Sunshine and 60s charm: If you do Palm Springs right, you’ll feel like you’ve stepped back in time

Palm Springs is a honeyed American destination unlike any other.

There’s the way it presents itself – all dusky colour and clean, uncluttered mid-century charm. But there’s more here — it has layers — you just need to know how to lift them, to find what rests beyond the surface. You gotta know where to go.

Get it right and experiencing Palm Springs evokes a sense of time-travel — stepping into a place far cooler than the homogenised destinations of today (fun fact: Hollywood execs initiated a “two-hour rule” during the Golden Age of Hollywood between the 1920s to 1950s, allowing actors to live up to two hours’ drive from LA, thus creating this time capsule of fabulousness).

Escape as the actors and crooners and crims did — you know who they are — and grab a car and head out and across from LA (though realise the drive’s not exactly picturesque, unless you’re a fan of bland American freeways).

While Greater Palm Springs is vast, encompassing nine cities (yes, those rented wheels will come in handy), nothing beats the original, so base yourself in Palm Springs proper.

Read the latest edition of ROAM by The Nightly now

It’s here the ghosts live. Hold off on the bars and restaurants for a minute and hit the streets. Leo’s (di Caprio) pad — a three-minute walk off the main street in the Old Las Palmas neighbourhood — was once the home of 60s TV darling Dinah Shore.

Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s glass-domed honeymoon abode is up the street, next to Marilyn Monroe’s former residence, which rests beside Liz Taylor’s estate. It’s all just … there — a living, breathing Hollywood museum from a time before the gilded façade began to peel a little.

Nearly every Palm Springs home presents as a piece of gloriously preserved art. The Mid-Century Desert Modernism (architectural) movement began here, characterised by a revolutionary idea to design housing that seamlessly blended indoor and outdoor living. The town of Palm Springs maintains the highest concentration of this architecture globally.

You’ve got to stay retro, baby

Don’t consider staying anywhere contemporary, because retro rules, baby. And the yesteryear vibe resonates loudest at Villa Royale. Built in 1947, it was here that Irving Shulman penned the Rebel Without A Cause screenplay, lounging by the pool parked directly outside his room.

Today’s guests tend to congregate here too, lazing across cabanas that come framed by views of the nearby and snow-covered San Jacinto Mountains. Every room at Villa Royale is uniquely designed and decorated — ROAM’s carrying a life-sized image of Shulman on the lounge room wall, with a personal spa out front.

Along with the architecture and the ghosts, it’s these boutique hotels that help define Palm Springs. Best yet, all are welcome. You don’t need be a card-carrying guest to gain entrance and experience things, just shlep out enough for a lacklustre coffee to come and see, and be seen, in the hotel restaurants and bars that work as the city’s social anchors.

At Norma’s, held in the elevated Parker Palm Springs hotel, we opt for its famous blueberry pancakes ($US23), with a drip coffee that nearly gets the job done ($US3).

Once the private ranch of 40s movie star Gene Autrey, today it’s a five-star retreat set among a labyrinth of swimming pools and gardens buzzing with hummingbirds. The actor Ethan Hawke sits a few tables over on the restaurant’s terrace. He’s also tucking into the pancakes.

Eating and drinking is a favourite Palm Springs pastime. The best brunch is a secret affair just off the 111 (California State Route 111), behind a strip mall in the neighbourhood of Indian Wells. Yeah, you gotta know where to go.

Modelled on the racquet clubs of the 50s, the Pink Cabana is what every brunch bar wishes it could be, with party lights strung across giant outdoor cacti, waiters belting about in garish pink and green with the busiest of them, a “spirit guide”, fixing inventive cocktails from behind an enormous mirror-backed bar. It’s barely 11am.

ROAM lands at The Pink Cabana in search of decent coffee, though it’s rude not indulge the Brioche French Toast with honey crisp apples and Chantilly cream, washed down with a Mezcal chaser of ginger, jalapeno and lime.

Some Palm Spring secrets are easier to find. Metres from the tourists scoffing generic burgers at Tommy Bahamas’ Marlin Bar on the main street, the 75-year-old boutique hotel, Holiday House, serves a solid lunch. I step inside on a whim, straight into its open-air restaurant, The Pantry, which looks across a shimmering swimming pool to the foothills of the mountains. It’s all very Slim Aarons — a vibrant, high-contrast, blue-and-white palette with pops of yellow, modern pop art and custom textiles.

One street over, Sinatra’s ghost lingers by the grand piano of his favoured hangout, Melvyn’s, a classic American steakhouse with white tablecloths and bow-tied waiters. You’ll find it inside the 104-year-old Ingleside Estate hotel, once an invitation-only hideaway for stars like Monroe.

Today’s Hollywood types tend to congregate at two new bars a few hundred metres on from Melvyn’s, in a strip mall next to a nondescript dry cleaner. Yeah, you gotta know where to go.

Bar Cecil and Beaton’s at Bar Cecil may be relative newcomers though they maintain the spirit of Palm Springs past — red velvet booths, gold silk sofas, leopard-print carpets and a few Andy Warhol prints clinging to the walls.

It’s possible to come to Palm Springs and not move beyond its depth of hospitality and hotels. And that’s OK. But know there’s more. February’s annual Palm Springs Modernism Week means a ticketed opportunity to go beyond the thickset green hedges and enter some of the former residences of the former stars, a true embrace of the design and architecture (and ghosts).

Greater Palm Springs is also the “golf capital of the West”, boasting 125-plus championship courses. One site, PGA West, offers nine, three of which host a PGA Tour event each January.

There’s also California’s most unlikely, if most reliable, surf spot. At Palm Beach Surf Club, located in the scrubby desert, I share head-high, fast-breaking waves with a handful of hardy surfers who’ve landed from across America.

You just gotta know where to look. Drive down roadways claiming names like Bob Hope Drive and Gene Autry Trail and then head out to the spa retreat Two Bunch Palms, a slick adults-only effort of wellness and accommodation held at Desert Hot Springs (a 20-minute drive). The palm-laden property is said to be riddled with escape tunnels dug for a former resident — Al Capone. Cue the onsite Capone suite with bullet hole mirror in the bathroom.

Ghosts like his blanket Greater Palm Springs, restless souls of a fantastical age, pickled and preserved in timeless mid-century design and the unexpected, and sometimes secretive, wonder of the bars and restaurants and hotels and homes. You just gotta know where to go.

visitgreaterpalmsprings.com