These are the things to do in Los Angeles

The best things to do in Los Angeles

With surf, sea and sun on tap, there's plenty of amazing things to do in the home of Hollywood

10 March 2023

Los Angeles may be the birthplace of Hollywood, but there is so much more to this city than red carpets and movie stars (although there are still plenty of those). The city is sprawling, making it an enjoyable, multidimensional visit that offers many activities for holidaymakers of all ages. There are plenty of amazing things to do in Los Angeles, and with a thriving art scene, an exciting hotch-potch of restaurants and bars to choose from, plus surf, sea and sun on tap, there’s a reason why it’s still the number one city on the West Coast.

What month is the best to visit Los Angeles?

Los Angeles is lucky enough to have beautiful weather year-round, but some months reign supreme. We recommend going to LA in the early autumn or late spring for milder weather and more manageable crowds.

How many days should I spend in Los Angeles?

Los Angeles is huge, and the public transport system leaves little to be desired, so you will likely be driving between activities. If you have the time and want to get to know the city, we recommend spending five days to avoid feeling rushed. This amount of days means you can enjoy all the things to do in Los Angeles while not rushing from Abbot Kinney boulevard to the Griffith Observatory.

Eat the best tacos in town
LA is famous for its food trucks, and perhaps none more so than the ubiquitous taco truck, which you’ll find parked curbside everywhere from Boyle Heights to Beverly Hills. But the best in the city can be found at Tacos 1986, where their lively taquero Jorge Alvarez-Tostado (known by everyone as ‘Joy’) serves up LA’s most sought-after Tijuana-style tacos. Best of all, you no longer need to refresh your Twitter feed every five seconds to track down their latest truck location, because they’ve just opened their first bricks and mortar spot in Downtown LA.
Address: Tacos 1986, 609 South Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014
Griffith Observatory
Enjoy a spot of star gazing
The Art Deco Griffith Observatory is one of the city’s most prominent landmarks, up high in the Hollywood Hills, and offers stellar views of both the sprawling city below and the twinkling skies above. Its Samuel Oschin Planetarium puts on daily shows exploring the cosmos and there are free public telescopes available every evening, as well as monthly star gazing parties held on the front lawn. The observatory has also made guest appearances in several iconic films, including La La Land and Rebel Without A Cause.
Address: Griffith Observatory, 2800 East Observatory Road, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: griffithobservatory.org
Getty Images
Trawl for vintage treasures
The city’s monthly Rose Bowl Flea Market has garnered near mythical status among LA’s stylists, who come on the second Sunday of every month to hunt through the sprawling rabbit warren of stalls for everything from vintage clothes and furniture to wonderfully weird collectibles. Bargain hunters should also head to the weekly Melrose Trading Post Flea Market, which is held on the campus of Fairfax High School every Sunday and has 250 stalls packed with eclectic bric-a-brac.
Address: Rose Bowl Flea Market, 1001 Rose Bowl Drive, Pasadena, California, CA 91103; Melrose Trading Post Flea Market, 7850 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90046
Website: rosebowlstadium.com/events/flea-market; melrosetradingpost.org
Take a stroll down the coolest block in America
Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice has regularly been touted as the hippest shopping street, not just in LA but in the whole of the US. A few blocks inland from Venice Beach, this mile-long strip is lined with chic household brands, including Aesop, James Perse and Rag & Bone, as well as independent boutiques like the carefully curated homewares store Tumbleweed & Dandelion, which is housed in a charming bungalow with a white picket fence. Head to the Boulevard on the first Friday of every month for their food truck extravaganza, where you’ll find everything from Korean BBQ and overloaded hotdogs to meatless Nashville-style hot chicken.
Address: Abbot Kinney and Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: abbotkinneyblvd.com

Getty Villa
Get a dose of culture in the great outdoors
LA may not be famous for its theatres, but they do exist – you just need to look a little harder for them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the city’s climate, the most popular ones are open-air. The 500-seat amphitheatre at the Getty Villa in Malibu, J Paul Getty’s museum inspired by ancient Rome and Greece, is always packed out come September, when they run their annual series of classical productions. Past sell-out productions have included Euripides’ The Bacchae and Plautus’s Tug of War.
Address: Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman Theatre at the Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
Website: getty.edu
Katie Gibbs
Discover Downtown’s most talked-about new development
Spanning across 32 acres, ROW DTLA is one of LA’s most ambitious and exciting new projects. Rows and rows of fruit and veg warehouses have been repurposed and transformed into cool boutiques, modern art galleries and buzzing restaurants, all housed within a block of blissfully car-free streets. It’s as much of a hit with the city’s foodies, who come for the first LA outpost of the insanely popular San Francisco-born bakery, The Manufactory, and the weekly Sunday food market, Smorgasburg, as it is with the fashion crowd, who flock here to discover under-the-radar brands.
Address: ROW DTLA, 777 South Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021
Website: rowdtla.com
Where to eat in downtown LA
Explore the largest art museum in the western United States
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (referred to as LACMA) has an incredible collection of nearly 150,000 works spanning 6,000 years. Their permanent collection features prominent works by Matisse, Kandinsky and Giacometti, to name just a few, and seminal exhibitions have included retrospectives of van Gogh and Picasso. The museum is now as famous for its sculptures as its paintings, with a huge Jeff Koons balloon animal in the main courtyard and Chris Burden’s much-Instagrammed ‘Urban Light’ lamppost installation outside the front of the museum.
Address: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Website: lacma.org
Track down some literary gems
There’s no lovelier way to wile away a few hours than perusing stacked shelves in a bookshop, and The Last Bookstore in Downtown LA is one of the best places to do just that. Housed in a former bank, this sprawling shop – the largest used and new book and record store in California – is filled with labyrinthine rows of books, as well as some truly astonishing literary installations. Head upstairs and you’ll be met by books hanging in mid-air as they erupt from shelves, as well as entire tunnels built out of leather-bound tomes.
Address: The Last Bookstore, 453 South Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Telephone: +1 213 488 0599
Website: lastbookstorela.com
Soak up some Cali beachside living
Santa Monica’s most popular spot for sunset cocktails is Élephante, an ocean-facing bar and restaurant that looks like a cross between a Tulum beach bar and Soho House. Inside you’ll find artfully arranged cacti plants and lashings of reclaimed wood, but the best spot is on the terrace, where you can drink rounds of their potent signature cocktail – your choice of spirit mixed with passion fruit, lemon, meletti and Calabrian chilli – and watch the sun set over the ocean. Just don’t keep your eyes glued to that horizon for too long, or you’ll miss all the excellent people-watching opportunities.
Address: Élephante, 1332 Second Street, Santa Monica, CA 90401
Website: elephantela.com