Palm Springs - California: Strange and Fabulous, Palm Springs, California

This is an article about one of the most quirky, but compelling places, to visit in California USA: Palm Springs. I love the place and it is somewhere I recommend you try and visit at least once. Here are my tips for travelers on things to do in Palm Springs, as well as Palm Springs Hotels, tours and best time to visit.

There are a few places in the USA that are wildly popular and yet seem just quite bizarre. One of these is Las Vegas that is a large glistening neon light the middle of the desert, and the other is Palm Springs.

This city also sits in the desert, around 270 miles from Las Vegas, it is sizzling hot in summer and used to be a major magnate for all the big stars, and many still have homes here. It now seems to be a mixture of retired people with Hollywood connections and gay men and women. The later accounting for, based on which source you read, between 35% and 50% of the permanent population of around 50000.

But despite its quirky history, this city does have a great appeal and is massively popular in the winter months as a warm place to escape to. A major pull being that it is just 100 miles from Los Angeles.

That fact was a major reason why Palm Springs took off as a vacation resort. It became the playground of choice for Hollywood stars and celebrities as in the days of the studio system, stars contracted to the studios were not contractually allowed to be further than 100 miles away from Los Angeles. The distance that Palm Springs conveniently is away from Los Angeles. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).