Things to Do in Los Angeles: A First-Timer’s Guide

Los Angeles is not a city you see; it is a city you assemble. There is no single center, no walkable old town where the sights line up, and the first-time visitor who tries to “do LA” from one hotel in three days usually leaves tired, having spent half of it on the 405. Approached differently, it is one of the great destinations in the world: the Hollywood of the movies and the Hollywood of the hills, a downtown that has rebuilt itself around a concert hall and a free contemporary art museum, forty miles of beaches from Malibu to Palos Verdes, museums funded by oil and film fortunes, Dodger Stadium on a summer evening, and the best Mexican, Korean, Thai and Chinese food in the United States, much of it served from trucks and strip malls. This guide covers the sights that earn a day, the neighborhoods worth a half-day, the food, the sports and theme parks, the day trips, and the practical details that make the geography work for you rather than against you.

If you are still comparing cheap flights to Los Angeles, read this alongside our guides to the best time to fly to Los Angeles and whether you need a car. Between the three you can plan the whole trip.

Los Angeles at a glance for first-timers

• Airport: Los Angeles International (LAX), on the coast in Westchester about 30 km (18 miles) southwest of downtown. The FlyAway bus to Union Station, a taxi or ride-hail from the LAX-it lot, the Metro connection from the airport’s transit center, or a rental car gets you in. Burbank, Long Beach, Orange County and Ontario are the alternatives. See our LAX airport guide.
• Getting around: the Metro rail network now links downtown, Hollywood, Koreatown, Santa Monica, Pasadena, Long Beach and the airport, and each of those districts is walkable on its own. Between districts, and for Malibu, the theme parks and the day trips, most visitors drive or use ride-hail.
• Money: US dollars. Sales tax in Los Angeles County is among the highest in the country and is added at the register; tipping 18 to 20 percent in restaurants is expected, and many restaurants add a service or health surcharge, so read the bill.
• Weather: mild and dry almost all year, with a short rainy season from December to March, gray mornings at the coast in May and June, hot inland afternoons in summer and early fall, and the Santa Ana winds that bring fire weather in October and November. Our month-by-month guide has the detail.
• Where to stay: Hollywood for the sights and the Metro; downtown for the museums, food halls and nightlife; Santa Monica or Venice for the beach; West Hollywood or Beverly Hills for shopping and restaurants; Pasadena for a quieter base. Our Los Angeles hotel search covers them all.

Hollywood: the Sign, the Walk of Fame and Griffith Observatory

Start with the view. Griffith Observatory, on the southern slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith Park, is free to enter, has a planetarium and public telescopes, and offers the single best panorama in the city: the Hollywood Sign to the west, downtown to the southeast, and on a clear winter day the Pacific and Catalina Island beyond. It is also the best place to photograph the Hollywood Sign, which sits on Mount Lee across the canyon; the trails from the observatory and from Bronson Canyon get you closer, and the walk up to the summit behind the letters is a genuine three-hour hike. Down the hill, Hollywood Boulevard is the part every first-timer sees once: the Walk of Fame stars set into the sidewalk, the handprints in the forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre, the Dolby Theatre where the Oscars are held, and a lot of costumed characters and souvenir shops. The Hollywood Bowl, the outdoor amphitheater in the hills above, is the summer home of the LA Philharmonic and one of the best concert venues anywhere; bringing a picnic to a Bowl concert on a warm evening is as Los Angeles as it gets. For the working side of the industry, the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in Burbank takes you onto real backlots and sound stages.

Downtown: the Broad, Disney Hall and Grand Central Market

Twenty years ago visitors were told to avoid downtown; now it is where many of them spend their best day. On Grand Avenue, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Frank Gehry’s stainless-steel sail, is the home of the LA Philharmonic and worth a walk around even without a ticket; the Broad next door is a free contemporary art museum with a serious collection, from Basquiat and Koons to Kusama’s infinity rooms, and free timed tickets that you should book ahead. Down the hill, Grand Central Market is the city’s century-old food hall, where a plate of carnitas and a coffee make the best cheap lunch downtown, and the Angels Flight funicular, which bills itself as the shortest railway in the world, climbs back up to Bunker Hill for a small fare. Across Broadway, the Bradbury Building has the wrought-iron atrium from Blade Runner, and The Last Bookstore nearby is one of the most photographed shops in the city. To the north, Olvera Street, the city’s oldest street, is a Mexican marketplace beside the 1818 Avila Adobe, and Union Station across the road is one of the finest railway stations in America and the hub of the Metro system. Little Tokyo, with the Japanese American National Museum, and the Arts District beyond it, with breweries and galleries, round out a full day on foot.

