El Paseo, Palm Desert

El Paseo is the only street in these towns built for walking

El Paseo runs east to west through the middle of Palm Desert, a long tree-lined stretch of galleries, boutiques and restaurants with tables out on the sidewalk. Rotating public sculpture sits in the median, swapped out on a cycle the city sets, so the street does not look the same from one season to the next.

What people get wrong is treating it as a shopping errand. The shops are the reason the street exists, but the street is the reason to go. You park once, walk the length of it, look at whatever sculpture is out, sit down for dinner and walk back to the car without ever moving it. In a valley where nearly everything is a drive between parking lots, that is unusual enough to be the point.

It is also the closest thing the mid-valley has to a downtown. Palm Desert, La Quinta and Indian Wells are laid out around golf courses and gated streets rather than around a main street. El Paseo is the exception, and the towns around it do not have a second one.

Go in the evening, and park on a side street

From roughly November through April the street works at any hour. The rest of the year, and especially through summer, the sidewalk is not usable in the afternoon. The trees help. They do not help enough. Evening is the answer in any season anyway: the heat drops fast once the sun is behind the mountains, and the patios fill in that hour.

Parking is on the street and in lots behind the buildings. The trick is not to circle El Paseo itself. Turn onto one of the cross streets running north and south off it and you will usually find something within a block, then walk back.

The tradeoff is price. This is the expensive end of the valley for both dinner and shopping, and the galleries are set up for buyers rather than browsers. A cheaper meal means driving east, which is a real distance from a Palm Desert rental. Worth doing once in a week, not every night.

Because the sculpture rotates, what is on the median when you visit is not what was there last year. Your local manager will know what is currently up better than most websites do.