6 Days In Palm Springs, CA: Where We Stayed, Visited, Ate & Drank

After staying in Temecula for 9 days, Shae, Truffles and I moved on to Palm Springs for 6 days.

The last few days of our stay happened to overlap with the city’s annual Modernism Week festival, so we were fortunate to be able to book our hotel using points because many hotels (including the one we stayed at) were going for $250+ per night.

We’d only heard good things about Palm Springs beforehand, so I was looking forward to seeing what it had to offer. Here’s a roundup of where we stayed, what we did and where we ate and drank during our almost week-long stay in Palm Springs.

Where We Stayed

As mentioned above, hotel rates were very high when we wanted to visit Palm Springs. We got around this by booking a stay at the Hyatt Palm Springs for 12,000 World of Hyatt points per night.

We got lucky as well because the hotel had standard suites available for our dates. I have Globalist status and had some Suite Upgrade Awards available, so we used one of those to upgrade to a Cabana Suite. That gave us a larger suite on the ground floor which had its own cabana outside.

The hotel was a little dated, so I wouldn’t have been pleased if we’d paid $250+ per night. However, it was pretty good value when using points and had a fantastic location downtown that put us close to everything there. I’ll be writing a full review in the next few days, so stay tuned for that.

What We Did

Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

One of the highlights of visiting Palm Springs is riding its Aerial Tramway – the world’s largest rotating tram. It takes you up Mt San Jacinto, providing some amazing views of both the mountains and valley below. Check out this post for more about what it’s like.

VillageFest

We didn’t know about VillageFest until a reader emailed us a couple of days before we arrived to let us know about it (thanks Laurie!) It probably would’ve been hard to have missed it though because it started right in front of our hotel!

VillageFest is a street fair that takes place every Thursday night on S Palm Canyon Drive – the main street running through downtown Palm Springs. There are street vendors selling art, crafts, food and much more, so it’s a fun place to wander around. It seemed like it was particularly busy the night we got to experience it, presumably because that Thursday was also the day that Modernism Week kicked off.

Marilyn Monroe Statue

A few people had mentioned to us that Palm Springs has a Marilyn Monroe statue. I was imagining a regular-sized bronze statue honoring her, but instead it’s a 26 foot tall sculpture featuring the iconic image of her standing over a subway grate with her dress blowing up.

The statue resided in Palm Springs from 2012-2014 before being removed for a number of years, making a comeback in 2021.

Palm Springs Air Museum

The day after we arrived in the city, we decided to visit the Palm Springs Air Museum. One of the great things about the museum is that it’s pet-friendly, so that meant Truffles got to join us.

If you’re into aviation history, you’ll love it there. Even if you’re not a big aviation/military buff, there’s a lot of interesting information to read and aircraft to see, plus you can take a guided tour of a B-17.

One thing that could be improved is that there’s simply far too much to read because there are displays and walls of endless text. That’s great if you live nearby and want to visit each week to learn something new, but I’m sure most people only visit one time. I enjoy reading information at museums, but I don’t think I was able to absorb even 2% of what was written at the Palm Springs Air Museum. For example, the photo below is just one small part of a section about the Korean War.

It’s almost like they simply printed everything they could possibly find on Wikipedia about any kind of aviation history and displayed it around the museum. That’s a shame, because it means I have no clue if I missed anything interesting because I had to bypass entire sections of text. Here’s another example – there’s a display setting out the timeline leading up to World War II in Europe. The photo below is just one-tenth of that display.

Explore Neighborhoods

Modernism Week is held in Palm Springs each year because of the architecture of many of the homes there. Even though we’re not big on architecture and home design (unlike Shae’s mom and stepdad who were jealous of us because they love it!), it was interesting to wander around some of the neighborhoods to view them from the outside.

PS I Love U Sign

Between the Kimpton Rowan hotel and H&M in downtown Palm Springs, there’s a quintessentially Instagrammable photo opportunity thanks to the PS I Love U sign you’ll find there (PS also being the initials of Palm Springs).

It’s a piece of art known as “Love Letters” that you get to be part of – there’s a space between ‘PS’ and ‘Love U’ for you to stand in so that you can be the ‘I’. Shae and I aren’t really into being quintessentially Instagrammable, but Truffles sure is.

Joshua Tree National Park

For our final day in Palm Springs, Shae and I had a decision to make. Should we visit The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens in nearby Palm Desert or drive a bit further out to Joshua Tree National Park?

While riding the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, we got chatting to someone who lived locally and even though he liked the zoo, he recommended visiting Joshua Tree even more highly and we decided to take his advice.

