Sparrows Lodge

Sparrows Lodge

A hand-painted sign with two birds marks the turnoff on Palm Canyon Drive, easy to miss unless you already know Sparrows Lodge is there. The property began in 1952 as Castle's Red Barn, built by MGM actor Don Castle and his wife Zetta as a Hollywood retreat, and legend holds that Elizabeth Montgomery married for the first time on these grounds; a full 2013 restoration kept the original buildings and their modern-rustic bones intact. Twenty rooms sit on a single floor around a garden, fire pit and vegetable patch, each one stripped of televisions and phones, with rain showers, some horse-trough bathtubs, Grown Alchemist toiletries and Italian linens on the beds. The Barn Kitchen, recommended by the Michelin Guide, works Coachella Valley produce into rustic American plates around communal tables, and an outdoor massage tent with two treatment rooms runs custom, deep-tissue and couples sessions to the sound of birds and fountains. There's a pool, a spa, free bicycles for the flat ride into town three kilometres away, and staff who speak English and Spanish. Pets travel for a hundred dollars a stay; children do not travel here at all, since the lodge is adults only. This suits a couple or a small group of friends happy to trade screens and room service urgency for an art-filled barn and quiet; it will frustrate anyone who wants a lively strip, a big pool scene or a television at the end of the day. No other Palm Springs address carries this particular Hollywood-ranch history into a working restaurant and a tented massage garden on the same twenty-room plot. It rewards people who came to slow down, not to be entertained. A 1950s Hollywood ranch turned twenty-room hideaway in Palm Springs, adults only, with no televisions or phones, a Michelin-recommended Barn Kitchen and an outdoor massage tent. It suits people ready to disconnect, not families or anyone chasing a livelier scene as it sits three kilometres from the centre.