Where To Stay in Palm Springs - Andreas Hotel & Spa

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Parent Category: Travel Info

Category: Places To Stay

Published on Wednesday, 13 January 2010 17:16

Written by Laura Blum

Enter the Andreas Hotel & Spa in downtown Palm Springs, and you’ll enter three eras. First, the bamboo garden and earthenware jars will send you time-tumbling to the Native American past. That’s several millennia of mileage before you even reach the front door.

Thirties Spanish Revival will hit you next. A vintage year for the town’s development, 1935 was when the hotel was built, and it’s also about when its ironwork was forged and its bricks were baked. Originally called the Royal Palms Hotel, it soon became one of downtown Palm Springs’ preferred courtyard lodgings.   

On closer inspection, visit one of the hotel’s 25 guest rooms and suites, and you’ll find yourself back to the future. Looking fetchingly photogenic for any architectural magazine close-up, my ground-floor suite contained sleek present tense-references like a marble bathroom and a built-in armoire amid such retro accents as wood ceiling fans, alligator-skin trunks, fireplaces and brocade-covered couches in sepia tones.

The Andreas was renovated in 2004 with such modern touches as flat screen TVs, microwave ovens and oversized Jacuzzis. Its deft fusion of old and new recently got this boutique hotel nominated for a Gold Nugget Award for Architecture and Design.

Ascend the open-air terra cotta stairs to a second storey of patios and walls studded with decorative tiles. Here a line of suites open onto balconies with downtown views, reminding you that this soothing retreat with the feel of a hacienda is a quick skip from Palm Springs’ glittering boutiques, bars and restaurants.

Broughton Hospitality added the Andreas to its portfolio in 2008, alongside such properties as the Spanish Garden in Santa Barbara. Happily, the only thing corporate about the hotel staff is their efficient service. They greeted me like family and made me feel right at home.

 

Further adding to the welcoming atmosphere is Andreas’s cozy lounge, where the morning spread includes yogurt, dried fruits and a modest assortment of breakfast carbs, and where windows with filigree grills brighten raised cappuccino tables and overstuffed leather chairs. Wifi service is reliably strong in the lounge – though this isn’t always the case in the rooms or patios.

A full-service spa offers warm bamboo and rattan massages, among other restorative skin and body treatments administered amid fireplaces and tasteful furnishings. There’s also a small workout room for guests who hope to melt away the excesses of the local fudge and nut brittle on offer at many Palm Springs emporia.

The night of my stay was a tad chilly for a dip in the outdoor Jacuzzi and pool, though were I of hardier stuff I would have plunged into the heated waters and dried off by the outdoor gas fireplaces. These facilities stay open around the clock, even in January, deepening my grasp of how the town where Marilyn Monroe was discovered, where Frank Sinatra was buried and where Lucille Ball became a redhead came to be known as America’s Winter Playground.

For more info go to: www.andreashotel.com

Andreas Hotel & Spa
227 N. Indian Canyon Dr.
Palm Springs, CA 92262
760.327.5701
888.327.5701

227 N. Indian Canyon Dr.
Palm Springs, CA 92262
760.327.5701 or 888.327.5701
www.andreashotel.com

 

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