Palm Springs Weekend - Nov 25-27, 2011

We spent the first part of our vacation this year in Palm Springs, touristing around the area with some good friends who live nearby in Indio. The weather was perfect for a weekend in the desert. We booked a room at the downtown Hilton, which is within walking distance of the shops and restaurants on Palm Canyon Drive.

One of our first stops was the Palm Springs Visitor Center, which is housed in the recently renovated Albert Frey designed former Tramway Gas Station. Frey designed the building in the Modernism style in 1965.

It was pretty crowded out on Palm Canyon Drive on both Friday and Saturday nights. It's a fun place to walk around, people watch, and have a nice meal. We found a good Florentine-style Italian restaurant on Friday, and a Belgian/French one on Saturday. Both were excellent.

We also spent some time at the Palm Springs Air Museum, the Palm Springs Art Museum, and the Living Desert (a cross between a botanical garden and a zoo). I'll put up separate posts for each of those.


Click here to see more images from our general wandering around Palm Springs, as well as a few images from Diamond Lake Reservoir and Shields Date Farm, a couple of places we stopped on our way to Palm Springs.