Four days in El Segundo and Downtown Los Angeles, California
Off the Beaten Path Itinerary
January and February of 2020 was an interesting time. My partner Anthony and I booked a trip in November 2019 to leave for LA in February. As the new year rolled around, we knew there was a virus but we had no idea the wave that was about to hit North America in just a couple of months.
In honor of this last trip before the COVID 19 locked down, I am sharing our trip itinerary, why we loved it and where we wish we would have had time to go!
1 day, 2 nights in El Segundo, California
Day 1 - Saturday: Dockweiler Beach, Santa Monica Pier, and Venice
Knowing that we were landing late into LAX we decided to stay somewhere near the beach and close to the airport! After so many hours of travelling, picking an airbnb closeby is honestly the best call you can make! The Uber ride was 7 minutes from the airport to 360 Dwell Hubs, which meant we were only 7 minutes away from a good night's rest!
On our first day in El Segundo, we kicked off the day with a beautiful long walk! If you enjoy walking like we do, 360 Dwell Hubs is well situated, it is close by a plaza (where they have an In-n-Out), downtown El Segundo (Main Street) is a 20 min walk away where you'll walk past beautiful trees, cute local shops and Dockweiler beach is nearby.
In order to maximize our sunny day on the coast, we rented bikes from Beach Side Market (around $40 CAD) and took off! We biked about 32km+ (20 miles) there and back which allowed us to see the Venice Canals, Venice Beach, and the Santa Monica Pier all in one day!
Pro tip: Sit and watch planes fly over! We discovered as we were biking that Dockweiler Beach is perfectly situated at the end of the runway from the LAX airport. I wish we would have brought our brunch to eat at the beach so we could have watched the planes fly over us!
3 days, 2 nights near Sunset Boulevard
Day 2 - Sunday: Melrose Trading Post, Downtown Los Angeles
Anthony and I wake up early when we are on vacation (the irony right? Wouldn't you want to sleep in later?!) to maximize our day. We checked out of 360 Dwell Hubs and before we got to our second Airbnb near Downtown LA (commonly referred to as DTLA), we made a pit stop to a highly recommended activity that is only open on Sundays-- Melrose Trading Post!
Melrose Trading Post is an outdoor flea market, located at Fairfax High School that sells clothes, trinkets, plants, jewelry and more! There are no lockers there to place your bags, so we browsed with all of our luggage. I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you want to browse freely but sometimes you’ve got to go with the flow! The Melrose Trading Post entrance fee was $7 USD (~$9 CAD).
After browsing the market, we took an Uber to our Airbnb that was located just off Hollywood Boulevard, dropped our stuff off and made our way to DTLA for our 1pm reservation at The Broad Museum.
Tickets for The Broad Museum are free, but you do have to reserve in advance to avoid waiting in a long line at the door. I was most excited to see the Infinity Mirrored Room-The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away as I missed some of Yayoi Kusama's work when it was on exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.
After a couple hours browsing through the museum, we took Damon and Jo’s recommendation and made our way to Grand Central Market in style. If you watched La La Land then you would be familiar with the Angel Flights Railway scene where Mia and Sebastian are kissing. Anthony being the team player that he is, let me have my La La Land moment! We (as in I) asked these lovely strangers to capture us, recreate that scene and snuck a quick kiss!
Grand Central Market is a perfect place to grab some food as there are a ton of options to choose from! If you go solo, you won't be dining solo for long! As you're in such close proximity with a bunch of people you probably will end up chatting with folks as you wait for your food!
Once we got to the market we were in awe and HUNGRY. It was a full sensory experience. The market was bustling with people from all over the world, the smell of food in the air made our mouths water, the sounds of pots clattering and people laughing created the perfect ambiance.
Photo Credit: Dave Mullen - Photo published in The Architect’s Newspaper
After we restored our energy levels with some delicious sushi, we made our way to the Bradbury Building. According to the U.S National Register Of Historic Places,
“The Bradbury Building, completed in 1893, was inspired by the architect's infatuation with the California light and by a description of a Utopian building in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. This fictional structure was "a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above....The walls were frescoed in mellow tints, to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior.””
Doesn’t that just read beautifully? It is an architectural landmark in DTLA that is a must see, even if it is just for a peek. Currently it is used as an office building, so entrance into the building is free but restricted to go up to the first floor landing. If you are interested in seeing the Bradbury Building along with some other historic buildings DTLA, I recommend to go on the Historic Downtown Walking Tour offered by the L.A. Conserveracy on Saturdays at 10 a.m when COVID-19 restrictions allow you to go inside. Currently, due to health concerns related to COVID-19, the tour is currently running as an exterior exploration of downtown Los Angeles.
Once we finished standing in awe at The Bradbury Building, we took another stroll and found ourselves taking pictures at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Honestly DTLA is an architectural feast. The Walt Disney Concert Hall has been a building I’ve been wanting to see since I saw the Frank Gehry exhibit in the Centre Pompidou Museum in Paris back in 2015 and learned about his unique architecture featured all over the world! I could not believe I was standing in front of it in real life! We tried going up to the rooftop terrace but did not have any luck. Unless you are going to see a show at the concert hall there isn’t much for the public to see.
