United States · California
Plan your Los Angeles trip
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01Your itinerary
02Where to stay
Santa Monica and Venice
Best for first-timers who want the beach as the baseThe coastal version of Los Angeles — ocean air, a beach path you can actually walk or cycle, a real street grid in Santa Monica, and Abbot Kinney's restaurants and shops a mile south in Venice. Cool and grey most summer mornings, which surprises people.
Shutters on the Beach
Waking up on the coast solves the beach half of an LA trip completely, but budget for the drive east to everything else — it is 40 to 70 minutes to Downtown depending entirely on when you leave.
$$$$The Venice Beach House
Venice puts good food and bars within walking distance of the room, which is rarer in this city than it sounds, and keeps you a few blocks from the boardwalk rather than on it.
$$$Downtown LA and the Arts District
Best for travellers who want to walk, and anyone leaning on Metro instead of a carHigh-rise hotels in restored 1920s bank and office buildings, the city's densest and most genuinely walkable core, and the only part of Los Angeles where transit gets you meaningfully far. Also the most visibly uneven, block to block.
Hotel Per La, Autograph Collection
Downtown's best rooms are inside its architectural stock — vaults, ballrooms and lobbies from the 1920s boom — and the Broad, Grand Central Market and Disney Hall are all walkable from them.
$$$A loft-style stay in the Arts District
Warehouse conversions east of Alameda, next to the breweries, galleries and coffee roasters. Quiet at night, a short rideshare from Little Tokyo, and cheaper than the tower hotels.
$$Silver Lake, Los Feliz and Echo Park
Best for repeat visitors and anyone who wants the city rather than the postcardHilly eastside neighbourhoods below Griffith Park, with mid-century houses on winding streets, the reservoir loop, Sunset Junction's shops and restaurants, and the highest density of places locals actually go of anywhere in this guide.
A boutique hotel near Sunset Junction, Silver Lake
Central to the eastside, ten to fifteen minutes from Downtown and Hollywood off-peak, and one of the few areas where you can leave the car and walk to dinner.
$$$Hotel Covell
Quieter and more residential than Silver Lake, with Griffith Park trailheads at the top of the street and a short drive to the observatory before the crowds arrive.
$$West Hollywood
Best for nightlife, and central positioning between the Westside and the eastsideA separate small city wedged between Beverly Hills and Hollywood — design showrooms, the Sunset Strip's music venues, the historic centre of LA's gay nightlife on Santa Monica Boulevard, and restaurants that take themselves seriously.
Chateau Marmont
The Strip's hotels are the reliable LA nightlife base, and West Hollywood is one of the few genuinely central positions in the basin — thirty minutes from most places rather than sixty.
$$$$A mid-range hotel near Santa Monica Boulevard
Walkable to the bars and restaurants of the WeHo strip, with valet or garage parking that costs less than the Sunset addresses a few blocks uphill.
$$$Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.
03Tickets & tours
Griffith Observatory and Griffith Park
A 1935 Art Deco observatory on the south slope of Mount Hollywood, free to enter, with the best single view of the basin and the Hollywood Sign in…
Tip Parking at the observatory itself is a bottleneck from mid-afternoon; park lower down on Fern Dell Drive and walk up the trail, which takes about thirty-five minutes and…
The Getty Center
Richard Meier's travertine campus on a ridge above the 405, holding European paintings, decorative arts and photography, with gardens by Robert Irwin…
Tip The separate Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, a recreated Roman country house full of antiquities, is the better half for some visitors and requires a free timed…
Grand Central Market, Downtown
A 1917 market hall on Broadway that survived long enough to become the best single introduction to how Los Angeles eats — Sonoran-style stalls, Thai…
Tip Go on a weekday at 11am. Weekend lunch queues at the two or three famous stalls run forty minutes for food that is a step behind what is being served with no queue ten…
The Broad and Walt Disney Concert Hall
Two buildings across the street from each other on Grand Avenue: a contemporary art museum in a perforated white shell with free general admission,…
Tip Book Broad tickets online in advance and specifically reserve the Infinity Mirror Room slot separately if you want it.
Venice Beach and the Venice Canals
The boardwalk is a street-performer carnival with skate park, Muscle Beach and an unfiltered edge; the canals four blocks inland are silent,…
Tip Do both in one loop, boardwalk first, canals second. The contrast within a ten-minute walk explains more about Los Angeles than either does alone.
A working studio tour in Burbank or Culver City
Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood and Sony Pictures Studios both run walking and cart tours of active production lots — standing sets, backlot…
Tip Book the earliest slot of the day on a weekday. That is when you have the best odds of walking past something actually being shot rather than an empty stage.
Universal Studios Hollywood
The original working studio turned full theme park in the hills above Cahuenga Pass — a genuine backlot tram tour running alongside rides built from…
Tip Buy a timed-entry or Express ticket online and arrive at opening; the park is at its best in the first two hours, before the headline rides build hour-long waits.
Mulholland Drive and the canyon roads
The ridge road running the spine of the Santa Monica Mountains, with overlooks facing the basin on one side and the San Fernando Valley on the other.
Tip Drive it east to west in the last hour before sunset, then descend Topanga Canyon Boulevard to the Pacific Coast Highway.
The Huntington, San Marino
A railroad fortune turned into a library, art collection and 130 acres of botanical gardens — a Japanese garden, a Chinese garden built by artisans…
Tip Allow four hours minimum and go on a weekday; timed tickets are required and weekend slots sell out.
Day trips from Los Angeles
Joshua Tree National Park
Two and a half hours east, where the Mojave and Colorado deserts meet and the namesake yucca trees stand over piles of monzogranite boulders.
Day tripSanta Barbara
Ninety minutes to two hours up the coast on the 101, a Spanish Colonial Revival town with a working mission from 1786, a walkable State Street, and…
Day tripPalm Springs
Two hours east through the San Gorgonio Pass wind farms, into a mid-century modern architecture museum that happens to be a functioning desert resort…
Day tripChannel Islands National Park
A boat from Ventura, an hour up the coast, to islands that have been isolated long enough to evolve their own species — island foxes, endemic scrub…
Day tripEverything to do in Los Angeles
Skip-the-line tickets, guided tours and day trips, all in one place on Booking.com.
04Getting there & around
Getting around, which means driving
Rent a car. This guide will not pretend otherwise. The Metro rail system has improved considerably — the A Line runs from Long Beach through Downtown to Pasadena, the B and D lines cover Hollywood and Koreatown, the E Line reaches Santa Monica, and the K Line finally connects LAX-adjacent South LA — and if your trip is confined…
Flights
Compare fares into Los Angeles and pick dates that suit the days you planned.
Airport transfers
Book a private or shared ride from the airport so the first evening starts at your door, not at a ticket queue.
Car hire from Los Angeles
Only worth it for day trips beyond the city — in town, the plan above works on foot and public transport.
Affiliate notePostcardRoute is reader-supported. Some links to Booking.com (stays, flights, car hire, tickets and tours, airport transfers) are affiliate links, tracked through CJ Affiliate: if you book through them we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend places we would send a friend.