Sparrows Lodge

Several of the baths at Sparrows Lodge are steel horse troughs, which suits a hotel that began as a barn. Don Castle, an MGM actor, built Castle's Red Barn on East Palm Canyon Drive in 1952 with his wife Zetta, as a getaway for Hollywood, and it answered to two more names before the sparrows arrived. Since the restoration of 2013 the barn has been the Barn Kitchen: white-painted boards, beams overhead, a bar faced in rounded stones and a single long table of pale wood, so dinner comes with neighbours. The rooms keep the beams and add concrete floors set with pebbles. The art is less rustic: work by Ruscha and Baldessari. Outside, palms and an orange tree stand round the pool, and the mountains stand behind them.

Recommended for couples, since nobody under 21 stays and no room takes more than two. Book a Garden Room: about 400 square feet, a king-size bed and, in most, a patio and a horse-trough bath, with townie bikes thrown in. The Owner's Suite doubles the space and adds a gas fireplace. The food, which guests praise, starts at breakfast in the barn: homemade bread and pastries with cheese and charcuterie. The rest of the cooking is built on Coachella Valley produce. The massage tent in the gardens does a couples massage called, naturally, Two Birds. After dark the fire pit is lit among the trees, ringed with Adirondack chairs, and the room has nothing to compete with it: no television, no telephone.