1996 — 2026
A house with a pool, mountains out every window, Jackie and Poppy asleep in the shade, and nowhere in particular to be.
One house for the whole trip. We unpack once, and everything else is a short drive through open desert.
The days are built to be easy. Mornings and evenings are when the desert is at its best, so that's when we're out. Middays are for the pool and a long lunch. Nothing here is required, and any day can shrink to just the two of us by the water.
You mentioned a midcentury house with a pool, so I went looking. These are real, available for our dates, and you can see the photos yourself.
A private pool means no crowds and no lobby — just a quiet house we have to ourselves, and the water twenty feet from the door.
The one I keep coming back to
Movie Colony
In the Movie Colony, the old neighbourhood where Sinatra had his place. Heated pool, outdoor fireplace, walled garden, private drive.
$4,150nine nights · $461 a night
See the house and photosEast Palm Springs
Properly midcentury, inside and out. Saltwater pool that's heated, a hot tub, and an outdoor fireplace for the evenings.
$4,518nine nights · $502 a night
See the house and photosSouth Palm Springs
A design-forward house two miles from downtown, with a heated pool, an open-air bath and a quiet garden.
$4,607nine nights · $512 a night
See the house and photosNorth Palm Springs
Fully remodelled with a pool and hot tub, on a quiet street at the north end of town.
$3,616nine nights · $402 a night
See the house and photosNorth Palm Springs
A charming three-bedroom with a private pool and a garden. The best value of the houses on this list.
$2,824nine nights · $314 a night
See the house and photosCentral Palm Springs
Pool, spa and mountain views, tucked on a circle street close to the middle of everything.
$3,978nine nights · $442 a night
See the house and photosThree of the houses above take small dogs, and both of ours are well under the usual limit. Delta flies them in the cabin under the seat — one carrier each, one dog each, and we book it by phone the same day we book the tickets.
Palm Springs is an easy town for them. Plenty of restaurant patios welcome dogs, the neighbourhoods are flat and quiet for morning walks, and the house has a fenced garden so they can be outside without being on a lead. Two things to plan around: the pavement gets hot by midday, so walks are early and late, and the national park only allows dogs on the roads and picnic areas rather than the trails — which suits us anyway, since we’d be seeing it from the car.
The same houses are often listed on VRBO and Airbnb as well, sometimes for less — here is the same search on VRBO. And in September you want a pool with a chiller, not just a heater. Worth asking the owner.
If you'd like someone else doing the cooking and a spa down the path, these are the good ones, all available for our dates.
Adults only · Palm Springs
A 1930s bungalow hotel with a courtyard pool. Grown-up, quiet, walkable to town.
Curio Collection by Hilton
A landmark resort of casitas, gardens and dozens of pools. The best value of the resorts.
Adults only · Palm Springs
Midcentury bungalows around a pool, with a full spa. Small and intimate.
Rancho Mirage
Set above the valley, with long views, a spa and several restaurants.
A suggestion, not a schedule.
Thursday & Friday
We land in the afternoon, pick up the car and we're at the house inside twenty minutes. Palm Springs airport is small and half open-air — you walk off the plane into desert air. The first full day has nothing in it. Pool in the morning, shade and a long lunch, an easy dinner.
Saturday & Sunday
Palm Springs has the best midcentury architecture anywhere — glass walls, flat roofs, breeze block, all of it against the mountains. There's a self-guided driving route through the old streets and it's lovely from the car. The art museum downtown is excellent and air-conditioned for the high sun. In the evening, Palm Canyon Drive under the string lights.
Monday & Tuesday
Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage has beautiful desert gardens on flat paved paths, with a cool visitor centre and a short film. The Living Desert opens at seven, so we go early and beat the heat entirely. El Paseo in Palm Desert is the elegant shopping street — best in the evening. And an afternoon at the mineral springs spa downtown, which is what the city was built on.
Wednesday & Thursday
An hour north and unlike anywhere else — huge piles of boulders and the strange trees the park is named for. It's a driving park: the best of it sits right off the road and at short pull-offs. We'd go early and be back before the heat. The next day is deliberately empty.
Monday the 21st
Whatever pace feels right — a slow morning, an afternoon by the water. Then somewhere worth dressing for. Eddie V's on El Paseo has live music and a good room. Jillian's is a Palm Desert institution with a courtyard. Copley's is in Cary Grant's old estate.
All of this was checked against our actual dates. September is the quiet season here and a surprising amount of the town is shut — these are the ones that are open while we’re there.
Almost every guided architecture tour in Palm Springs closes for the summer. One good one is running.
Ninety minutes · air-conditioned van · $80 each
Kurt Cyr drives five people at a time past the Cody, Frey, Krisel and Wexler houses and tells you what you’re looking at. It leaves at eleven from The Saguaro. This is the only guided architecture tour running while we are there, and it seats five — worth booking before anything else.
Book the tourFree · about two hours · no booking
Nearly forty houses across Racquet Club Estates, Vista Las Palmas and Twin Palms, laid out as a route you drive yourself — the Kaufmann house, the Edris house, Frey House II, the Wexler steel houses. Best at sunrise, about half past six, when the light is low and the streets are empty. These are private homes, so it is a look from the car and nothing more.