The Westside: Santa Monica, Venice and the beaches

The Pacific is what makes Los Angeles a resort as well as a city, and the beach cities are a different world from Hollywood. Santa Monica is the easy one: the pier with its Pacific Park ferris wheel and the sign marking the end of Route 66, the wide beach, Third Street Promenade for shopping, and the Metro E Line, which drops you a block from the sand. From the pier, the paved Marvin Braude Bike Trail runs south along the beach through Venice, whose boardwalk, with its skate park, Muscle Beach and street performers, is the city’s most reliable spectacle, and whose canals and Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a few blocks inland, are its most pleasant surprise. Further south, Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach are the volleyball-and-surf towns. North of Santa Monica, the Pacific Coast Highway runs through Pacific Palisades and into Malibu, where the beaches at Zuma, Point Dume and El Matador are the best in the county. The fires of January 2025 destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and stretches of the Malibu coast, and rebuilding will take years; the highway is open, but check current conditions and respect the closures before you plan a day there. The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area behind Malibu has the canyon trails and the old movie ranches.

Museums and culture

Los Angeles has more good museums than a first visit can hold, and most of the best are cheap or free. The Getty Center, on a hilltop in Brentwood, is free to enter (you pay for parking), reached by a tram from the parking structure, and combines Richard Meier’s travertine campus, gardens, a collection of European paintings and sculpture, and a view over the whole basin to the ocean; it is the one museum every visitor should see. The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, a recreated Roman villa full of Greek and Roman antiquities, needs a separate free timed ticket; check its status after the 2025 fires. On Wilshire Boulevard’s Museum Row, LACMA, the largest art museum in the western United States, has been rebuilding its main galleries for years; the Urban Light lamppost installation out front is always open and always photographed, and the new galleries are worth checking for status before you go. Next door, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is the museum the film industry finally built for itself, with the Oscars gallery, real props and costumes, and a sphere-shaped theater; the Petersen Automotive Museum across the street is a showpiece for car lovers; and the La Brea Tar Pits beside them are exactly what they sound like, active asphalt seeps in the middle of the city that have produced millions of Ice Age fossils, with a museum to show them. In Exposition Park, near USC, the Natural History Museum and the California Science Center, the permanent home of the space shuttle Endeavour, are free or cheap and superb with children; the shuttle is being moved into a new wing for a vertical display, so confirm what is viewable when you visit. In San Marino, next to Pasadena, the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, with its Gainsborough portraits, Gutenberg Bible and vast gardens, is worth most of a day.

Neighborhoods worth a half-day

Koreatown

The densest neighborhood in the city, west of downtown on the Metro D Line, and home to one of the largest Korean communities outside Korea. It is where Angelenos go for barbecue at midnight, for the Korean spas that are a rite of passage, for karaoke and for the bakeries and cafés along Wilshire and 6th Street. Go hungry and go late.

Silver Lake, Los Feliz and Echo Park

The hilly neighborhoods east of Hollywood are the city’s coffee-and-vintage belt: Sunset Junction and the reservoir loop in Silver Lake, Vermont and Hillhurst avenues in Los Feliz below Griffith Park, and Echo Park’s lake with its swan boats and view of the downtown skyline. This is where a visitor with an unplanned afternoon should go.

West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip

The Sunset Strip’s rock clubs, the Whisky a Go Go and the Troubadour, the comedy clubs, the design shops of Melrose Avenue and the restaurants along Santa Monica Boulevard make West Hollywood the city’s most concentrated nightlife district, and its Pride and Halloween celebrations are the biggest in the region.

Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive

The most famous three blocks of shopping in the world are worth a walk even if you buy nothing, and the residential streets north of Santa Monica Boulevard, with their palms and mansions, are what most visitors picture when they think of Los Angeles.

Pasadena

Fifteen minutes from downtown on the Metro A Line, Pasadena is a proper small city with a walkable Old Town, the Rose Bowl in the Arroyo Seco, the Gamble House and the Craftsman bungalows, and the Huntington and Norton Simon museums.

Long Beach and San Pedro

At the south end of the Metro A Line, Long Beach has the Aquarium of the Pacific, the retired ocean liner Queen Mary and a lively waterfront; neighboring San Pedro is the working port, the departure point for Catalina Island, and home to the Korean Bell of Friendship on its clifftop.

