Los Angeles

Sun, surf, Hollywood dreams and the world's most diverse food scene.

Los Angeles is the most sprawling, car-dependent and cinematically mythologised metropolis in the United States — a city that has been dreamed about, discussed, dismissed and reinvented so many times that arriving for the first time feels like entering a familiar scene from a thousand films and television shows. It is also a place of extraordinary cultural diversity, excellent food (some of the finest Mexican, Japanese, Korean and Ethiopian cooking in North America), and a natural setting of rare beauty — beaches, mountains and desert within an hour's drive in any direction. The visitor's LA is concentrated along the Westside and coastal strip: Santa Monica pier and beach, Venice Beach's boardwalk, the Getty Center (Richard Meier's hilltop museum with outstanding European paintings and Pacific views), the Griffith Observatory (panoramic views and excellent astronomy), the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Getty Villa (Roman villa with Greek and Roman antiquities) and the LA County Museum of Art. Beyond the tourist infrastructure, LA rewards those who drive and explore: the Grand Central Market downtown for extraordinary multicultural street food, Koreatown for the finest Korean barbecue outside Seoul, Silver Lake and Los Feliz for independent bookshops and cafés, Malibu for surf and celebrity, Joshua Tree for desert camping under extraordinary night skies. The Los Angeles food truck scene is extraordinary. The Broad and MOCA are world-class contemporary art museums.