Palm Springs

Palm Springs is a desert town, and the nearest ocean beaches are about two hours west over the mountains. Swimming here means the pool. Nearly every hotel, motel and rental house is built around one, and the long, hot season of pool lounging is a large part of a stay. Nobody comes for sand or sea, though, and the Salton Sea to the south-east is a strange, salty landscape rather than a place to swim.

Eating out in Palm Springs means long brunches on shaded patios, cocktails by the pool and a reliable set of mid-range American restaurants along Palm Canyon Drive. The valley adds things worth seeking out. Date groves around Indio and Thermal supply the region's signature date shake, and the towns further east have plenty of honest Mexican taquerias and panaderias serving the farmworking communities.

The range is narrow for a place this popular. Fine dining is thin, there is no local cuisine to speak of, and in the hottest months many kitchens cut back their service. It suits relaxed grazing more than serious eating.

The town's real sight is its architecture. Palm Springs holds one of the densest collections of mid-century modern buildings anywhere: Albert Frey's angular houses and the tramway valley station, Richard Neutra's Kaufmann House, the folded roofs of the Alexander tract homes in Twin Palms and Vista Las Palmas, and the old gas station that serves as the visitor centre. Self-guided driving and cycling tours through these neighbourhoods fill a pleasant day, and the Modernism Week calendar draws design enthusiasts each February.

Beyond that the list is short. The Palm Springs Art Museum has a good collection of modern and Western art, and the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum tells the story of the Cahuilla people whose land the town sits on. Everything else is a backdrop for relaxing.

Going out in Palm Springs centres on Arenas Road and the blocks around it, a long-established strip of LGBTQ bars with patios, drag nights and a friendly, social crowd. Hotel pool parties carry the weekends in spring, and Palm Canyon Drive has a run of cocktail lounges styled in the town's retro manner.

It is a scene with character but little size. There are hardly any real clubs, most places wind down well before the small hours outside the busiest weekends, and in the summer heat the town empties. Visitors looking for a big night out will find it pleasant rather than memorable.

The landscape is the main reason to be here. The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway climbs from the desert floor to about 2,600m on Mount San Jacinto, where pine forest, snow in winter and miles of wilderness trails sit directly above the town. At the foot of the mountains, the Indian Canyons and Tahquitz Canyon hide palm oases, streams and a waterfall, and trails climb the bare ridges straight out of town.

Joshua Tree National Park is about an hour away, with its boulder piles, climbing routes and star-filled night skies, and the Whitewater Preserve and the Coachella Valley Preserve are closer. Cycling and golf are big from autumn to spring. From June to September the heat often passes 42°C, and hiking shrinks to the hour after dawn or the cool upper mountain.

The best outings are small and quirky rather than grand. Idyllwild is a mountain village in the pines about an hour away, Pioneertown is a 1940s Western film set that people still live in, and the eastern shore of the Salton Sea has abandoned resort towns and the folk-art hillside of Salvation Mountain. Temecula's wineries are about an hour and a half by car, and the apple-pie mining town of Julian is at the limit of a day out.

The other Coachella Valley towns, Palm Desert with its shopping and La Quinta with its old resort, are easy short hops. Los Angeles and San Diego are too far for a comfortable day trip, and everything needs a car.

With children, Palm Springs works best as a pool vacation with a few outings. The Living Desert in Palm Desert is an excellent zoo and botanical garden of desert animals, the aerial tramway is a thrill with snow at the top in winter, and the Palm Springs Air Museum lets children get close to old warplanes. Easy canyon walks with palm oases suit older kids.

The town is calm and safe but leans towards adults. Many of the boutique hotels are adults-only, the social life revolves around cocktails and pool parties, and from late spring the heat makes the middle of the day impossible outdoors. Families do better in the large resorts further down the valley.

The downtown strip along Palm Canyon Drive and Indian Canyon Drive is compact, flat and easy on foot, and bikes are a good way to tour the nearby mid-century neighbourhoods in the cooler months. Valley buses run between the towns but slowly and sparsely. The tramway, the canyons, the rest of the Coachella Valley and Joshua Tree all need a car, and in summer walking anywhere at midday is out of the question. The airport sits right on the edge of town, which is a real convenience.

Palm Springs has a real specialism in mid-century modern furniture, lighting and vintage clothing, concentrated in the Uptown Design District on North Palm Canyon Drive, where consignment shops and galleries sit side by side. The weekly street fair, Village Fest, adds crafts and local food stalls downtown.

For mainstream shopping, El Paseo in Palm Desert is the valley's polished luxury street, and the big outlet centres at Cabazon, about twenty minutes west, draw shoppers from all over Southern California. There is little in the way of local crafts or markets beyond that.

Palm Springs is an expensive place in its high season, from winter into spring, when boutique hotels and rental houses with pools command resort prices and festival weekends push them higher still. Eating out costs what it does in any American resort, and the hire car adds to the bill. Summer is the exception: in the hottest months rooms drop dramatically and the town becomes a bargain for those who can bear the heat. Simple motels and supermarket picnics keep costs down at any time of year.

The valley's big musical moments come each April, when the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals fill the polo grounds in Indio, about half an hour east, and draw crowds from around the world. For the rest of the season, the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert hosts touring shows, comedy and concerts, and the tribal casinos around the valley book well-known pop and rock acts.

In town, drag cabaret and piano bar singing are the most characteristic live entertainment, along with small community theatre. There is no resident opera or orchestra of note, and in summer the programme largely stops.

Palm Springs exists because of a hot spring. The Agua Caliente spring downtown, sacred to the Cahuilla people, has a bathhouse built over it where visitors soak in its mineral water. Fifteen minutes north, Desert Hot Springs sits on a large aquifer of hot mineral water, and its small spa motels fill their pools straight from the ground, often at 38°C or warmer. Resort spas with massage and treatments are found across the valley.

Just as important is the pace. Days here revolve around lying by a pool under the mountains, a late breakfast and an evening drink as the light turns pink on San Jacinto. Dry winter sunshine and quiet streets make it one of the easiest places in America to switch off.