Theme parks

Southern California invented the theme park and still runs the best ones. Disneyland, the original, and California Adventure next to it are in Anaheim, about 45 km (28 miles) southeast of downtown in Orange County; the drive is an hour in traffic, and most families either stay near the park or give it a full day with an early start. Universal Studios Hollywood, in the hills above Hollywood on the Metro B Line, combines the studio tram tour, the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Super Nintendo World, and is the park to choose if you have one day and no car. Knott’s Berry Farm near Anaheim and Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia are the roller-coaster parks. Every park is cheaper booked online in advance and busiest on Saturdays, in summer and over the winter holidays.

Sports

Los Angeles is a two-of-everything sports town. The Dodgers play at Dodger Stadium, the 1962 ballpark in the hills above downtown with a view of the mountains, from late March to October, and a summer evening game with a Dodger Dog is the best cheap night out in the city. The Lakers and the Kings play at Crypto.com Arena beside the LA Live district downtown; the Clippers moved to their own Intuit Dome in Inglewood, next to SoFi Stadium, where the Rams and the Chargers play NFL football from September to January and which hosted matches at the 2026 World Cup. LAFC and the Galaxy play soccer, the Angels play in Anaheim, and college football fills the Rose Bowl and the Coliseum on fall Saturdays. Los Angeles hosts the Olympic Games in the summer of 2028, which will reshape the sports calendar and the hotel market for that year. Check what is on sale in Los Angeles for your dates before you book flights.

What to eat, and where

Los Angeles may be the best eating city in the United States, and the reason is that its best food is cheap. Start with tacos: from the trucks and stands of East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights, from the al pastor spits that appear on Hollywood street corners after dark, and from the sit-down Oaxacan and Sinaloan restaurants that are as good as anything in Mexico. Korean barbecue in Koreatown, Thai food in Thai Town on Hollywood Boulevard, Ethiopian along Fairfax in Little Ethiopia, Armenian in Glendale, Japanese on Sawtelle Boulevard and in Little Tokyo, and the Chinese food of the San Gabriel Valley, in Alhambra, San Gabriel and Monterey Park, which is the best in North America, are all within a half-hour drive. The two downtown institutions are Philippe the Original, which claims to have invented the French dip sandwich in 1918, and Langer’s in Westlake, whose pastrami sandwich is the city’s best-known lunch; Grand Central Market and the Smorgasburg market on Sundays at ROW DTLA cover the rest. For a restaurant meal, the concentrations are the Arts District, Silver Lake, West Hollywood, Culver City and Venice’s Abbot Kinney; book ahead for weekends.

Los Angeles through the seasons

The climate is mild enough that Los Angeles works in every month, but the city changes more than visitors expect. Winter (December to February) is the secret: clear air after the rains, snow on the San Gabriel Mountains behind the skyline, daytime highs in the high teens Celsius (the 60s Fahrenheit), the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day, the Grammys and the Oscars season, and the lowest hotel rates of the year outside the holidays. Rain, when it comes, comes in a few heavy storms. Spring (March to May) brings wildflowers in the hills, whale migration off Palos Verdes, the LA Marathon, and the coastal gray known as May Gray. Summer (June to September) is the beach, Dodger Stadium, the Hollywood Bowl season, June Gloom on the coast in the mornings, and heat in the Valley and inland that the beach cities never feel; it is also the busiest and most expensive season. Fall (October and November) is the local favorite: the ocean is at its warmest, the crowds have gone, and the Santa Ana winds bring the clearest skies of the year along with the fire risk that comes with them. Halloween, with the West Hollywood carnival, is enormous. Our month-by-month guide has the fare patterns that go with each season.

Los Angeles with kids

Few cities are easier with children. The theme parks are the obvious draw, but the free and cheap days are the ones families remember: the California Science Center and the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park, the La Brea Tar Pits, Griffith Observatory and the pony rides and merry-go-round in Griffith Park, the Santa Monica Pier and the beach path on rented bikes, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, and the tide pools at Abalone Cove. The Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park is a manageable size. Distances are the challenge: plan each day around one part of the city, and if you are driving, leave before eight or after ten. Our family car rental guide covers the vehicle question.

Los Angeles on a budget

Much of the best of Los Angeles is free: the beaches, Griffith Observatory and the park, the Getty Center and the Getty Villa, the Broad, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Olvera Street, the Venice boardwalk, Urban Light at LACMA, the Huntington on its free-admission days, and the hikes in Runyon Canyon and the Santa Monica Mountains. The Metro makes the sights cheap to reach, and daily fare capping means a heavy sightseeing day never costs more than a day pass. Eat from the trucks, the food halls and the strip malls rather than the hotel; a taco dinner for two costs less than a downtown cocktail. Hotel rates are lowest in January and February and in the weeks after Labor Day, and neighborhoods like Koreatown, Culver City and Pasadena are cheaper than the beach or Beverly Hills without being far from anything. Compare rates by neighborhood on our Los Angeles hotel search.

