in the sumptuous dining room did not miss a beat. Ho hum. Just a regular thing like a sunrise or a sunset.

Golfing for every challenge level

Golf with our host as PGA West Citrus Course was fun but the Pete Dye course was a bit too challenging for me. The legendary architect certainly got the beauty factor just right on this most choice piece of land he was given to work with.

No great scores but I finished with the same two balls I started with…keeping them dry the whole round. Playing the Palm Valley Country Club with our next host allowed me another rare opportunity to chase those same two little white balls around, find some pars on the friendlier Ted Robinson course. 

PGA West Citrus Course, La Quinta 

Spending a couple of hours at the American Express tournament and catching up with Séamus Power on the 17th was really fun. Kevin had played with him when the title sponsor was Career Builder and Séamus was an unknown Irish golfer on the PGA Tour. 

The American Express PGA Tour event has had many title sponsors over the years, however it started as the Bob Hope Classic and many of us still refer to it as the ‘Hope’.

Starting in 1960, Arnold Palmer won the Bob Hope Classic five times and he is the only 5-time winner of the event. Palmer’s last victory was in 1973. It’s no wonder Arnie made the Tradition Golf Club in La Quinta his winter home, having designed the course in 1996.

Finding time for art

Kevin and I had just enough time to swing by Heather James Fine Art on Portola Avenue in Palm Desert before we headed back over to Avenue 52. While it is a gallery where everything is for sale, it feels more like a museum. The Winslow Homer (1836 – 1910) Girl Standing in the Wheat Field painted in 1873 spoke to me.

This summation from the Heather James website describes the glowing light and serene setting:

Among the many other paintings inspired by the region, Girl Standing in the
Wheatfield is rich in sentiment, but not over sentimentalized. It directly
relates to an 1866 study painted in France entitled, In the Wheatfields, and
another, painted the following year after he returned to America. But Homer
would have undoubtedly been most proud of this one. It is a portrait, a
costume study, a genre painting in the great tradition of European pastoral
painting, and a dramatically backlit, atmospheric tour de force steeped in
the quickly fading gloaming hour light buoyed with lambent, flowery notes
and wheat spike touches.

Dining at Arnold Palmer restaurant

Add in dinner at Arnold Palmer restaurant and we capped off another perfect day in paradise. The main dining room has been significantly remodeled since the photo of it featured in the profile of Arnold Palmer from the Professional Golfers With Their Own Wine Label, is represented in Terroir of Golf.

Kevin’s final round of golf was back at the Citrus Course for a member-guest tournament. Breakfast-golf-lunch with more superb sunshine concluded a fabulous week.

It gave me a chance to take a long walk around a beautiful residential neighborhood. I spotted a couple of trails going through desert toward the mountains to the west but I stuck to the sidewalks where I could see thriving bougainvillea and other flowering plants with birdsong all around me.

Yep. Heaven for me.

Arnold Palmer restaurant – private dining room with framed Green Jacket

The Fife Arms Hotel in the Highlands of Scotland

Aberdeen to Braemar

Several months ago I learned about The Fife Arms in the Highlands of Scotland, only about 15 minutes from Balmoral Castle. Knowing that I would be in Scotland in June, I did some research and discovered the owners of the hotel are art dealers, Iwan and Manuela Wirth, and since they bought the property and elevated it to five-star status, they also filled the entire building with high-end art.

Next, I found out there is an Art Afternoon Tea with a tour of the hotel’s art collection. It did not take much persuasion to get Kevin to agree to go, since we would not be far away when we booked our stay at our favorite Marcliffe Hotel in Aberdeen.

We would certainly both be deserving a little break after finishing our Golf & Music Tour to Scotland earlier in June. Remember, if you have read the beginning of Terroir of Golf, Kevin and I are the honeybees that are always keen to get back into our Marcliffe hive.

Sadly, upon our arrival, we found out Stewart Spence had recently passed away. Stewart was awarded an MBE for services to tourism in 2015. He was a consummate professional and he also had a magnetic personality. This was a man who clearly relished his role as the director of a luxurious boutique hotel that evolved to become an institution. Stewart would always leave a letter for us in our room with a hand-written note of welcome. I wrote about this visionary man who had such an over-sized spirit in Monarch of the Marcliffe story.

It does seem, however, the Spence family appears to have found the perfect owner in the Balmoral Group, founded by chairman Sir Jim Milne. Kevin and I met him when we were having drinks in the sumptuous Drawing Room, as it was a Sunday and he was there enjoying the lively buzz.

We couldn’t help but notice there are ambitious projects underway with new construction, the centerpiece being a glass domed dining space for a new brasserie-style restaurant which will serve food all day. It is due to open in early 2026. There is so much more happening at the Marcliffe but it would take up my entire story to give you the full report!

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“Welcome to The Marcliffe Mr. McGrath” – in chocolate

An Art Afternoon Tea at the Clunie

Back to our “Tea” that we booked for June 23rd in The Clunie. The restaurant takes its name from Clunie Water, which is a tributary of the River Dee, that runs past the hotel. We left early enough to enjoy the drive through the countryside which took us into the Cairngorm Mountains. The Cairngorms National Park covers a vast area, spanning several council areas including Aberdeenshire where the Marcliffe is located.

We mapped it out so we could arrive about an hour before the art tour began. I was excited to roam around and fortuitously met Lauren, who was to be our guide.

I peppered her with questions and she graciously pointed out things that might not have been covered with several people in tow. I had read online that the largest artwork in the hotel is a mural created by Argentinian artist, Guillermo Kuitca. This particular work reminded me of the show of Expressionists that I saw at the Tate Modern in 2024. That was, indeed, a very enlightening experience!

