9 Days in Southern California

With a local guide, you will take in all the highlights - from tourist hotspots in Beverly Hills to locals' favourite haunts - covering about 30 miles (hence the e-bikes). Lunch will be at a hip restaurant on the sand at Venice Beach - home to the infamous Muscle Beach - before cycling along the canals which gave the neighbourhood its name. Your tour will end with a visit to the iconic Culver City, home to the movie studios that made LA they city it is today.

Keys in hand, you will make your way to Palm Springs, two hours from Los Angeles in the middle of the California desert. We will provide you with detailed driving instructions, as well as a few suggestions for places to stop for lunch - after all, we're not sure if a Stateside-road trip really counts if there isn't at least one American diner burger-and-milkshake meal along the way. Once you arrive at your hotel we recommend getting out and exploring America's (or at least Hollywood's) most famous spa town before dinner.

This morning your design-expert and Palm Springs architecture aficionado guide will meet you at your hotel for a private tour of some of the best architecture and design in the city, including access to the interiors of some private homes.

This afternoon, you will make your own way to the Palm Springs Arial Tramway. Here, you will ride up and across the sheer cliffs of Chino Canyon. Once at the top, we recommend spending some time exploring the hiking trails, before making your way back down and to the San Andreas fault zone. You will explore the geological nooks and crannies, which have shaped the area for millennia, in an open 4x4 and with the help of an expert guide.

Once you have arrived and settled into your hotel - perhaps playing a game of golf and having some lunch in the restaurant - you will make your way down to the harbour. Here, you will set off in your electric boat before spending the afternoon cruising around the harbour. Make sure you stock up on a delicious smorgasbord of snacks to take on board, or hold out and grab bites to eat later on a waterfront bar crawl.

After you have boarded your RIB inflatable dinghy boat, you will head out to where the whales are known to spend their time, in the company of an expert guide. Depending on the time of year, you will be able to spot blue, fin, humpback, grey or minke whales - maybe even all of them if you're really lucky.

Your hotel is on a spit of land in San Diego Bay, so we recommend spending the rest of the day soaking up some sunshine on the beach - we'll make sure we give you a list of our favourites with your final documents.

Later today, we recommend visiting the USS Midway Museum, a maritime museum aboard the eponymous aircraft carrier, where you will learn about the history of this vast ship, once home to 4,000 sailors.