Beautiful Palm Springs

Palm Springs Art Museum

To cap off our Idyllwild adventure, we drove down the hill to Palm Springs for our last vacation day.  We stopped at the Living Desert nursery to check on the succulents and cactus.  Yes, Larry bought a few.  Then, we headed over to the Palm Springs Art Museum.  I do love that museum.  It's large enough to be interesting, but small enough to see everything in a few hours.

We were very lucky that the Rauschenberg at Gemini Studio exhibit was on view!

After the Museum, we cruised down Palm Canyon...just like many of my Easter week vacations when I was a youth.  We stopped at the P.S. Visitors Center which is the converted Tramway gas station designed by Albert Frey.  Inside, we perused a few of the exhibits and purchased a P.S. Mod-Com tour map.  Every year we want to attend Palm Springs Modernism Week, but we've never been able to make it.  Maybe 2014!

Finally, we drove back across town and checked into the Caliente Tropics for the night.  This is one of those old 1950's motels that has been updated to reflect an old 1950's motel.  It's fine.  Many of the renovations are kinda' cheesy, but it was comfortable and clean.

Since we were in a retro mode, we wanted to experience one of the vintage P.S. restaurants for dinner.  We decided to go to the very 1970's Melvyn's at the 1920's Ingleside Inn for dinner. 

The decor at Melvyn's is very '70's Rococo!

WOW!  Great service, lush atmosphere and excellent food.  Larry had Steak Diane which was prepared tableside.

Steak Diane, prepared tableside

We took a little walk after dinner.  Just up the block from Melvyn's is the Coachella Valley Savings (currently a Chase Bank) building.  It was all lit up in the perfect desert sky.  It's a positively gorgeous building.  

 

Coachella Valley Savings & Loan, 1960. E. Stewart Williams, Architect

Mid-Century Architectural Souvenirs

A block further is the Union Bank building.  There are fantastic ceramic, sculpted murals at the entrance.  The murals depict historical events in Palm Springs history.  We were amazed at the detail.

Larry, photographing mural detail

The next morning we left Palm Springs and returned to Los Angeles.  It was a wonderful and relaxing weekend.