L.A. is quite a diverse city — there’s something for everyone, whether you’re a foodie, hiker, sports fanatic, shopper, or music connoisseur. In my three years living in L.A., I’ve had the pleasure of hosting several friends who were visiting L.A. for the first time. Since everything in L.A. is so spread out and the city is infamously known for traffic (it’s amazing when there’s no traffic on a Saturday morning and you realize that things in L.A. aren’t so far away after all!), it’s worth the time to plan your itinerary in advance and group activities based on where they are. So I’ve compiled a few of my go-to excursions for these occasions. I begin with some suggested day excursions, and end with a list of L.A.-unique things you may want to check out if you’re here for longer! Feel free to adjust these according to your specific preferences and schedule.

Sunset/Evening at Griffith Observatory

Griffith Observatory is the classic L.A. touristy must-visit for first-timers, so I like to bring my friends here first, especially since they would usually arrive during the day, so it was the perfect thing to do in the evening. 

Always budget in extra time for traffic, getting lost, finding parking, and buying planetarium tickets on-site. You have to get your tickets like 15 minutes before the actual show starts (I missed the window by 5 minutes one time, and after that, I definitely made sure to budget extra time!). There’s paid parking close to the observatory, or there’s free parking lots at the bottom of the hill (as long as nothing’s going on at the Greek Theatre), so you’d walk about a mile or so to the top.

I would highly recommend getting here by sunset if you can! And once the sun sets and it gets dark, you get the really nice panorama, picturesque view of the bright lights of L.A. as well as the Hollywood sign.

The planetarium show is a must – their classic main one is Centered in the Universe. On a clear day you should also check out the telescope viewing – they have a large telescope where you can get a closeup view of the moon or Orion. Sometimes they also have smaller telescopes around the observatory. They also have museum exhibits, including a Tesla coil showing, that you can spend a good amount of time at.

The observatory closes at 10pm. If you’re not tired yet and still want more, some late-night options are grabbing a shake at In ‘n Out (there are a few locations not too far from Griffith) and getting drinks in Hollywood or downtown L.A./Arts District.

Santa Monica Beach Day

I feel like Santa Monica has become bougier over the years. It can be quite lively here, especially on the weekends. In the morning the beach is full of the energy of people walking, running, and rollerblading (I felt really motivated when running here, it really felt like we were all in this together!). There are also people doing workouts, doing yoga, playing volleyball, etc. Just picture people wearing Lululemon, walking the dog and talking on the phone, or doing a Crossfit workout, and there you have Santa Monica on a Saturday morning. In the evenings it is just as lively, if not more lively, with everyone out to relax and have a good time.

I typically would start the day with a hike in Pacific Palisades, which is north of Santa Monica. The Los Leones Trail is a popular one, but check out my full list of hikes! If you’re not into hiking, an alternative is to check out the Getty Villa, a museum on top of a hill in Malibu by the beach with a gorgeous view of the ocean that you can do in a couple of hours.

Then drive down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), aka Highway 1, and catch some gorgeous Malibu Beach views on your way to Santa Monica Beach for brunch/lunch! You could grab a lobster roll or fish plate at Malibu Seafood by the highway, or get to Santa Monica and have a nice bougie meal with a view of the ocean at Elephante (strongly recommend making reservations in advance, but they also do first-come-first-serve walk-ins at the bar), or enjoy a quick and refreshing lunch at Lemonade.

Parking can be a hassle around Santa Monica – do not assume that parking everywhere is free on Sundays! I found free parking on the residential streets around Idaho Ave, but make sure to read the parking signs because they’re all different — some of them only allow parking between 8am-6pm, while the metered parking might be free after 6pm, and others may only have street sweeping restrictions.

You can easily spend the rest of the day at Santa Monica Beach (pics below) at your leisure! You can walk down the Promenade on 3rd Street (a couple blocks of shops and restaurants) and continue down to Venice Beach and walk around the Venice Canals (bottom pics below).

Or if you want to rent a bike, you can bike south along the beach to Marina del Rey (below), Manhattan Beach, or as far as you want to go!

Then enjoy some hard kombucha at JuneShine – you can share a 3-cup or 6-cup flight with friends so you can try different flavors!

Have dinner in Santa Monica. Santa Monica has several different types of cuisines, from the very bougie to the less bougie. There’s good Japanese food, American, etc. If you still have room for dessert, there are quite a few delicious donut shops, including Holey Grail Donuts, Sidecar Donuts, and Randy’s Donuts. But don’t wait until closing time because they might run out!

Round out the day by watching the sunset on the beach – if it’s a clear day you just might see a gorgeous sunset with pinks and oranges!

