SPA WATCH | SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
Palm Springs Yacht Club: Divine but landlocked in the desert
IMAGINE the Harvard crew team getting lost in the desert, and you'll have some idea of the Palm Springs Yacht Club. The new full-service spa is cheeky and aesthete, sort of East Coast cad meets anything-goes California.
Here, body aches incurred in the playing of old-school leisure sports — croquet, for instance, or pétanque — can be soothed with a detox seaweed wrap. A relaxing martini can be complemented with an anti-stress sea soak with freeze-dried ocean water.
From its sailor's knot carpeting to its porthole doors — the gift shop even stocks yachting flags — the Palm Springs Yacht Club is nautically themed throughout.
That doesn't explain the large ceramic monkey in the spa foyer, however. But the monkey does fit with the spa's manifesto: "We believe you are only young once, but you can be immature forever."
Susan Carpenter
Palm Springs Yacht Club at the Parker Palm Springs Hotel, 4200 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs. (760) 770-5000, http://www.theparkerpalmsprings.com . Open 8 a.m.-8 p.m. daily. Body treatments $75-$200. Facials $120-$185.
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