Joshua trees are the largest variety of yucca in the US. It’s thought that the tree’s name came about as a result of Mormon settlers who were traveling across the Mojave Desert in the 1800s. The tree’s shape reminded them of a story in the Bible about Joshua keeping his arms out to guide the Israelites.

Despite all of the trees being unique, many of them are a similar size – here’s Shae standing next to one of them.

When stopping at the visitor center on the way in though, a park ranger mentioned that the tallest Joshua tree in the park could be found on Park Blvd after Sheep Pass, but before getting to Big Horn Pass Rd on the left. Here’s Shae next to that one to show how tall it is in comparison to other Joshua trees in the National Park.

I’m glad we visited Joshua Tree National Park seeing as we were in the area, but it’s not somewhere I’d say is worth making an effort to go out of your way for. We spent an hour or two driving through and that was sufficient for us. If we were into camping, I can imagine the park gives some amazing starry nights and views of the Milky Way.

Palm Springs Walk Of Stars

It’s not only the Hollywood Walk of Fame that has a street of stars honoring those in the entertainment industry – Palm Springs has its own Walk of Stars along Palm Canyon Dr downtown.

Cycle The Palm Springs Citywide Loop

Palm Springs has a 20 mile bike lane encircling the city called the citywide loop. I say encircling, but the shape of it looks more like an elephant balancing on one foot:

Shae has been training for RAGBRAI – a bike ride across the length of Iowa this summer. She completed the first part of her training program while we were in Palm Springs by riding the city loop for 30 miles (i.e. more than once).

Where We Ate & Drank

Boozehounds

While in San Diego, we met Mike and Mark at a winery and then met up with them a couple more times in the city. They’ve spent time in Palm Springs before and, as fellow dog owners, they recommended visiting Boozehounds as it’s a very pet-friendly restaurant and lounge.

We visited during Happy Hour which meant both cheaper drinks and cheaper snacks. Shae and I shared some Truffle popcorn which was tasty.

Shae stuck to wine, while I started with a hazy IPA and followed that up with a mojito which was very good.

Date Shakes

Palm Springs is known for its date shakes which are, as you might be able to tell from their name, shakes containing dates. It sounded quirky, but we were up for it. I’ve had dates many times before and enjoyed them, but was curious about how it would translate in the form of a shake.

We ended up trying date shakes from a couple of places. A few blocks down from our hotel was Great Shakes which offers dozens of different shake flavors.

The date shake wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It was nice and creamy, but didn’t have much flavor to it. It’s not that I didn’t like it – it was just incredibly plain and didn’t taste like dates.

A friend (hi Chris!) recommended getting a date shake from Windmill Market which claims to have the best date shakes in the desert. We were driving past there on the way back from Joshua Tree National Park, so stopped in to get one to share.

Would our second date shake experience be similar to our first? Sort of. There was a bit more flavor to our date shake from Windmill Market and it was nice and creamy too, but there still wasn’t as much flavor as I’d been hoping for.

Final verdict – if you miss out on trying date shakes in Palm Springs, you’re not missing out. Don’t get me wrong – I had no problem finishing them off, but there just wasn’t much to them. I guess dates simply don’t impart much flavor into shakes.

Gelato Granucci

Something that did have more flavor was chocolate gelato from Gelato Granucci. They have a restaurant downtown, but Shae got a scoop from their stall during VillageFest that she thought was delicious. It was so good that she forgot to take a photo of it, so here’s their storefront instead!

Santorini Gyro Greek Food

After having a couple of drinks at Boozehounds, we were ready for dinner. I ordered mine from Santorini Gyro Greek Food as a chicken gyro plate sounded really good.

Unfortunately they messed up and gave me someone else’s dinner. I couldn’t be bothered to walk back to the restaurant to have them make me the right thing, so I just went with the lamb skewers and pita bread that they gave me instead. It was OK, but not amazing as the lamb was quite chewy.

L’Olivo Italian Bistro

That night Shae ordered pizza from L’Olivo Italian Bistro. Unfortunately her dinner experience wasn’t much more successful. The order was correct, but the pizza was only fair.

Las Casuelas Original

After wandering around some of the neighborhoods in Palm Springs, we’d worked up an appetite and so looked for somewhere pet-friendly to eat on our way back to the hotel. We spotted a Mexican restaurant called Las Casuelas Original which allowed dogs on the patio, so we ate there.

I ordered a chicken burrito which was fine but nothing special, but Shae really enjoyed her enchiladas.

Brandini Toffee

Reader Laurie who’d given us a heads up about VillageFest also recommended trying toffee from Brandini Toffee. We had to walk by it to get to Great Shakes for our date shakes, so we tried the samples they were giving away.

It was very tasty and so I’d love to have bought some to take with us. However, it was a little pricier than I was expecting, so sticking to our budget won out.