San Fran to LA :)

[Confusedsolicitor123]

Hi everyone

In a moment of madness / brilliance (depending on how you look at it), my husband and I booked a flight from London to San Francisco on 24 February 2018 and from LA to London on 9 March 2018 (i.e. 13 nights/days), with the intention of visiting both cities and driving down the California coast (we know that certain sections of Highway 1 are closed / will be closed when we visit). The trip is to celebrate my 30th birthday (in early March 2018) and our “last big holiday” before we start thinking about starting a family.

We've booked 4 nights in San Fran, leaving 9 to drive to and stay off in LA.

From our research (which admittedly should have been done before we booked flights) there are so many amazing places in between San Francisco and LA that we are struggling to decide where to actually stay over! Also, I'm unsure how long we should stay in LA (I've heard mixed things).

So, if anyone has any suggestions/recommendations/tips I'd be very grateful.

Thanks

Op loads of long threads on this here, scroll back a bit. Loads of great info, I can't link on my phone. Also planning this trip looks utterly amazing, who did you book with I saw great flights with finnair and Norwegian air.

We did this road trip ! We did it in 3 weeks but spent 3 days in San Fran and at the end a week in LA we also stopped at mamouth mountain, palm springs (2 nights) and Vegas (3 nights) . Can't remember where else! It was amazing !

We did this a number of years ago, so not sure whether your route will be the same if the coast road is closed. Carmel/Monterrey are lovely, but only for a night or two.
Do your research on LA, we stayed in Santa Monica which was great.

We have stayed in Carmel and really like that area. 2/3 nights is fine. You can then go down to the St Louis Opisbo area and Santa Barbara (2 nights). We saw 4 Orcas off the coast there one February.

I think Santa Monica is the place to stay in the LA area rather than in LA itself. 4 nights minimum.

From here you can easily get to Malibu (the Getty Villa is lovely), into LA and we also went to Pasadena (The Huntington Art Gallery and Library) and also the wonderful Getty Cente in LA. One stunning building!

There are some interesting things to see in LA but some of it is yuk and touristy. If it's still there, the Max Factor building is a little gem. It still has the Art Deco make up booths and an interesting film costume museum with one of Marilyn's dresses. The stars in the street are covered with chewing gum and grubby so best avoided.

We drove along Mulholland Drive. Fantastic views. Had a little drive around Laurel Csnyon too - the LA community of singer song-writers in the 60s/70s. We also went to Paramount Studios but not the Disney-esque fun parks south of LA. In Feb you may find the Spirit Awards are being hosted on Santa Monica beach. Film star spotting if you get lucky! Santa Monica is very pleasant. LA is all about the car but if you avoid the motorways it is not that bad in Feb!

Thank you lovely ladies!

Definitely agree with Santa Monica and Santa Barbara. San Francisco is great too. And we loved monterey too. We did a 3 week round trip and went via yosemite and sequoia national parks and did the coast road on the way back. The national parks were by far my favourite part of the whole trip (as much as I loved the cities) you just cannot imagine how huge everything is! The sequoias, the cliff faces, the bears! Loved it!

Such a gorgeous drive. I did it from LA to San Fran a couple of years ago and Hearst Castle is brilliant if you’re into history and crazy architecture - the guy that built it is the real life man behind the character in Citizen Cane