24 Hours In Palm Springs

Fill up on culture at the gas station. See the final resting place of Ol' Blue Eyes. Eat at Cary Grant's house...

09.00: It's sunny every day in Palm Springs, with winter temperatures typically a balmy 24C. Most boutique hotels offer an inclusive buffet breakfast, which you can eat at outside tables around heated pools. The Orbit In is an original 1950s motel with a nice courtyard (00 1 760 323 3585; orbitin.com).

Get into shapes

10.00: It's worth a trip to the Palm Springs Visitors' Centre at 2781 North Palm Canyon Drive, if only to see the building. The office, with its remarkable hyperbolic paraboloid canopy, was designed by the architect Albert Frey in 1963 as a gas station and later converted to a gallery before becoming the visitors' centre.

Up and away

11.00: Albert Frey also worked on the lower station of the Aerial Tramway (00 1 760 325 1391; pstramway.com) that takes you 10,000 metres up to Mount San Jacinto National Park. The views from the summit are breathtaking.

Keep healthy

13.00: Palm Springs is full of burger joints, but you can eat like a hippie at Café Totonaca, a downtown place inside Nature's RX Health Food Market at 555 South Sunrise Way (00 1 760 323 9487).

Walk the strip

14.00: Stroll along the shopping thoroughfare of Palm Canyon Drive and check out the chic boutiques selling 1950s furniture. Don't miss reconstructions on the village green of traditional adobe houses built by the earliest Anglo-American settlers to Palm Springs in the 1880s.

Go for a spin

15.00: It's a pleasure to drive around this dinky city and you will need a car to get to the cemetery, the Desert Memorial Park, to see where Palm Springs' most famous resident, Frank Sinatra, is buried. Then drive 10 minutes north to Desert Hot Springs where you can relax in genuine hot spring water in one of the eight pools at the Desert Hot Springs Spa Hotel.

Get on your bike

17.00: Take a leisurely cycle ride around the cul-de-sacs in the Tennis Club area north east of Palm Canyon. You will see many more elegant glass and steel houses as you cycle along.

Mine's a martini

19.30: Begin the evening like a movie star and have an aperitif at the Citron bar inside the incredibly chic Viceroy Hotel at 415 South Belardo Road (00 1 760 320 4117; viceroy palmsprings.com).

Dine in style

21.00: Try Copley's at 621 North Palm Canyon Drive (00 1 760 327 9555); copleys restaurant.com), the eaterie run by British chef Andrew Copley inside Cary Grant's former guest bungalow.

Now a nightcap

23.30: End your day at Melvyn's inside the Ingleside Inn, 200 West Ramon Road (00 1 760 325 2323; inglesideinn.com), the famous bar where Frank Sinatra entertained guests with a song.