How to do California: Go west and blaze your own trail (or east if it's a bit cloudy)

By Frank Barrett, Mail on Sunday Travel Editor

Published: 08:44 EDT, 23 September 2012 | Updated: 14:42 EDT, 28 September 2012

It says something for our changing taste in holidays that if you Google 'holidays off the beaten track' you get 25.1 million hits.

The trend is for holidaymakers to want to take the road less travelled, to avoid being part of the tourist herd. This is partly because it's always nice to avoid the crowds, but there is also a financial incentive in being less predictable.

On a recent family holiday to Los Angeles, I divided the trip into three segments: West Hollywood villa rental and a couple of short breaks in Palm Springs and Santa Monica.

During the holiday I was reminded of the benefits of blazing my own trail: there are financial savings and enhanced holiday pleasures if you are prepared to be innovative.

California dreaming: Palm Springs is a great sunshine spot, even is LA is suffering bad weather

Short breaks

There was a point along the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Highway when the cool, cloudy California spring suddenly became baking-hot high summer. In LA, June can be a surprisingly dreary month weather-wise. It suffers from what locals call 'June gloom' (cloudy conditions caused by 'the marine layer effect' and 'enhanced by the Catalina eddy', to use the meteorological term).

For several days we lingered in West Hollywood enduring 17C temperatures and infrequent glimpses of the sun. Looking at the weather forecast, I couldn't help noticing that a couple of hours' drive away in Palm Springs, on the eastern fringes of California, the weather was all-day roasting sun with a temperature of 30C.

With access to the internet, reorganising arrangements can be carried out swiftly and economically. On hotels.com rooms were widely available in Palm Springs from as little as £40 per night – we opted to pay a little extra for the suave sophistication of the Parker Palm Springs (once a famous trysting spot for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie).

Travelling midday and midweek when the traffic can be considered light (don't even think of making the drive at 5pm on a Friday), it's just a couple of hours down the I-10 freeway to Palm Springs. The bad weather followed us to within 20 minutes of our destination and I was beginning to think the LA Times weather forecast was rubbish.

Beach bliss: Santa Monica, with its famous pier, is Frank's favourite coastal destination

But as we crested a hill west of Yucaipa, miraculously the grey skies suddenly gave way to blue and the sun hit us with a bang. It's hard to express the joy with which we parked in the hotel, dumped our bags and raced to the hotel pool, welcoming the belated arrival of our summer holiday.

In LA we had stayed in a rented house, relatively expensive, but with the benefit of offering very cheap living (you can buy your food economically at the markets and cook your own meals).

Staying at a hotel, the accommodation can come cheaply, but you have the extra cost of eating out.

In America, however, eating out is not necessarily expensive. Our cut-price option was breakfast at Starbucks (which does excellent porridge) and other meals at places such as Whole Foods, which has cheap but decent salad bars and other serve-yourself options (they weigh your meal and charge accordingly).

The local Whole Foods equivalent in Palm Springs was Jensens where three of us ate quite handsomely for a total of less than £30. One of the attractions of staying in a resort such as Palm Springs is that while there are lots of things you can do (desert safaris, golf, architectural tours), you really don't have to do much beyond stretching out beside the pool and soaking up the sun – in contrast to LA, where there is so much to do you feel you have to be constantly out and about.

The sun shone until, that is, 20 minutes into our drive back when once again June gloom struck.

The Parker has rooms from £183 per night, based on a roomonly basis. theparkerpalmsprings. com. visitpalmsprings.com. Virgin Holidays (0844 557 3870, virginholidays.co.uk) offers seven nights in Palm Springs from £940pp including return flights from Heathrow, accommodation at the Marriott Desert Springs Villas II and car hire. Based on select departures from October 4-15.

Wish you were here: When LA is coated by June gloom, sunny Palm Springs is just two hours away

Rental home

The description was simple: 'Villa, three bedrooms, three-baths (sleeps six).' But for me, it was a dream come true. I've always fancied a Hollywood home – albeit a rental one – for a week. Dreams here don't come cheap – £1,910 per week through rental company homeaway.co.uk – but it struck me as good value compared with staying in a hotel for seven nights. With six people, it works out at about £40 per person per night.

Starry sight: Reese Witherspoon is a regular in Santa Monica

I spent ages on Google Street View clicking my way up and down the street – and the neighbouring streets – trying to get an idea of what the neighbourhood was like. And it was much more smart, quiet and delightful (we were next to a big park) than my online clicking suggested.

The location was excellent: a short walk from Santa Monica Boulevard, a slightly longer one up to Sunset Boulevard (we were near a particularly interesting part of Sunset Boulevard with historical links to The Doors and a veritable cavalcade of Hollywood stars). And around the corner was another piece of rock heritage: the Troubadour club, rich in history. It was here Janis Joplin played her final gig just before her untimely death.

The great pleasure in self-catering is being able to feed yourself what you want when you want (and at a fraction of the price of eating out). There's also the space to spread out, your own pool, and super-fast broadband (sadly, this is probably more important to me than to other people).

The villa was handily placed for driving all over LA but surprisingly we enjoyed walking around, particularly up into the back roads of Beverly Hills, past the extraordinary houses of the rich and famous. That's my next plan: a big house in Beverly Hills. Perhaps Simon Cowell is looking for a housesitter for a few weeks next August...

One final word of warning. Parking laws in West Hollywood (in fact all LA) are labyrinthine with all sorts of sub-clauses covering which day of the week you can park on which side of the road. Parking laws also apply throughout the night. Ignore them at your peril. My son woke one morning to find his car gone. It had been towed because his parking permit, correctly hanging from the rear-view mirror, was facing in the wrong direction (this mistake cost £150).

Crime-writer Raymond Chandler wrote about LA: 'Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean...' No one could be as mean as the West Hollywood parking bureau.

The villa is available through homeaway.co.uk (ref 363062). It sleeps six and costs £1,910 per week. www.homeaway.co.uk has more than 100 rental properties in Hollywood.

Santa Monica

My favourite seaside place in the world is Santa Monica. And my favourite hotel here is the wonderful Fairmont Miramar, a favourite with Hollywood stars from Greta Garbo to Jennifer Aniston. It's perfect with great accommodation (try and get one of the bungalows near the pool if you can) – and a great location right on Ocean Avenue, a short walk from Third Street Promenade and the famous pier.

Unlike many places in the US, Santa Monica is a safe place to wander around. And given its proximity to Hollywood, it's not surprising it has plenty of starry connections. Almost next door to the Fairmont was the home of Sunset Boulevard star William Holden, and nearby is the hospital where Richard Burton went on one of his many unsuccessful 'drying out' stays.

Third Street Promenade is the place to linger and you'll bump into the likes of Reese Witherspoon shopping in Pottery Barn or Arnold Schwarzenegger out to restock his cigar supplies.

Santa Monica is the acme of Hollywood seaside glamour, yet few Brits know of its existence. If I had to choose one place for a seaside break, this would be it.

B&B packages start from £195 a night. www.fairmont.com/santamonica.

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