Los Angeles

Understanding Los Angeles

Los Angeles is not a city in the conventional sense. It is a collection of distinct neighbourhoods spread across an area the size of a small country, connected by one of the most famous freeway systems on earth. First-time visitors who try to treat it like London or Paris — a centre with things radiating outward — will find it bewildering. Those who accept it on its own terms find it endlessly fascinating.

Give yourself at least five days. Three is not enough. The distances between places that look close on a map are deceptive, and traffic at the wrong time of day can turn a twenty-mile journey into a two-hour ordeal.

Santa Monica and Venice Beach

For most UK visitors, this is the right place to base yourself. Santa Monica has excellent hotels at every price point, walkable streets, good restaurants and direct access to the beach. The Third Street Promenade is a lively outdoor shopping street. The pier has been photographed ten million times and is still worth walking.

Venice Beach is fifteen minutes south on foot and an entirely different world — street performers, bodybuilders at Muscle Beach, artists, skaters and the kind of organised chaos that feels distinctly Californian. Walk the boardwalk, then cut inland to Abbot Kinney Boulevard for independent shops and some of the best coffee in the city.

Hollywood and the hills

Hollywood Boulevard is not glamorous. The Walk of Fame is enjoyable for about twenty minutes and then it is a tourist trap on a busy street. What is worth your time: the TCL Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood sign viewed from the Griffith Observatory, and Griffith Park itself — a genuinely large and beautiful urban park with hiking trails and sweeping views of the city and the sign.

Beverly Hills and West Hollywood

Rodeo Drive is worth seeing once. The concentration of wealth on display is genuinely extraordinary and the architecture is unlike anywhere else. You do not have to buy anything. West Hollywood — WeHo — is where to eat and drink. Sunset Strip still has history in its walls; the Comedy Store and Whisky a Go Go are both still operating and worth a visit.

Universal Studios Hollywood and CityWalk

Universal Studios Hollywood sits in the hills above the San Fernando Valley, thirty minutes north of Downtown LA off the 101 freeway. It is a working film studio as much as a theme park — the Studio Tour, a tram ride through the active backlot, passes sets from productions currently filming alongside legendary locations from Psycho, Jaws and War of the Worlds. For anyone with an interest in how films are actually made, this is one of the most genuinely interesting attractions in Southern California.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is the headline draw — Hogsmeade village, Butterbeer, interactive wand experiences and the Forbidden Journey ride inside a full-scale Hogwarts Castle. For UK visitors this carries an extra dimension that American guests do not quite feel in the same way. Jurassic World, Transformers and the Minion Park round out a full day. Universal is significantly less crowded than Disneyland on most days and a single day covers it comfortably.

Universal CityWalk is the outdoor entertainment complex at the base of the hill below the park — open to anyone without a park ticket. It has restaurants, bars, a cinema and live music venues and is a reasonable evening destination in its own right, separate from the theme park. Valet parking is available at the base; the Metro B Line stops at Universal City station with a free tram connection to the park entrance.

Culver City and the Eastside

If you have time beyond the obvious, Culver City has become one of the best food and art destinations in the city — walkable, less crowded and more interesting than most of the Westside. The Museum of Jurassic Technology on Venice Boulevard is one of the strangest and most wonderful places in Los Angeles, and almost nobody knows it exists.

The Eastside — Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Echo Park — is where Los Angeles residents actually live. Independent restaurants, bookshops, record stores and a neighbourhood feel entirely absent from the tourist trail.

Downtown Los Angeles

Downtown LA has undergone a genuine transformation over the past fifteen years and is worth a half-day that most visitors never give it. The Broad museum on Grand Avenue is free and houses one of the best contemporary art collections in the country — the Infinity Mirrored Room by Yayoi Kusama requires a timed entry ticket booked in advance. The Museum of Contemporary Art next door is excellent. Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, is one of the most important buildings in California — the exterior alone justifies the detour.

Grand Central Market on Broadway is the best single food destination in the city — a historic covered market operating since 1917, now home to some of the finest food stalls in Los Angeles. Go hungry. The funicular railway next door — Angels Flight, the shortest railway in the world — costs fifty cents and has been running since 1901.

Little Tokyo, just east of Downtown, is a genuine neighbourhood with excellent Japanese restaurants, the Japanese American National Museum and a pace of life entirely unlike the rest of the city. Chinatown is a short walk north and the Original Farmers Market — not to be confused with Grand Central — is at Fairfax and Third, a forty-year institution worth an hour.

SoFi Stadium and LA sports

SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, which opened in 2020, is one of the most technologically advanced sports venues in the world — a 70,000-seat arena with a translucent roof that allows natural light while protecting from rain, and a video board so large it wraps around the entire interior. It is the home of both the LA Rams and the LA Chargers, sharing the venue in an arrangement unique in the NFL. Tours of the stadium are available on non-event days and worth doing for the architecture alone.

Los Angeles has more major professional sports teams than any city in the United States. The Dodgers play at Dodger Stadium, opened in 1962 and one of the most beautiful ballparks in baseball — perched in Chavez Ravine above Downtown with views of the San Gabriel Mountains on clear days. A Dodgers game on a warm evening is one of the great LA experiences. Book tickets in advance for any game against the Giants or Angels.

The Lakers and Clippers both play at the Crypto.com Arena in Downtown — two franchises sharing one building, which makes for an interesting civic dynamic given the Lakers carry one of the most celebrated histories in basketball and the Clippers have spent most of their existence in their shadow. The LA Kings play NHL hockey in the same building; if you are visiting between October and April and have never seen live ice hockey, an NHL game is an excellent introduction — faster and more physical than it appears on television.

