This is part 1 of our USA 2026 trip.
Correction first: it was not 16 days. It was 23 days.
Twenty-three days in the States with Janice, Nelly at 5, and Jamie at 1 is not a vacation. It is an endurance event with better weather and more cup holders.
Part 1 was the boot sequence: LAX, Palm Springs, Las Vegas, and the early hours where every adult decision had to pass through jet lag before reaching production.
The children had a simpler evaluation framework:
- pool
- food
- why are we still in transit
Hard to argue with. Honestly a decent travel philosophy.
LAX was a portal, not a place
We landed in Los Angeles and performed the classic European-in-America ritual:
Admire the idea of LA.
Get in a car.
Leave.
I am sure Los Angeles is brilliant if you arrive with sleep, range, and a relaxed relationship with traffic.
We arrived with luggage, two small girls, and the kind of concentration normally required for aircraft landing procedures.
So LAX was not the beginning of the holiday.
It was the airlock.
The job was to get through it without losing a bag, a child, or the last working piece of adult patience.
Palm Springs was recovery with architecture
Palm Springs was the correct first proper stop because it understood the assignment.
No museum guilt.
No ambitious sightseeing.
No “we should really make the most of the day” nonsense.
Just a villa, a pool, heat that felt intentional, and enough square meters that nobody had to breathe directly on anyone else for a while.
That is underrated luxury after a long-haul flight.
Not marble-bathroom luxury.
Spatial luxury.
The kind where Jamie can nap, Nelly can orbit the pool, Janice can exhale, and I can pretend I am calmly managing the plan instead of silently recalculating everyone’s sleep deficit.
Palm Springs did not make us elegant.
It made us operational.
That was enough.
Las Vegas is not a city, it is a volume setting
Then came Las Vegas.
Vegas does not introduce itself.
It walks into the room wearing lights and asks why you are being so quiet.
With children, it becomes even stranger. The adult brain tries to process the fake skylines, casino carpet, giant signs, indoor outside, outdoor inside, and the general sense that someone approved every idea at once.
Nelly looked at it with real professional curiosity.
Jamie looked at it from stroller height, which is probably the most honest angle. Knees, lights, wheels, noise, legs, ceiling. A complete worldview.
Vegas is absurd.
That is not criticism.
That is the product.
Bubba Gump knew its role
The food moment that best explains this leg was Bubba Gump.
Not because it was the culinary peak.
Come on.
Because it was exactly the right kind of surrender.
There are trips where you hunt for the little local place with no sign and the perfect menu.
This was not that hour.
This was the hour where a chair, cold air, fries, shrimp, and a table nobody had to research became a tactical victory.
Sometimes taste is less important than reducing the number of active decisions.
Bubba Gump reduced the decisions.
Respect.
The first leg was about becoming usable again
That was the real theme.
Not discovery.
Not beauty.
Not the grand American road-trip montage yet.
Part 1 was about getting the family across the Atlantic, through the airport machine, into the desert, through Vegas, fed at the right moment, and back into something close to human form.
Palm Springs repaired us.
Vegas overstimulated us.
Bubba Gump prevented a system incident.
That may not sound glamorous.
Fine.
Glamour is overrated when one of your travellers is 1.
Part 1 was the restart chapter. The trip only became pretty later.