One of the amazing things about living in California is all the different terrain. You can drive an hour in one direction and be at the beach, and drive an hour in another direction and be in the mountains snowboarding. Yes, we do have snow in California!
One of my favorite day trip or weekend trip destinations is Palm Springs. Since Coachella is coming up and I can’t go this year, it was a good excuse to visit Palm Springs one more time. As much as I love LA, I also enjoy getting out of the city. For interior design geeks like me, one of my favorite styles is the mix of mid-century modern and desert vibes. Palm Springs is a haven for this. I could just drive around there all day and look at all the houses and architecture. In fact, several years ago, I even paid to do a tour of Elvis Presley’s Honeymoon Hideaway. Full disclosure, I’m equally a fan of Elvis Presley as I am of the architecture of the house.
Desert X
Anyway, my most recent visit to Palm Springs was a last minute day trip with my bestie, Rachelle, her fiancé, Sean, and our dogs (Rambo & Denali) because we wanted to see this year’s Desert X art installations and because I wanted to spend some quality time with my bestie before I moved to Helsinki. If you’re not familiar with Desert X, it is basically art installations that are spread out throughout the Coachella Valley. It started in 2017, and is usually held between February to April. Do keep in mind that some of the installations are quite far from each other. We only got a chance to see three of them that were next to each other (Nancy Baker Cahill’s “Revolution”, Sterling Ruby’s “Specter”, and John Gerrard’s “Western Flag”). I’m not sure if it was because it was extra cold and windy that day and painful to be outside, but I was a bit underwhelmed by this year’s art. It could also be because last year’s Mirror House by Doug Aitken was so amazing and hard to top.
Exploring Palm Springs
Beyond the art, we just had so much fun with all the beautiful back drops. Shoutout to Sean for doing his Instagram hubby duties and making sure me and my bestie got some great photos together before I made my big move. After we checked out some of the Desert X art, we headed to downtown for brunch and mimosas at Cheeky’s. Another great thing about Palm Springs is that it’s super dog friendly. Not only did our dogs join us for brunch, but they strolled downtown with us while we window shopped for all the incredible furniture we couldn’t afford. There’s a reason why Palm Springs is a design haven, you’ll see it in the prices, even at the antique stores.
We started our day around 9:30am, got to Palm Springs before noon, and left around 5pm. We even stopped by one of our favorite restaurants, Yojie’s Shabu Shabu for dinner on the way home. It’s definitely a fun little day trip, but if you can stay through the weekend, I recommend staying at one of the boutique hotels or funky Airbnbs. When it’s warm enough, you’ll want to go hang out at a pool. The Ace Hotel and Saguaro are known for having pool parties, and the Omni & Hyatt have a lazy river. At night, I like to go bar hopping and karaoke. Palm Springs has a big retirement and LGBTQ community, so I always find such an interesting mix of people in one place. I’ll be back again, but for now enjoy these pics from our mini road trip.