Lauren showed me the precise corner where Kuitca began to paint and even where his signature is. It turns out this floor-to-ceiling acrylic mural covers every square inch of the walls of The Clunie, where the Afternoon Tea is served.

The precise corner where Kuitca began to paint the full wall mural around this large room.

Before the tour began, I noticed two Picassos, and was ecstatic when I discovered a pile of art books in the room with the larger one. My eye went right to the big Joan Mitchell book published by the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Then I spotted a book titled Monet – Mitchell, which intrigued me because in 1967 Joan Mitchell had purchased an estate overlooking the Seine in the village of Vétheuil where Claude Monet lived for several years. The book explores the artistic parallels of the two artists who lived and worked in the same area outside of Paris, but at different times.

I settled on looking at just a couple of pages — one spread of Mitchell walking in a French garden, and another, a portrait of her taken in 1946 by Barney Rosset. Mitchell and Rosset married 1949 and settled in Greenwich Village. They divorced in 1952. Rosset went on to become a pioneering book and magazine publisher (and marry four more times). In 1955 Mitchell traveled to Paris where she met painter Jean Paul Riopelle and she then lived with him for over twenty years.

Joan Mitchell in her garden in France

The Clunie

After I somewhat sated my curiosity, the formal tour with Lauren began. She took us first into The Clunie and since I had already familiarized myself with the giant Kuitca mural, I could concentrate on the monumental Brueghel II, and learn the story of that picture. Pieter Brueghel the Younger was a Flemish painter, the son of the renowned Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He is known for his numerous copies of his father’s works. In the lower left corner of this painting are three women, added to the scene at a later date, according to Lauren. She said the different style of dress and even the brighter yellow color was intentional because the owner wanted to distinguish this picture from others that were so similar. And yes, Bruegel the Elder spelled his name differently.

The next item Lauren pointed out was the Ice Age Antlers hanging over the service window of the Clunie restaurant. Back in 2019 I wrote a story titled The Great Irish Elk. I did divulge that the beast was not exclusively Irish nor was it an elk, and it roamed all over Eurasia. My story actually focused on an ingenious artwork created by an Irish sculptor, Andrew Carragher, that was made entirely of twigs he found in a forest.

The form of this animal was striking — including the massive antlers. Andrew arrived in Liscannor with his masterpiece strapped to the bed of a trailer that he drove down from County Louth. Passing cars were nearly crashing into each other as heads swiveled around to catch a glimpse of the buck.

Before we moved along, Lauren mentioned the chandeliers were made of Murano glass. I was astonished by that fact, as I was currently reading The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier and it is all about a family of Murano glassmakers, that was set in the 15th century. Well, it started out that way.

Lauren then guided us through Elsa’s cocktail bar. The interior design was based on the eccentric Elsa Schiaparelli, who became known for, among other things, the use of “shocking pink.” You could have easily missed the photograph by Cecil Beaton, taken in 1937 of Schiaparelli when she was at the height of her career as a fashion designer.

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Picasso and Zhang Enli

At last, we circled back to the Drawing Room with the larger Picasso, Nude with Man and Pipe,1967. This is thought to be based on Jacqueline Roque. She was the muse and second wife of Pablo Picasso and their marriage lasted 12 years until his death in 1973. He created over 400 portraits of her and she was the most featured woman across his entire oeuvre. The male figure is an iteration of a musketeer, one of the stand-ins for the artist himself.

Perhaps not covering as many square feet but categorized as the second largest artwork at the Fife Arms is the painting on the ceiling of the Drawing Room. It is an organic and magical sea of blues, greens, yellows and purple, created by Zhang Enli and is titled Ancient Quartz, 2018. The inspiration is derived from cross-sections of Scottish agates, that when split open reveal a dazzling array of color.

Our tour concludes in the lobby area with Lauren gathering us around the second, earlier Picasso: Tete de Femme,1938. It is of his mistress and muse Marie-Thèrése Walter. They did have a long affair and had a daughter together, Maya. This is a very rare work as it is the only painting in which Picasso included one of his own poems within the composition. Picasso began writing poetry in 1935 when he was 54 years old. From the Musée Picasso Paris website I learned that he wrote over 340 poems between 1935 and 1939.

There is plenty more to see, like the Wall of Heads. Lauren had made us aware that taxidermy was an art form in its day. She warned people about going into a certain room, incase they were sensitive to seeing these stuffed animals. I get it. We live in a very different age.

I was enchanted by the drawing of “A Stag Shot by John Brown” done by Queen Victoria. It is pencil and watercolor on paper and exquisitely framed incorporating the Fife Arms plaid in the outer mat. It really took me by surprise to see how adept she was at creating this sketch. I loved learning that it was a favorite occupation that she shared with Prince Albert during their summer visits to the Highlands of Scotland.

This is the earlier Picasso: “Tête de Femme,” 1938.

The commissioned Drawing Room’s ceiling artwork was created by Chinese artist, Zhang Enli

The Art Tea

When the tour finishes the Tea begins with an extraordinary array of savory treats. One must save room for the sweets, that included Key Lime Pie and a Red Velvet Cake. Alas, we asked to put the scones in a box to take with us.

The various teas are presented in an extensive stand-alone menu. I went for something exotic sounding: Rooibis Blueberry. It was absolutely delicious and the smell was intoxicating. It was hard to resist champagne but I’m glad I did!

It enabled me to enjoy our delicious dinner at the Marcliffe more than ever so I could savor the wine without feeling guilty.

Rooibos Blueberry tea at the Clunie dining room