What Are the Best Things to Do in Los Angeles in One Day?
Los Angeles is an enormous city, practically changing its look in nearly every corner. It offers a great variety of locations to walk around the area, from the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the iconic Hollywood Sign to the high-end districts of Beverly Hills, the coastal towns of Santa Monica, and the trendy Venice Beach.
The problem with visiting such a huge city is how to squeeze a large number of highlights into one brief day.
A well-planned city tour will help you avoid wasting most of your day driving from attraction to attraction. You can still visit a number of places and at the same time, enjoy the city through your organized plan.
Here is a simple but useful one-day Los Angeles city tour designed for first-time visitors, families, couples, and short-stay tourists who want to make the most of a full day private tour Los Angeles experience.
Start Your Day in Hollywood
Hollywood is a clear choice to start the first-time visitors’ tour of Los Angeles. Begin your morning in Hollywood Boulevard, where you may see the Hollywood Walk of Fame and check TCL Chinese Theatre at your pace.
The Walk of Fame runs for quite some distance on the side streets of Hollywood. It has thousands of stars dedicated to movie stars, TV personalities, musicians, and stage actors. Although this spot will probably have a lot of people hanging around, it’s not a good idea to go there expecting to be able to take selfies and do everything without a rush.
This is another idea you can try: take pictures from a few places that provide a nice Hollywood sign view. As much as you might want to get near the sign, the sign itself is not easily accessible.
Pick up a quick history of how the entertainment scene in LA got world-famous for a first-time visitor just from Hollywood itself.
Hollywood is a place to start with because its movie culture is an important part of what makes LA unique.
Explore Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive
When you are done with Hollywood, proceed to Beverly Hills. This is a region of the city that you might not even think about compared to Hollywood, and yet it is completely different with its tree-dotted avenues, grand houses, high-end fashion retail outlets, and famous sites.
It doesn’t matter whether you intend to shop or not; just strolling around Rodeo Drive and getting pictures of the street and shopfronts around will be a fun part of your day. If your budget allows, you can try out some of these designer stores too.
You may also want to spend time checking out Beverly Hills’s major avenues and the places in them that have played a role in celebrity culture since they have become well-chronicled sites.
Going to be both Hollywood and Beverly Hills in one day is ideal, particularly for the first visit to LA, since both are the contrasting sides to the city they are showing!
Sunset Boulevard by Car
A car ride along Sunset Boulevard is one of the old LAX tourist attractions at a different angle.
With the highway that links and passes through several neighborhoods, you get a feel of a city where a whole new neighborhood can appear with a small turn.
While you travel on these streets, your first impression might be quite different from a more urban setting. If it suits your time and traffic conditions, you are likely to manage your photo stops at some of the landmarks en route as well.
Therefore, having your own plan on how to spend your day realistically is important.
As the city is sprawled over an enormous amount of land, traffic is another factor which makes travel time very unpredictable.
Santa Monica is Waiting
Go further to the west and enjoy Santa Monica, one of the most well-liked seaside areas in LA. Santa Monica Pier is the most famous landmark in the surrounding vicinity. This pier is situated on the Pacific coast and can offer stunning scenery, especially when there are no clouds in the sky. Take a stroll at the waterfront and enjoy the ocean ambiance at your best; besides, you can snap photos. You may even decide to visit nearby avenues and boutiques before heading off on the rest of the journey. A visit to Santa Monica while experiencing Los Angeles for the first time is definitely not to be missed because it gives you a taste of what an alternative life from that of movie stars and the rich in Beverly Hills is.
Venice Beach Is Worth Visiting
If time permits, go all the way from Santa Monica and end up at Venice Beach.
Apart from its relaxed vibe, Venice is a destination known for vibrant surroundings, street performers, a variety of outdoor activities, and a very well-known boardwalk. This is one of the places you can have the real and most informal creative side of an urban giant revealed through your eyes.
You can take advantage of your time here and enjoy the environment, walk across the boardwalk, and capture some photographs even for a short visit.
Of course, if your priority is to spend most of the time at Santa Monica, it will be perfectly fine if Venice is left behind or at least a very brief stop there is made.
How to See More Without Feeling Rushed
The real issue when doing a one-day LA trip doesn’t really lie in the quantity of attractions to visit.
Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica aren’t all in the same block. The time that is lost due to traffic, parking, figuring out the way, and deciding where you will stop are all major causes of a quick vacation being over.
For this reason, among others, travelers who are very limited in their time will usually choose the option of a full-day private tour of Los Angeles at the expense of their limited day.
In the context of a full private tour service, you’d usually get a car and an experienced, reliable tour director in addition to that freedom to design your itinerary only around those places that would be of most importance for your group. This way, instead of yourself being the one who figures out every stop, you will have the chance to look around for the sights, absorb the beauty of the city, and just learn the local culture and history.
A private tour can also be a very good option, especially if a family is coming, an older person is there, two or more couples are there, or some visitors want to keep stress away from trying to maneuver driving in a strange city.
Is a Los Angeles Full Day Private Tour Worth It?
When travelers have limited days to enjoy a city, sometimes a smooth operation that doesn’t require much effort is just as vital to them as the volume of attractions being visited.
A Los Angeles full-day private tour is a highly effective solution when you feel inspired to do a one-day journey covering multiple areas. Your tour itinerary can feature Hollywood, Beverly Hills, the Fashion Avenue of Rodeo Drive, Santa Monica, Venice Beach, the Hollywood Sign, as well as many other hot spots based on your preferences and the available time.
This option may also be a nice change as compared to a fixed group itinerary since with the former, more freedom is guaranteed, and one’s preferences in choosing the places to stay will be respected. You can, for example, talk with your guide and arrange your priorities accordingly.
Once again, the time for the tour, the starting point where the car is provided, whether an individual car would be the case or not, what group size it is for, the details about the vehicle, etc.
A One-Day LA Trip Itinerary Sample?
You probably will not know better than the local guides who can recommend places and the best routes; however, if a simple layout is all that you need, the following should work very well for you:
- Morning visit: Rodeo Drive in Santa Monica
- Mid-morning: Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive
- Sun down: Sunset Boulevard, followed by Santa Monica
- Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach in late afternoon
- Night: Stay at your hotel or, if you fancy it, take part in other evening plans.
The time of arrival will depend upon the traffic level and starting point, meal, rest times, and how much time you decide to spend at each place.
Take Advantage of Your One Day in LA
Los Angeles, with its huge sprawl, cannot be covered in a single day, but with a bit of planning you can see many of its most famous spots.
Don’t be too ambitious – limit yourselves to only those places that mean everything to you. Grouping the locations that are in close proximity to each other and allowing for traffic jams and delays is another smart way.
In case the only thing that’s on your mind for this trip is to get the feeling of Los Angeles by visiting its major attractions without dealing with driving and parking yourself, a great idea is a private tour Los Angeles city full-day experience. Such tours, indeed, turn a day of sightseeing under time pressure into something much easier to manage for those who have very little time.
Especially for visitors who come for the first time, a Los Angeles full-day private tour is just the best way to enjoy city sightseeing in a relaxed way!