Los Angeles is not a city so much as a county's worth of neighbourhoods stitched together by freeways, and most of the disappointment visitors report comes from treating it as one place. Hollywood, Santa Monica and Downtown are each a proper day, and the drive between any two of them can take twenty minutes or ninety depending on the hour. So the useful list of stuff to do in LA is sorted by geography as much as by fame: the landmarks people fly in for, the Downtown that used to be skipped, the neighbourhoods worth a half day each, and the small things that make the trip feel like yours. Getting around, when to come, and how to keep a phone working across all of it come at the end, with the USA eSIM page as the place the data question is settled.
The landmarks everyone comes for
Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Sign. The observatory on the south slope of Mount Hollywood is free to enter, closed on Mondays, and the best single viewpoint in the city: the sign to the north-west, the basin to the south, the ocean on a clear day. Go for the hour before sunset and stay for the public telescope after dark. Parking on the hill is scarce and metered, so take the DASH Observatory shuttle from the Vermont/Sunset Metro station instead of circling. The sign itself is best seen from here, from Lake Hollywood Park below it, or on foot along the Griffith Park trails; there is no path to the letters, and the residential streets beneath them are not the place to look for one.
Hollywood Boulevard. The Walk of Fame, the handprints in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre and the Dolby Theatre are a two-hour stop, not a day, and they are busiest and most hustled in the middle of the afternoon. Come early, then walk east to Musso & Frank for a lunch that has not changed much since 1919. The Metro B Line stops at Hollywood/Highland, which is the easiest way in.
Santa Monica Pier and Venice. The pier is the end of Route 66, a ferris wheel over the water and a beach that goes on for miles in both directions. The Metro E Line ends a few blocks away at Downtown Santa Monica, so this is the one landmark that needs no car. Rent a bicycle and ride the beach path south past Muscle Beach and the Venice boardwalk, then turn inland for the Venice canals and the shops and coffee on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Mornings belong to locals and the marine layer; afternoons belong to everyone else.
The Getty Center. A hilltop of travertine above Brentwood, reached by tram from the car park, with free admission on a timed-entry reservation booked in advance, a paid car park, a garden worth the visit on its own and the same wide view as Griffith from the other end of the mountains. Closed on Mondays. It is the calm afternoon after a Hollywood morning.
A studio. Universal Studios Hollywood is a theme park with a studio tour inside it, and a full day; the Warner Bros. tour in Burbank is the working-lot version, smaller, quieter and better for anyone who cares more about how television is made than about rides. Both are booked ahead, and both sit in the Valley, which is a different climate zone in summer.
Downtown, which visitors used to skip
For decades the advice was to stay away from Downtown after dark. That is out of date. The Broad shows a large contemporary collection for free, with timed entry booked in advance, and stands next to Walt Disney Concert Hall, whose steel curves are the one Frank Gehry building everyone recognises. Across the street the Grand Central Market has fed the city since 1917 and is the best lunch in the area; the Angels Flight funicular next to it climbs Bunker Hill for a dollar, and the Bradbury Building a block away is the ironwork atrium from a hundred films.
Union Station, from 1939, is the most beautiful railway station in the western United States and the hub of the Metro. Olvera Street across the road is the site of the city's founding and the place for a taquito; Philippe the Original, around the corner, has served French dip sandwiches since 1908. From there Little Tokyo is a walk, the Arts District with its murals and breweries is a walk beyond that, and Chinatown is a stop north on the A Line. All of this is on foot or on the Metro, which makes Downtown the easiest day in the city for anyone without a car.
Neighbourhoods worth a half day each
- Koreatown. The densest neighbourhood in the city, on the D Line, and the best place to eat at midnight: barbecue, tofu stew, and the spas that stay open all night. Go hungry.
- Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Echo Park. The hilly, walkable east side below Griffith Park. Pedal boats on Echo Park Lake, the shops around Sunset Junction, the old cinemas, and the reservoir path in Silver Lake for a morning run.
- West Hollywood and Melrose. The Sunset Strip for the music history and the comedy clubs; Melrose Avenue for vintage shopping and murals; the Original Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax for lunch, with the Grove next door.
- The Miracle Mile. LACMA's lamp-post forest, Urban Light, at the kerb on Wilshire, the La Brea Tar Pits bubbling in the park beside it, and the Academy Museum for the film history the boulevard tour did not cover.
- Beverly Hills. Rodeo Drive is a short walk that everyone does once. The palm-lined residential streets behind it are the prettier stroll.
- Pasadena. Old Pasadena for the evening, the Huntington's gardens and library in San Marino for the day, and the Rose Bowl flea market if your trip includes the second Sunday of the month.
- The South Bay. Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo beaches share one long strand path and a slower pace than Santa Monica, and they are the nearest good beaches to the airport.
- Long Beach and San Pedro. The Aquarium of the Pacific, the Queen Mary at her berth, and the ferries to Catalina Island, an hour offshore and a different world.
- Malibu. El Matador State Beach at sunset is the coast from the postcards. The Pacific Coast Highway and the communities along it were hit hard by the fires of January 2025, and conditions on that road and in those towns still change, so check the current state of the coast before making a day of it.
Off the beaten path
The Wisdom Tree above Burbank Peak is the hike locals send friends on, a short, steep climb to a single pine and a view that includes the back of the sign. The Watts Towers, in South Los Angeles, are one man's thirty-three years of steel, mortar and broken tile, and a reason to leave the tourist map. The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City is impossible to describe and worth an hour. Hollywood Forever cemetery screens films on the lawn on summer nights, with the studios' water towers over the wall. The In-N-Out on Sepulveda Boulevard sits directly under the LAX approach path, and eating a burger while jets pass a few hundred feet overhead is a genuinely Los Angeles evening. Dodger Stadium on a summer night, reached by the free shuttle from Union Station with a game ticket, is the city at its most relaxed. And the Venice canals at seven in the morning, before the boardwalk wakes up, are the quietest place on the west side.
