Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Another perfect trip
Doug Scrivener and his team deliver excellent service and have for the 20 years I have been coming to DialAFlight. Thank you
Excellent work
Ruby was very helpful and professional.
Finn Conlon as always did an excellent job for which I am very grateful.
Not aware that Palm Springs car rental at Alamo did not open until we had to check-in. Checked their website and found their advice about checking in early morning.
Always keeps us up to date on all of our travel arrangements.
Everything went to plan. Had a wonderful time with my family and seeing my grandson graduate from university.
For the many, many years I have dealt with DAF and Ewan and his team, they have never let us down, and our recent trip was perfect as well. Thanks DAF for being just a 100% perfect company to deal with.
Always very professional - look forward to the next one
Disappointed not to have adjacent seats from Sacramento to Dallas. Suffice it say we will never fly BA again. Got our lost baggage back last night.
Peter looked after my trip from beginning to end, thank you
Everything went like clockwork - very nice resort
Excellent contact and communication. Clear information on flights and good choice of hotel. Probably need to inform customers about hotel tax!
Very polite and efficient service
Have dealt with Christian for many a year and would not organise a trip through anyone else. Superb as always.
Everything was perfect thanks. Great seats on the plane. Great car. Excellent connections. Thanks.
Mason has always helped us with travel plans superbly and the app from DialAflight is really helpful.
I know someone is looking after me from booking to arriving back home. Makes my trips stress free
As always perfect in every way, great holiday, fantastic hotel recommendation, caring communication - pre hols and post hols checkin.
The car hire arrangement was just what I wanted - thank you
Gino gave great service and even booked us upgraded seats for the best price - a nice touch and much appreciated
A bit more clarification re US time zones would be good.
All good thank you
Thank you for the ongoing support, even whilst we were on holiday and needed to call! Des was great right from booking through to the travel date.
Philippa was great throughout the whole process - thank you for your help!
Would highly recommend. Thank you Steven Merralls and team.
Always a pleasure to book with DialAflight. Very professional and efficient. I look forward to the courtesy call 24 hours before I travel . Professionalalism at its best.
We had a problem with our hotel room. One phone call and all sorted! Thank you
Shelley has been fantastic and I’ve already asked her to start looking at options for NZ next year
It's called the Golden State for its famous gold rush, its golden poppies and the light that film-makers love. But what about the golden age of rock and roll? I set out on a two-week road trip to find the California places made famous by classic album covers and legendary rock exploits...in a Ford Mustang.
PET SOUNDS
First stop on my journey was the petting farm at San Diego zoo, instantly recognisable as the place the Beach Boys fed the goats on the cover of Pet Sounds. The zoo itself is vast with its own cable car to speed you between the polar bears, pandas, elephants and goats. There's a huge appetite for rock in San Diego. Its Gaslamp Quarter is teeming with blues bars, restaurants, clubs, cool shops and other hipster hangouts.
THE JOSHUA TREE
Next stop was the Joshua Tree, best known as the name of a U2 album but in fact a must-see national park at the meeting point of the Mojave and Colorado deserts.
Those weird volcanic formations have made Joshua Tree a beacon for rock visionaries. Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg came here in 1969 on a trip with their friend Gram Parsons, the country singer who co-wrote Wild Horses. There's a guitar-shaped shrine to Parsons at the Joshua Tree Inn, where he died aged just 26.
ELVIS' HIDEAWAY
Nearby Palm Springs has always been a haven for the famous. I took a tour of Elvis Presley's honeymoon home, where he shacked up with Priscilla in 1967.
Elvis's manager Colonel Tom Parker lived round the corner, as did Frank Sinatra whose favourite bar was Melvyn's. Martini-loving locals and celebs still lose all inhibitions there around midnight.
There's a sense in Palm Springs that there's always a wild party happening somewhere behind electric gates or out in the desert - which is very much the kind of landscape where people get abducted by aliens.
THE BRITISH INVASION
The Sunset Strip was arguably where heavy rock was born. The Who, The Kinks and Led Zeppelin all played their first US shows at The Whisky a Go Go, turning what had been a hippy hangout into a more raucous affair.
Tucked just off the Strip is the Sunset Marquis, a perfect hideaway for rock stars including Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith and Black Sabbath. Villa 41 was Keith Richards' favourite. He wrote two Rolling Stones albums here and allegedly paid $5,000 for a new carpet each time because he liked to drop his cigarettes on the floor.
WELCOME TO THE HOTEL CALIFORNIA
The Eagles wrote Hotel California after a disorienting stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel ('You can check out, but you can never leave') and its roof can be seen on the album cover.
Paul McCartney and John Lennon both holed up here in the 1970s, having discovered its charms in the days of Beatlemania. Elvis's car is still parked in the private garage. The same hotel indulged Elizabeth Taylor's order for a bottle of vodka at breakfast during her six honeymoons there. So naturally that's where newly-minted rock millionaires looked for luxury with no questions asked.
IF YOU'RE GOING TO SAN FRANCISCO
It's a long drive from LA to San Francisco, but if you stick to the coast road it's one of the most scenic drives on earth.
From the hazy neon and palm trees of Los Angeles, the scenery soon becomes vineyards, salad farms and, around Big Sur, redwood forests that stretch up the coast to Canada. There's a section where the Santa Lucia mountains plunge into a Pacific teeming with whales that's so beautiful it's almost a religious experience.
They call San Francisco's Fillmore the 'Vatican of rock' and its equivalent of the Sistine chapel is the poster room, lined with all the psychedelic flyers for legendary gigs there by Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, The Who and Pink Floyd.
The nearby Matrix, where Jefferson Airplane debuted, is still a music venue but the iconic Winterland Ballroom is now luxury flats. The old hippy neighbourhoods are long since gentrified, you see.
The Grateful Dead house on Ashbury Street is a beautiful wooden Victorian townhouse and the Jefferson Airplane house on Fulton Street is a gleaming white mansion in the style of a Greek temple. Scenes of wild bacchanals in their day, both are now private homes. Fans scratch their tributes on nearby railings.
Where do rock stars stay in San Francisco today? There are no bungalow-based hideaways to compare with LA's. So instead stars seek out the best views. None compare to the view from the top of the Mark Hopkins, the tallest building on San Francisco's highest hill. When the Rolling Stones stay, they rent two entire floors of this regal 1920s hotel.
First published in the Mail Online - May 2016
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