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Hi frequent travellers.
Having a 2 day trip to LA (Early May) – first time – where do you advise to stay? Are there any areas to avoid or not particular nice? Is transport, public or not, alright in LA? Any general advice?
Having status with IHG and had a look at their options, does it make sense to stay at the IC or something like the Kimpton Every in Hollywood more preferable?
We don’t have an issue walking lots and it is main mode of sightseeing during trips.
Thank you!
Yes but not the IC Downtown.
Walking and Uber can work well.
Which LA airport are you leaving from?
We stayed at the Kimpton Le Peer in West Hollywood – would 100% recommend it. WH is one of the few walkable areas of LA.
You literally cannot walk in LA to the major attractions, the entire city is linked by vast freeways and public transport is awful.
If you can hire a car, do. Otherwise you will need to Uber from area to area.
We have always stayed in Santa Monica but we haven’t been for about 8 or 9 years. If you like burgers you have to try In-N-Out.
It depends on how you plan to get around and what you want to do while there. LA isnt really walkable and public transport is quite slow.
From the everly, hollywood is walkable (also a subway line just down the street that will cut out the 20m walk if you prefer), santa monica is accessible by a bus (takes 1h+ and from santa monica, venice is walkable) that also goes past beverley hills and la brea tar pits, griffith observatory is walkable and the subway line goes to downtown if you happen to be getting the airport bus from downtown. Its also walkable to the nearby in n out (which is literally the best thing LA :])
From the IC, you’d basically be doing the same as the above to get tho those places but having to get the metro from downtown to hollywood first and other than downtown, Im not sure that its easier to get to anything else.
“We don’t have an issue walking lots and it is main mode of sightseeing during trips”
If you enjoy walking round interesting towns and cities, LA is the very last place on earth you should visit. It isn’t a city at all, just an unimaginably vast (and slightly smoggy) collection of suburbs. Given car ownership is in no way optional, public transport is negligible and usage is limited to desperate and the near destitute.
My honest advice would be rent a car, head up the coast for an hour or so to Santa Barbara and spend two days walking round there. Or the other way to San Diego if you want a full-sized city.
Having a 2 day trip to LA (Early May) – first time – where do you advise to stay? Are there any areas to avoid or not particular nice? Is transport, public or not, alright in LA? Any general advice?
Having status with IHG and had a look at their options, does it make sense to stay at the IC or something like the Kimpton Every in Hollywood more preferable?
We don’t have an issue walking lots and it is main mode of sightseeing during trips.
Ok, so I did LA with a mate in November last year and walked around 100km during our 6 days. Everyone’s idea of “lots of walking” differs of course.
We did it on a budget, and stayed at The Biltmore in downtown LA. A perfectly decent hotel, you may recognise from the original Ghostbusters film, that was a 3 minute walk from the nearest Wholefoods for the takeaway hot Breakfast and supper buffets. It’s on the doorstep of a few metro stations to make it easy to get to Long Beach, Santa Monica or Hollywood strip. We took the Coach from LAX to Union Station and walked to the Biltmore with our luggage on the inbound – all seemed perfectly safe to me.
Public Transport is ok, it’s fairly busy. Every carriage on the metro seems to come with a statutory individual with mental health issues who will sing or play music loudly. Smoking of materials (crack?) seems to be openly tolerated on the Metro, we moved away so we weren’t breathing it in. We also mixed in Ubers, eg to reach the Getty, with the Metro.
LA is a big sprawling city so too big to walk everywhere. A good central safe place we stay is West Hollywood, our go to place is The London but not part of a chain, if you search for hotels in West Hollywood you’ll see the chains. From WEHO you can walk to Hollywood and Bev Hills. It’s a good idea to book a half day tour – loads available. Just make sure the observatory and Venice beach are included.
Interesting insights everyone – appreciate it.
We are leaving. from LAX.
There is no particular expectations from LA and we are aware that public transport is subpar and the city is not pedestrian friendly either.
We are not looking to walk everywhere but we appreciate a few hours walk a day even if that can only take place by the seaside or Beverly Hills as it seems to be walkable. Definitely we are not looking to go to hop-off major attractions by walking.
Andrew – 100km walk over 6 days sounds like us, any particular recommendations?
Any must-sees for such a limited time?
Hi stayed at manhatten beach, really nice great restaurants and not to far to from the airport
Certainly not the best walking/public transport city, but still a great place to visit despite some of the naysayers. I think two days is very limited for what is a sprawling huge area. I’d settle on one or two areas, wouldn’t argue with the West Hollywood suggestion, or Santa Monica. The problem with a short visit is you become very limited to how much you can see as the traffic is horrendous, and the public transport takes a long time to get around. Have a look at a previous LA thread, link below.
https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/thank-you-now-please-help-plan-my-la-trip/
Andrew – 100km walk over 6 days sounds like us, any particular recommendations?
We had to do the classic. Take the free/low cost bus up to the Observatory, then walk up to the Hollywood sign. On the way back we also walked back from the Observatory to Hollywood strip. It’s about 9km return walk from the Observatory.
Now that the trip has come to an end I thought I come back to this thread.
We decided to stay one night in LA before moving on to Colombia and Cartagena on a late evening flight giving us plenty of time to explore.
We chose the Kimpton Palomar Beverly Hills. The hotel is located basically in Westwood which is lovely. We spent the one full day we had walking to Beverly Hills and exploring the surrounding area which we loved! Next, was a ride to Santa Monica Pier and a walk to Venice and Venice Beach before we made our way back to pick up our stuff and head to the airport. Close to 14miles/22k without the morning running tour of the UCLA Campus.
I can safely say that the area we stayed and Beverly Hills are walkable and nice to walk around! We came to LA with bottom low expectations and we were pleasantly surprised.
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