Our last stop before grabbing some dinner was The Last Bookstore. In my opinion, I would classify The Last Bookstore as a hybrid bookstore / art installation. Both floors have books to browse, but the gems are on the top floor which is really fun to explore. Not only do you get a bird's eye view of the whole store but the second floor holds all of the ‘Instagrammable’ spots for pictures through a maze of books! If you are a bookworm, The Last Bookstore is definitely a place that should be on your list!
As we walked back to Grand Central Market for some food before we returned to our Airbnb for the night, we saw the location of Tom’s bench from 500 Days of Summer. I couldn’t believe that two of my favorite movie scenes were shot so close to each other! [The Angel Flights Railway (from La La Land) is just a half block away.] If you’re a fan of either of these movies make sure to keep an eye out while passing by.
Grand Central Market during the day is a bustling food market, but during the evening it is a total vibe. I would recommend having dinner here. There are tons of reasonably priced food options but there are also a couple of bars in the market so you can definitely turn visiting the market into a night out while enjoying the neon lights, the drinks, late night snacks, and the ambiance!
Day 3 - Hollywood Boulevard, Melrose Avenue, Rodeo Drive, and Hollywood Sign Hike
One of the things that shocked Anthony and I about Los Angeles were the amount of Lime/Bird Scooters everywhere. We scratched our curiosity and started our last full day in Los Angeles scooting around on a Lime Scooter along Hollywood Boulevard. Usually, I would be too scared to ride on the sidewalk during the day as there are many people around, but since we went in the early morning (like 8AM) the streets were empty. We freely browsed the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Chinese Theater, and the famous sunset strip!
Since we were in the mood for some pancakes, we did some research and found The Griddle Cafe... and let me tell you they didn’t disappoint! They were literally pan cakes - thick, tasty, and chocolatey! We were full only after a couple of bites, there’s a variety or options all for under 20$.
After a filling breakfast, we headed towards Melrose Avenue to walk it off. Around Melrose Ave there are tons of murals where you can take the perfect picture for the ‘gram. Anthony was an awesome #instagramboyfriend and took some pictures of me in front of Instagram hotspots like the classic LA wing mural, the Paul Smith ‘Pink Wall’, and some random murals we found walking around! As we were getting close to the meeting time for our Hollywood Sign Hike, we took a quick Uber to visit Beverly Hills to check out Rodeo Drive as it was closer to the meeting spot. We honestly had no reason to go to Beverly Hills/Rodeo Drive as we weren’t shopping but it was definitely fun to window shop and look out for any celebrities. As I was busy looking at the Google Maps app to find where our Uber was picking us up to take us to the hike, Anthony saw Mr.Big from Sex and the City! I joked with him that it wasn’t fair and that next time he would be the one guiding us as I browsed for celebrities!
We booked the Hollywood Sign Hike about a month in advance via Airbnb Experiences with a local tour company. We unfortunately arrived late (due to LA Traffic) to the meeting spot for the guided tour but continued on the hike by ourselves. We were a bit skeptical at the start of the hike as we were going through a neighbourhood, but now looking at the AllTrails map, it appears that we took the Hollywood Sign hike via Innsdale Drive which was a 3.8 mile hike (6.1km). We ended up taking the scenic route and it took about twice as long to arrive at the top of the Hollywood sign. After getting to the top, we decided to be overachievers and take the Mt.Chapel Trail to the Griffith Observatory which was an additional 3.2 miles to our hike (5.15 km). This impromptu hike added about two hours to our total time. If you are interested in doing the Hollywood sign hike and Griffith observatory, I recommend to go for the whole day, pack a lunch/snacks, refreshments, bring sunscreen, and a sweater for the evening as it gets chilly up at the top.
By the time we got to the Griffith Observatory, the sun was setting and night time quickly approaching. It was breathtaking to see the city from so high up with all of its lights on! Once we were ready to go we had a hard time ordering an Uber due to the poor cell reception. We eventually hopped on a city bus to get us down into the city and ordered an Uber from where it dropped us off back to our Airbnb to catch some needed rest.
Day 4 - Last morning before we started our road trip up to San Francisco!
On our last morning in Los Angeles, we checked out of our Airbnb and visited Santee Alley. As an entrepreneur I was interested in seeing wholesalers in real life as we don’t have many of these places in Ottawa or even in my hometown of Windsor, ON. Santee Alley has a huge latin influence from the noises of busy carts being pushed up and down the street to the aromas from the food stands -- it brought me back to shopping in Venezuela! From the Alley, we ordered an Uber to take us to the Fox Rental location near the airport and our Uber gave us one quick LA tour before dropping us off! He even let us out to take a quick picture in front of LACMA! It was a great way to end our time in Los Angeles!
Thanks for reading this blog post to the very end! If you’re interested in the locations mentioned above — check out this map guide. It has all the details and additional recommendations for your future trip to Los Angeles and areas up the coast to San Francisco.