Griffith Park and the Observatory

Griffith Park is the largest municipal park in the United States with urban wilderness — 4,310 acres of hiking trails, chaparral and oak woodland in the hills above Hollywood. Most visitors go only as far as the Observatory car park. This is a mistake.

The trails above the Observatory lead into genuinely wild terrain within twenty minutes of the car park. The Mount Hollywood Trail is the most rewarding — a moderate 4-mile loop that reaches the summit at 1,625 feet, with 360-degree views of the city, the San Gabriel Mountains, and on clear winter days, the Pacific. The Beachwood Canyon trail connects to the Hollywood Sign for those who want to get closer than the standard viewpoint, though the sign itself is fenced and the views from Mount Lee Drive are the best available.

The Griffith Observatory itself is free to enter. The Samuel Oschin Planetarium shows are ticketed and excellent. The Tesla coil in the main hall fires on the hour. Come for sunset and stay for the city lights — from the Observatory terrace, Los Angeles at dusk is one of the most spectacular urban views in the world.

Pasadena

Pasadena sits at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, fifteen miles northeast of Downtown, and feels like a different city entirely — quieter, greener, with intact early twentieth-century architecture and a walkable Old Town that bears no resemblance to the rest of Los Angeles.

Old Town Pasadena on Colorado Boulevard is the commercial heart, with independent shops, bookstores and restaurants spread across several blocks of well-preserved 1920s and 1930s buildings. The Norton Simon Museum on the edge of Old Town is one of the finest small art museums in California — Degas bronzes, Rembrandt, Raphael, a sculpture garden with Rodin and Moore, and almost no queues. The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in neighbouring San Marino is one of the great cultural institutions in America and requires at minimum a half-day.

The Rose Bowl stadium, set in the Arroyo Seco riverbed below the mountains, has hosted five Super Bowls and the 1994 World Cup Final. The Rose Bowl Flea Market, held on the second Sunday of each month, is the best flea market in Southern California. JPL — the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory — offers free public tours by advance reservation; this is where Mars rovers are built and operated.

The Getty Center and Getty Villa

The J. Paul Getty Trust operates two extraordinary museums in Los Angeles and both are free to enter — you pay only for parking. This is not a minor detail; these are two of the finest art institutions in the United States, funded by one of the largest private endowments in the world and genuinely committed to public access.

The Getty Center sits on a hilltop in Brentwood at the end of the 405 freeway, designed by Richard Meier and opened in 1997. The architecture alone is worth the visit — travertine stone, natural light, a series of interconnected pavilions with views stretching from the San Gabriel Mountains to the Pacific. The collection spans European paintings from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, decorative arts, drawings, manuscripts and photography. Van Gogh's Irises is here. So is Rembrandt's An Old Man in Military Costume. The central garden, designed by Robert Irwin, changes seasonally and is one of the most contemplative outdoor spaces in Los Angeles. Allow half a day minimum. Go on a clear day for the views.

The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades — twelve miles west of the Getty Center on the Pacific Coast Highway — is an entirely separate experience. Built to replicate a first-century Roman country house, the Villa houses the Getty's collection of ancient Greek, Roman and Etruscan art — 44,000 objects spanning 6,500 years. The building itself, set into a hillside above the Pacific with formal gardens, fountains and colonnaded walkways, is immersive in a way that a conventional museum building cannot be. Timed entry tickets are required — free but must be booked in advance at getty.edu.

If you have time for only one, the Getty Center is the more versatile choice. If you have a particular interest in the ancient world or want something genuinely unlike any other museum experience in California, the Villa is the better afternoon.

Malibu

Malibu stretches for twenty-one miles along the Pacific Coast Highway northwest of Santa Monica — a thin strip of some of the most valuable real estate on earth between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific. Most of it is hidden behind gates and hedges. The beaches are not.

California law mandates public access to all beaches below the mean high tide line regardless of who owns the land above it. This means that Malibu's best beaches — Zuma, El Matador, Point Dume, Surfrider, Broad Beach — are freely accessible to anyone who can find the public access points. El Matador is the most dramatically beautiful: a state beach tucked below eroded sandstone cliffs, with sea stacks and caves accessible at low tide. Get there early — the car park fills by mid-morning on weekends.

Point Dume is a headland that juts into the Pacific south of Zuma Beach, with a short trail to the clifftop and views up and down the coast that are as good as any in Southern California. Dolphins are routinely visible from the point. Grey whales pass close to shore from December to April. The cove below Point Dume — Paradise Cove — has a restaurant on the sand with overpriced but enjoyable food and the kind of setting that makes the prices forgivable.

Malibu Kitchen on Cross Creek Road is the best casual eating option in the area — a deli and grocery frequented by locals who happen to be famous and tourists who have not yet realised that is what they are looking at. Nobu Malibu on the PCH is the splurge option for dinner on the water; book well in advance.

The drive from Santa Monica to Malibu on Pacific Coast Highway — particularly early morning before traffic builds — is one of the great short drives in California. The road runs directly against the ocean for much of it. This is what people mean when they say the PCH.

Getting around

You will need a car for most of this, most of the time. Los Angeles has improved its public transport significantly but it remains inadequate for a first-time visitor trying to cover ground. Rent a car, accept the freeways, and avoid driving during the morning rush (7am to 10am) and evening rush (4pm to 7pm) wherever possible.

Parking in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills is manageable. Parking in Hollywood is expensive and stressful. If you are visiting Griffith Observatory, go early or use the shuttle from the lower car park.