Three ways to spend the time you have
One day. Griffith Observatory when it opens, at noon on weekdays and ten at weekends, Hollywood Boulevard for two hours after it, and the E Line to Santa Monica for the rest of the afternoon and the sunset from the pier. No car needed if the day starts at Vermont/Sunset.
A weekend. Day one as above. Day two Downtown on foot: the Broad, the market, the Bradbury, Union Station and Olvera Street, then Koreatown for dinner. If the second night falls on a summer weekend, trade Koreatown for the Hollywood Bowl and a picnic.
A week. Add the Getty, a studio, a Malibu or South Bay beach day, a Pasadena day, and one evening in the east side neighbourhoods. Keep one day empty; the traffic will spend it for you, and so will the friend of a friend who insists on showing you a taco truck.
Getting around, and when to come
The Metro is better than its reputation and worth learning for three lines: the B Line under Hollywood, the E Line to Santa Monica, and the A Line through Downtown to Long Beach and Pasadena. Fares go on a TAP card or the TAP app, transfers are included for two hours, and the DASH buses that circle Downtown and climb to the observatory cost less than a coffee. Ride-hailing covers everything the trains do not, and driverless cars now take fares across much of the city, which is a novelty the first time and a taxi the second.
A rental car still makes sense for Malibu, Pasadena, the studios and the Valley, with two rules. Do not cross the city between seven and ten in the morning or three and seven in the evening if you can help it, because the difference between those hours and the rest of the day is not minutes but the whole afternoon. And read the parking signs to the last line, because a Los Angeles parking sign is a legal document with four clauses, and the tow trucks read them too.
The airport is its own subject. LAX is large, its pickup arrangements for taxis and app rides have moved more than once, and a new automated train linking the terminals to the rental-car centre and the Metro station has been in testing for a long time, so check the airport's own current instructions on the day rather than a guide written earlier. The FlyAway bus to Union Station and the Metro connection from the transit centre are the two answers that need no car.
On timing: summer is dry and warm inland and grey at the beach until noon, which locals call June Gloom and which lasts well into July. Late summer into autumn is the warmest and clearest stretch, with September holding the city's heat records, and the Santa Ana winds that arrive through autumn bring the fire risk. Winter is mild, with most of the year's rain between December and March. Los Angeles keeps Pacific Time, nine hours behind Central Europe for almost the whole year, with a week or so around each clock change when the gap briefly drops to eight. Prices carry sales tax added at the till and tips of around twenty percent in restaurants, which the menu does not show.
Staying connected in LA
Everything above assumes a working map, and a Los Angeles day is a long one for a phone: the map open in the car, the transit app on the platform, the parking app at the kerb, photos all day, and a booking to make for the museum you decided on at lunch. How much data a United States trip needs works through that arithmetic, and it puts a driving week in this city near the top of the range.
If your plan is from outside the United States, what it does here is written in your own tariff and nowhere else, so read that section before you fly rather than at the baggage carousel. Most people who read it settle on the same split: the home line keeps the number and the bank's text codes, and a United States line does the data. The USA eSIM page lists the sizes and windows, and that guide puts a driving week here at the upper end, so read it against your own days before settling on a size: the 10 GB plan over 30 days suits a lighter driving week, and a heavier one needs more, whether that is a larger plan on the page or a top-up where the selected plan supports it. A car-free weekend needs far less. On a compatible device, sharing the connection from one phone keeps a second phone and a laptop on the same allowance, which matters in a city where the group in the back seat is all navigating at once.
Buy and install at home on Wi-Fi, days before the flight, and keep the order email somewhere that is not the phone the profile is going onto; the installation guide covers the phone-side steps. Leave the line switched off until you are landside at LAX with your bags, then make it the line for mobile data, switch data roaming on for that line alone, and take mobile data off the home line. The ordered steps for an American arrival are in how to set up an eSIM for the USA. Watch the usage screen on the phone, or the eSIM's own page in your account, at the end of the first day; a driving day tells you what the rest of the week will cost in gigabytes.
Two places the phone goes quiet: the canyons of Griffith Park and the Santa Monica Mountains, and the long stretches of the coast road past Malibu, so download the maps for both on Wi-Fi first. And a day trip across the border to Tijuana is a separate plan, not an extension of this one; does a USA eSIM work in Canada and Mexico explains where the line is drawn.
Short answers
What is the one thing to do in LA if I only have an afternoon? Griffith Observatory an hour before sunset, by the DASH shuttle from Vermont/Sunset. The sign, the city and the ocean in one view, for free.
Can I see Los Angeles without a car? Yes, for Hollywood, Downtown, Koreatown and Santa Monica, all on the Metro. Malibu, the Getty, the studios and Pasadena are easier with a car or a ride.
When is the best time to visit? September and October for clear skies and warm sea, spring for green hills, and any month for the museums. Expect grey beach mornings in June and early July.
How many days do I need? Two for the landmarks, four to add Downtown and the neighbourhoods, a week if a beach day and a studio are on the list.
Does my phone plan work in Los Angeles? That depends on your own tariff, so read it before you fly. A United States eSIM installed at home, with the USA eSIM page as the starting point, is the usual answer for visitors from abroad.
Will my plan work if I take a day trip to Mexico? Not unless the listing names Mexico. Tijuana is a separate plan, bought for that day.
Hotspot sharing is free on every Horizon plan.