Day trips from Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a base for the whole of Southern California. San Diego is two hours south on Interstate 5, a fine city in its own right with the zoo, Balboa Park and Coronado; our Los Angeles to San Diego route guide and our San Diego guide cover it. Santa Barbara is ninety minutes north on the coast, with its Spanish mission and wine country behind it. Joshua Tree National Park is two and a half to three hours east, with Palm Springs and its mid-century architecture and aerial tramway on the way; both are best from October to April. Catalina Island is an hour by ferry from Long Beach or San Pedro, and the Channel Islands, from Ventura, are the wild version. Las Vegas is four hours up Interstate 15 and a classic road trip; our Los Angeles to Las Vegas route guide and our Las Vegas guide have the detail. All of these are car trips except Catalina and San Diego, which has Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner along the coast; see our Los Angeles car rental page. Visit California covers the wider state, and Discover Los Angeles, the official tourism board, keeps the city’s event calendar.

Two sample itineraries

Three days, no car

Day one: Metro to Hollywood for the Walk of Fame and the Chinese Theatre in the morning, a ride-hail or the DASH bus up to Griffith Observatory for the afternoon and sunset, dinner in Thai Town or Los Feliz. Day two: downtown on foot: the Broad and Disney Hall, lunch at Grand Central Market, Angels Flight, the Bradbury Building and the Last Bookstore, Olvera Street and Union Station, an evening in Little Tokyo or the Arts District, or a Dodgers game if they are home. Day three: the E Line to Santa Monica, the pier and a rented bike to Venice and back, a late lunch on Abbot Kinney, and sunset on the beach.

Five days, with a car

Add a day for the Getty Center and Museum Row on Wilshire, with Koreatown barbecue at night, then a day on the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu’s beaches and a canyon hike, and if the family is along, swap either for Disneyland. Pick the car up on the morning of day four so the city days are car-free and the hotel parking bill is short.

Practical details

• Transit: buy a TAP card at any Metro station or load one into your phone’s wallet, tap on every ride, and let the daily and weekly fare caps do the rest. LA Metro has maps; our transit-versus-car guide goes into detail.
• From LAX: the FlyAway bus to Union Station, the Metro connection from the airport’s transit center, a taxi or ride-hail from the LAX-it pickup lot, or a rental car. The airport’s site covers ground transport and the status of its new people-mover train.
• Weather: a light layer for the coast in every season, a warm one for winter evenings, sun protection year-round, and a rain jacket from December to March. The National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office is the forecast to check, especially for heat and fire-weather warnings.
• Time zone: Pacific, three hours behind New York.
• Entry requirements: Canadians need a valid passport; visitors from Visa Waiver Program countries need an approved ESTA before boarding, and everyone else needs a visa. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the authoritative source, and the TSA lists what you can carry through security.
• Safety: the tourist districts are as safe as any big American city’s; downtown’s Skid Row, a few blocks east of the historic core, is best avoided, and the usual awareness applies on the Metro late at night. Lock the car and leave nothing visible in it, anywhere.

Frequently asked questions

How many days do you need in Los Angeles?

Three full days covers Hollywood, downtown and the beach; five adds the Getty and Museum Row, Malibu or a theme park. A week lets you add San Diego, Joshua Tree or Santa Barbara.

What is the number one thing to do in Los Angeles?

Griffith Observatory at sunset, for the view of the Sign, the city and the ocean. After that, the Getty Center and a Dodgers game.

Is Los Angeles walkable?

District by district, yes: downtown, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, Koreatown, Pasadena and Old Town are all walkable on their own. Between districts, you ride the Metro or drive.

Do I need a car in Los Angeles?

Not for a three-day trip based near the Metro. For Malibu, the theme parks, the San Gabriel Valley and any day trip, yes. Most visitors do best with a hybrid: car-free city days, then a rental for the driving days.

Is Los Angeles expensive?

Hotels and car rental are pricey by American standards, especially at the beach and in summer; food and the sights are not, because so much of the best of both is cheap or free.

What is Los Angeles known for?

Hollywood and the film industry, the beaches and the surf culture, the freeways, the Dodgers and the Lakers, the 1932, 1984 and upcoming 2028 Olympics, the tacos, and the fact that it is a hundred neighborhoods looking for a city.

Ready to go? Compare flights to Los Angeles, find a place to stay with our Los Angeles hotel search, and if the coast or the desert is on the list, price a rental car for those days.