Get the route300 S Palm Canyon Drive · $25, and it covers the art museum too
E. Stewart Williams built it as a bank in 1961, all glass and steel and shade, and it is now the museum’s architecture wing. Thursday to Sunday only. On Thursday the 24th it opens late and is free from five until eight, which is also the nicest hour to be downtown.
Opening timesMuseum plaza · free · ten minutes
A little all-metal house from 1931 that was shown at MoMA, then lost for decades, and was finally put back together outside the art museum in 2024. You cannot go inside. It stands in the open with no shade, so it belongs to that same Thursday evening.
About the houseWhen it is a hundred and five outside, these are the rooms to be in.
200 E Tahquitz Canyon Way · day pass $135 on a Monday
Twenty-two private mineral baths over the hot spring the town was actually built on, with salt caves and a steam room, all of it indoors and cool. Monday is the cheaper rate. Any treatment over $200 includes the day pass, so one couples booking covers everything for both of us.
See the treatments140 N Indian Canyon Drive · $10, $5 over 65
The tribe telling its own story, in a new building two streets off Palm Canyon. Tickets are timed and need booking. An hour is about right just now — the changing gallery is between exhibitions until October. Closed Mondays.
Book a ticket101 Museum Drive · $25, $23 over 62
Already on our list and still the best cool room in town. Worth knowing: it is closed Monday to Wednesday, and free on Thursday the 24th from five until eight, though the free evening needs a ticket booked ahead. The restaurant is shut for the whole of September.
Plan a visitNot many places, and only early or late — but more than you would expect.
745 N Gene Autry Trail · $26, $24 over 65
Air-conditioned hangars, eighty aircraft with no ropes round them, and their own website says friendly dogs on a lead are welcome inside. It is the only large cool attraction in the valley that will have them, which makes it unexpectedly useful. Stay in the hangars and skip the aircraft parked out on the tarmac.
Plan a visitTwenty-five minutes up the I-10 · free · 8am–5pm
A side canyon with a river running through it all year, shaded tables and easy flat paths. Cool stone, running water and shade — the one morning where the dogs get as much out of the day as we do. Go at eight and be back in the car by ten, and keep to the paths.
Before you go2080 N Palm Canyon Drive · mains $18–42
A proper restaurant built around dogs, with its own doggy door onto a shaded patio and a menu for them as well as for us. Take the latest table going, after half seven — the dog areas are open air rather than air-conditioned. No dinner on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.
See the menu3200 E Tahquitz Canyon Way · free · 6am–10pm
Watered grass, shade structures and a separate run for small dogs, open earlier and later than anything else in town. It is the only one open to us — the Demuth park closes for overseeding on the 20th. Twenty minutes, before half seven in the morning or after half eight at night.
Park detailsOur anniversary falls on the quietest day of the desert week. Shut that day: the art museum, the Architecture and Design Center, the Aluminaire House, Sunnylands, the Agua Caliente museum, Moorten, Cabot’s and the Indian Canyons. Copley’s is closed on Mondays right through September, so that one cannot be the anniversary dinner.
Open on the 21st: the spa at Séc-he, the Air Museum, Frey’s old petrol station, and for dinner Melvyn’s at the Ingleside Estate — live music every night, in the room where Sinatra held his wedding rehearsal dinner — or Bar Cecil, which is the hardest table in town and opens bookings exactly fourteen days ahead.
The aerial tramway is shut for its annual maintenance from 8 September to 4 October, which covers every day we are there. For real cool air, Idyllwild is ninety minutes up the mountain and twenty-five degrees cooler, and unlike the tram the dogs can come.
Modernism Week’s autumn festival is 15–18 October, three weeks after we fly home. Anything you read about going inside Sinatra’s house or Frey House II is describing access that only exists during that festival.
At a hundred degrees the pavement sits somewhere between 150 and 170, and it stays hot for hours after dark. Paw pads burn in under a minute. The test is to put the back of your hand flat on the surface for ten seconds — if you cannot, neither can they. In practice that means walks before eight in the morning and after half eight at night, on grass or dirt wherever we can.
The emergency vet is VEG ER for Pets, 73495 Highway 111 in Palm Desert, open around the clock and walk-in — (760) 249-2279. Worth putting in both phones before we go.
There's no route to drive on this trip. We settle in one place and everything radiates out from it — the old neighbourhoods and downtown to the west, the gardens and shopping to the east, and Joshua Tree about an hour north.
| A house | A resort | |
|---|---|---|
| Flights, both of us | $900 | $1,150 |
| Car, ten days | $450 | $650 |
| Jackie & Poppy, both ways | $600 | $600 |
| Where we stay, nine nights | $2,824 | $4,692 |
| Food, including the 21st | $1,500 | $2,600 |
| Gardens, museum, park, spa | $500 | $900 |
| Fuel, parking, odds and ends | $450 | $800 |
| Ten days, all four of us | $7,224 | $11,392 |
A house works out cheaper mostly because we'd cook a few breakfasts rather than eat every meal out.
Thirty years. I'd like to spend ten days of the thirty-first somewhere warm and quiet with you.
TROY