End the evening with a stroll around the Santa Monica pier, which is now lighted up – you can ride the Ferris wheel, play arcade games, eat a funnel cake, or just walk along the pier and watch the fishermen do their thing. 

Griffith / Hollywood / Downtown L.A. Day

The Hollywood sign hike is a must-do L.A. thing. Griffith Park is huge — at over 4300 acres, Griffith Park is 4x the size of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and more than 5x the size of New York’s Central Park! There are over 50 miles of trails you can do! But if you’re just planning on doing one hike, the Hollywood Sign via Canyon Drive hike on AllTrails, about 6 miles / 3 hours total, will take you behind the Hollywood sign, where you get a nice 360º view of the surrounding scenery. Make sure to bring a hat and sunscreen as there isn’t much shade out there! Though when we went it was pretty cloudy.

For lunch, head over to Thai Town for some delicious Thai food (highly recommend Ruen Pair!), or enjoy some delicious brunch at Republique (seriously, everything I’ve tried on their brunch menu, from the croque madame and potato pancake to their pastries including the kimchi brioche and pies, has exceeded my expectations).

After lunch, check out the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a touristy downtown like street on Hollywood Blvd with the Hollywood stars embedded in the sidewalks, tourist souvenir shops, several theatres including the TCL Chinese Theatre where you can see actors’ signatures on the ground (and apparently can watch movies on extra-large screens), and shopping/eating.

If there’s still time left in the day, you can check out the Broad Museum (pics below) or Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), both contemporary art museums in downtown L.A., or the Grammy Museum. They are all relatively small and won’t take more than a couple hours each. At the Broad Museum, definitely check out the Kusama exhibit! You need to reserve separate tickets in advance, but we got a little lucky – the guy was nice and still let us in.

End the day with dinner/dessert in Koreatown (Surawon Tofu House and Sul & Beans for shaved ice are some of my go-tos!), Little Tokyo (lots of sushi and ramen as well as dessert options), or downtown (there’s some nice sit-down restaurants like Joey DTLA and Panini Kabob Grill).

Museum Day

You could spend a whole day just exploring the variety of museums L.A. has to offer. The Getty Center museum in Brentwood (not to be confused with the Getty Villa in Malibu) is a huge museum at the top of a hill that you take a tram to get to. It has beautiful architecture, a spacious garden, and spectacular view of the city. The collections of J. Paul Getty, businessman and art collector, formed the basis of the museum. He established the J. Paul Getty Trust, which operates the Getty Center and Getty Villa. You probably want to budget at least half a day here. Admission is free (though parking is $25) and a timed-entry reservation is required. If you go to the Getty Museum, you could pair it with delicious Japanese food in Sawtelle and Saffron & Rose for Persian ice cream.

You can also check out the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), which will also take a few hours as LACMA is the largest art museum in the Western U.S.! It hosts a variety of diverse cultures and exhibitions, and has the famous Urban Light street lamps display outside it. Right next to it is the La Brea Tar Pits, which is the only active urban fossil dig site in the world, where according to their website, plants and animals from the last 50,000 years are discovered every day. The Tar Pits help us understand the abundance of natural history that lies within and beneath L.A.! The museums are near Hollywood, so you could pair that with a nice restaurant in Melrose.

Pasadena/Huntington Library Day

If you have another day to spare, spend a day in the Pasadena area!

Start the day with dim sum in Monterey Park/San Gabriel Valley (e.g. Alice’s Kitchen, NBC Seafood, Mama Lu’s Dumpling House, Five Star Seafood), an area known for their Asian food, or get some tacos at Guisados Tacos. You can also find a pretty bougie downtown area in Pasadena with some nice restaurants and shopping.

I would recommend reserving a good part of the day to visit the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. They have a few museums, but my favorite part is wandering the spacious grounds and beautiful botanical gardens, especially in springtime when everything is lush and colorful and in full bloom. I love the Japanese and Chinese gardens, as well as the California cacti gardens and the rose garden, but there are seriously so many! You can also have afternoon tea at the Rose Garden Tea Room. You can make reservations at their website: https://huntington.org/.

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Other L.A.-Worthy Things to Check Out

If you have the chance to hang in L.A. for a little longer, here are some other unique L.A.-worthy things I would highly recommend!

Music, Theatre, and Comedy!

Enjoy a jazz or classical concert at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to the L.A. Philharmonic. The hall is located right in the heart of downtown next to the Broad museum. The concert hall is spectacular, even just the outside is worth seeing!

