It’s an iconic stop on the West Coast for visitors from all over the world, but making the most of a short stay in Los Angeles can be tricky – for starters, it’s the second biggest city in America by area, making it difficult to know where to start.
Making the most of LA will be far easier if you hire a car for the duration of your stay – getting from A to B in the city might well be further than you expect, and the quickest route is almost always via the freeways that criss-cross the city and its surroundings.
Santa Monica
My first recommendation for new visitors to LA is always – don’t stay downtown. Santa Monica is a laid-back beach district to the North of central LA, and it offers you easy access to all the city’s attractions, along with some pretty spectacular attractions of its own.
Santa Monica is the perfect spot to laze on the beach, and when you’re thoroughly toasted, you can head up to the vintage Santa Monica Pier, where you’ll find a variety of shops and restaurants and a charming funfair (Pacific Park) where you can ride a solar-powered ferris wheel, eat candy floss and snow cones the size of your head, and take a turn on the rollercoaster.
Little Venice
Two miles down the coast from Santa Monica you’ll find Little Venice – you can cycle along the beachfront path from Santa Monica, and there are plenty of places to park up. Once in Venice, don’t miss the beach boardwalk, a stretch of beachfront that has artists, street performers, and independent stalls selling everything from skateboard wheels to jewellery. In the heart of Venice, you’ll also find the famous Skate Park, where you can watch the cool kids doing death-defying stunts, and Venice Muscle Beach, where you can watch very large men showing off their weightlifting skills.
Don’t miss the Small World Bookstore, a historic spot (by LA standards) that shares space with a decent hamburger restaurant and has its own resident piano player on the boardwalk out front.
The best spot to stay in Venice is probably Hotel Erwin, which has a famous rooftop bar where LA’s young and beautiful gather to watch the sun set over the palm trees – if you go, I can heartily recommend the Peach Sangria cocktail.
Griffith Observatory
There are plenty of iconic sights in LA, but possibly none more so than the Hollywood sign, a 45-foot high series of letters in the Hollywood hills. There are various tours that take you to the letters but my recommendation is to head to the Griffith Observatory – as well as being home to one of the very best planetariums in the world (along with a workshop where you can learn how to make a comet), this place has incredible views over LA, and arguably the best view in the city of the Hollywood sign.
Admission to the museum and its grounds are free (you need to pay for the planetarium shows), so it understandably gets busy here – aim to arrive in the morning before the Observatory opens (at 12pm) and don’t be surprised if the parking lot is full, and you need to walk up the hill to get there – it’s worth the climb, though.
The Grove
I suspect I’m not the only person who takes a spare, empty bag with them on trips to the US. I do this after years of buying a new suitcase on every trip to the US to transport home the ridiculous levels of shopping I manage to do there.
If you’re a shopper then The Grove is simply the only place worth visiting in LA. Start out at the Farmers Market on Fairfax and 3rd, where you’ll find dozens of stalls showcasing the very best Californian fruit, vegetables and meat products, along with countless food stalls serving everything from Fish and Chips to Brazilian barbecue, tacos and pizza. Particular highlights for us are Bennett’s Ice Cream at the back of the market, which has been serving fresh shakes and malts for over 60 years, and the candy apple store, where you can find organic toffee and candy apples starting at $16 – mind-boggling.
Walk through the Farmers Market and you’ll arrive at The Grove itself – a rather pretty shopping district built around a small waterfall with an (artificial) lawn and various pavement restaurants. Most of the high-end US clothes stores can be found here, along with Gap, Pottery Barn, Barnes & Noble and the like. Stop for lunch at The Cheesecake Factory (the Oreo cheesecake is worth every one of the 1,100 calories per slice) and catch a movie before finishing up.
Hollywood Boulevard
You can’t visit LA and not visit the Hollywood Boulevard. Not because there’s anything THAT amazing to see here, but because it’s the sort of living street theatre you won’t find anywhere else in the world.
We found affordable valet parking right under the waxwork museum ($12 per day) and from here you’re just seconds from the famous Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. There’s some fun to be had spotting your favourite stars, but by far the best entertainment are the people – there are street performers galore and within five minutes you could easily walk past a Darth Vader having a lightsaber fight with Spiderman, a Marylin Monroe being interviewed by a TV crew, and someone offering free hugs to passersby.
If you fancy it, you can see a movie at the theatre, or pay for a guided tour – but we found it entertainment enough just wandering around outside. As an added bonus, from this part of town, it is a fairly short drive up to Mulholland Drive, which makes for a beautiful spot to watch the sun set over Hollywood.
Disneyland California
It’s not strictly in LA, but should you find yourself in LA, then it’s only a short drive to Anaheim, home to the Happiest Place on Earth.
Disneyland California is a smaller, more charming version of its newer cousin in Florida, and offers the perfect day trip. If you’re travelling with adults and older kids, invest in “park hopper” tickets which offer admission to Disneyland and the park next door, California Adventure, to maximise the number of rides you can visit.
There are some fun thrill rides to explore, like Indiana Jones, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain, but there are plenty of shows, themed-character rides and fairground-type attractions, too. It can be a long day – the park opens at 8am and the nightly fireworks are at 9.30pm – so ensure you keep topped up with fluids and build in some quiet time, or you’ll be fit for nothing by mid-afternoon – it gets seriously hot here!
