Hotel at a Glance: Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs

At the four-star Hard Rock Hotel Palm Springs, every guest can feel like a rock star. The outdoor pool area is a party scene day and night—sip a frosty drink from the comfort of a day bed, or dance to tunes from live DJs. Feeling inspired to write your own hit song? Have one of the hotel’s Fender guitars delivered to your room.

• Glam guest rooms feature bold purple hues and signature Sleep Like a Rock bedding. Each one offers views of the pool or Palm Springs and its surrounding mountains.
• Simon Kitchen + Bar: The onsite restaurant from celebrity chef Kerry Simon plates inventive dishes such as juicy jerk turkey burgers topped with mango-chutney slaw.
• Bottoms up!: Choose from regional and national beers, global wines, and craft cocktails at the bar and lounge.
• Wind down with a detoxifying body wrap at the Rock Spa.

Palm Springs, California: SoCal Resort Town with Midcentury Charm

Palm Springs is an oasis of outdoor recreation and old Hollywood glamour located about 100 miles from Los Angeles. Once the stomping grounds of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and the Rat Pack, the town still attracts A-list vacationers today. A stroll through the Movie Colony—which had its heyday between the 1930s and 1960s—will take you past the former homes of Dean Martin, Bob Hope, and Marilyn Monroe.

Palm Springs is also the birthplace of desert modernism, a Bauhaus-influenced architecture movement. You can explore the area’s famed midcentury-modern landmarks on a self-guided tour; grab a map at the Palm Springs Official Visitors Center, itself housed in an iconic building—a retro-futuristic Tramway Gas Station designed by Albert Frey. Furniture and clothing boutiques along Palm Canyon Drive embrace Palm Springs’s trademark aesthetic—what you might call Mad Men West. Nearby, the small but impressively curated Palm Springs Art Museum features works by Pablo Picasso and Robert Rauschenberg along with significant contemporary and Native American collections.

The sun shines more than 300 days a year in Palm Springs, which means you can play a round of golf or hike in the nearby Agua Caliente Indian Canyons no matter the season. It’s worth taking a ride on the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, whose cars rotate 360 degrees as they carry passengers to Mount San Jacinto’s Mountain Station, located 8,516 feet above sea level. About 40 miles northeast is the nearly 800,000-acre Joshua Tree National Park, which spans parts of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts. Hit one of the 12 nature trails for a chance to see desert bighorn sheep, snakes, and black-tailed jackrabbits.

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