The one L.A. thing I didn’t get to do was see a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, an outdoor concert venue – they put on a host of wonderful events in the summer that feature jazz, classical, and movie/musical themes, and it looks amazing. I also have been recommended the Dorothy Chandler theater, but sadly also have not had a chance to check it out. And of course, the Pantages theater is the place to go for Broadway musicals.

If you’re into comedy, look no further! There are an abundance of comedy clubs around L.A., including the Hollywood Bowl, Comedy Store, and Laugh Factory. I went to a rooftop comedy show at Grand Central Market with up-and-coming comedians that was quite fun. I only very recently discovered the United Theater in downtown—a hidden gem, gorgeous, Baroque-style theater, where I saw Tom Papa as part of the Netflix is a Joke Festival (and laughed a ton).

Outdoor Malls

L.A. is home to a few nice outdoor malls that are great places to hang out, eat, watch a movie, and of course, shop. The Century City Mall, the Americana (Glendale mall), and the Grove (where the Taylor Swift concert film opening night took place) are worth checking out.

Watch a Live Taping of a Show!

I didn’t even realize this was a thing until I moved to L.A., but you can watch your favorite shows being taped live, and it’s completely free! All you need to do is reserve your tickets in advance (or win a lottery, depending on the show), and get there early as they usually book more people than there are seats to make sure that every seat is filled. The first show I saw was the Kelly Clarkson show (which has since moved to NYC). We had to apply, i.e. write a couple paragraphs describing how much we love the Kelly Clarkson show, and then we got tickets and it was a blast! It was especially insightful to see the behind-the-scenes of how a show is taped (they’re taped out of order, there’s bloopers, etc.) and how difficult being in the media/entertainment industry can be. For Jeopardy! the process was more straightforward, I just had to book tickets a few days in advance online. If you’re visiting from out of town, I would book tickets in advance to make sure you can get the dates you want, especially if you have to go through a lottery or application process for the show. You can also apply for the lottery to be a seatfiller at shows like the Grammy Awards, but those are way more competitive so you have to get really lucky to get one of those seats! Other shows you can check out are Wheel of Fortune, The Voice, The Price is Right, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Dancing with the Stars, America’s Got Talent, and American Idol!

Magic Castle

The Magic Castle is a clubhouse of the Academy of Magical Arts, a magician’s academy in Hollywood. It’s quite exclusive – invite-only if you’re not a member. I had the opportunity to go once, and couldn’t pass it up – after all, this is as “Hollywood” as it gets!

It was an interesting experience. They have shows every night, including brunch on the weekends. They have a strict dress code – men wear a tie, and women wear gala/cocktail attire (dresses don’t have to be floor-length, thankfully). For the evening shows, you can get there as early as 5pm. The castle is actually not so large – there’s a main floor with the bar and showrooms including the big main show room, a smaller room downstairs (for more casual shows), and the dining room upstairs. They have 20-minute shows every hour or so, and the main show after dinner (depending on your reservation time). I saw all the magic tricks I could think of that evening and more – card tricks, pulling stuff out of hats, items appearing and disappearing as suddenly as they had come, a woman walking behind a curtain and coming out the other side with a new outfit, magicians guessing cards drawn out of a deck, or transferring them between sealed envelopes. Many of the people there were very into the magic shows – I’m guessing they were members and more regular attendees. It was pretty wild to me that some people grow up wanting to be magicians, and working at the Magic Castle is their childhood dream!

If you go, be prepared to spend some $$$. If a member sends you an invitation, you’re required to order a dinner entree ($45 and up), in addition to paying the entrance fee of $40 or $45, depending on what day of the week you go. There’s also a $30 valet parking fee. So yea, it adds up. But if you have the chance to go, I would say it was worth it, at least as a one-time experience!

Universal Studios

If you’ve got a full day to spare, Universal Studios can make for a really fun day! If this is your first time, the Studio Tour (1-hour train ride) is a must. The rides range from actual rollercoasters like Revenge of the Mummy and Jurassic World (like Splash Mountain) to the indoor simulated rides like the Simpsons Ride, Transformers, and Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey (my personal favorite) to the more chill but fun ones like Mario Kart and Secret Life of Pets. My best tips are to take advantage of the single rider lines when available, go on a weekday if you can for shorter lines and better prices, and note that the lines are typically shortest at the beginning and end of the day.

Watch a Sports Game

If you’re a sports fan, L.A. has plenty to offer! Watch a Dodgers baseball game and eat a Dodger dog at the Dodgers stadium – if you go on a Friday night they might have a drone show afterwards! Or watch a Clippers or Lakers basketball game, or a Kings hockey game, at the Crypto.com Arena!