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What to do in Los Angeles??


Kiwi_cruiser
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I have never been to Los Angeles before...

 

What would you recommend doing in Los Angeles for a first time visitor?? and what is the best way to get around Los Angeles?? ( Also is there a hop on / off bus?)

 

Our ship is spending overnight in Los Angeles.

 

PS: One of our visits to Los Angeles will be in March 2019, what would the weather be like around then?, I suspect it could be cool/cold!?

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I have never been to Los Angeles before...

 

What would you recommend doing in Los Angeles for a first time visitor?? and what is the best way to get around Los Angeles?? ( Also is there a hop on / off bus?)

 

Our ship is spending overnight in Los Angeles.

 

PS: One of our visits to Los Angeles will be in March 2019, what would the weather be like around then?, I suspect it could be cool/cold!?

 

First note that Los Angeles is a VERY BIG city—both in terms of population and in area. The city is not just the city limits of the incorporated “City of Los Angeles” but also the metropolitan area includes about 100+ smaller incorporated and unincorporated cities, some surrounded entirely within the City of Los Angeles. It can take hours to get across the city from one end to the other…

If you were to visit Los Angeles on other than a cruise port stop, I would advise spending several days and staying in a convenient location such as Santa Monica or elsewhere on the “West Side”…

 

But, being there on a cruise stop, note that your ship will likely stop in San Pedro…or possibly Long Beach (Most cruise lines use San Pedro…Long Beach is used by Carnival with the rare visit by Princess or Cunard). The two port cruise facilities are both in the harbor area (on opposite sides of the harbor), about 30 miles south of most of the more popular tourist sites.

The things tourists most want to see are spread out throughout the metropolitan area, but the largest concentration are between Hollywood and Santa Monica—all a good 30 to 90 minutes drive north of the harbor, depending on traffic.

 

There IS a HOHO bus tour in Los Angeles…with quite an extensive route map. But it does not go anywhere near the harbor. You would have to get up to Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Hollywood or Downtown LA to catch it. If you wanted a “standard” LA tour, best to sign on to an organized package tour…Most tour companies, however, do not pick up at the harbor. One very popular tour company who does is “Sunseeker Tours”:

https://sunseekertours.com/

They are based in Long Beach and will pick up at either Long Beach or San Pedro and arrange your tour to return you to the ship on time.

 

That said, the typical highlights of Los Angeles are pretty much described in Sunseeker's tour description found here:

https://sunseekertours.com/our-tours/cruise-terminal-tours/

 

Other than that, say you wanted to do something independently, many people like to visit the amusement parks: Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, Universal Studios are popular...but often crowded, expensive and not really all that easy to do.

Others like to tour movie or television studios. Museums are a major attraction: The Getty Center is a world class art museum, as is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The Getty Villa is a spectacularly situated display of antiquities. There are several other museums scattered around the city with everything from modern art to automobiles to aerospace to a variety of odd subjects...none are close to the harbor.

 

If you wished to stay in the harbor area, you could visit the Queen Mary and the Aquarium of the Pacific--both in Long Beach and close to the cruise terminals--but you really wouldn't be seeing much of Los Angeles.

 

Good luck and have fun...

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm not the OP, but thank you to everyone who has posted ideas so far of things to do. We will be in LA from 7am-11pm on our cruise in September and I'm starting to wonder about what to do, so your suggestions are very helpful!

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I'm not the OP, but thank you to everyone who has posted ideas so far of things to do. We will be in LA from 7am-11pm on our cruise in September and I'm starting to wonder about what to do, so your suggestions are very helpful!

 

Just to give you a better idea of the scale of LA, it's 63 miles north-to-south, and

there's both a 10,000' mountain and cruise docks inside the city limits. Then add

in the "small" adjacent cities like Long Beach (pop. 500k), Anaheim (pop. 400k), ....

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I'm not the OP, but thank you to everyone who has posted ideas so far of things to do. We will be in LA from 7am-11pm on our cruise in September and I'm starting to wonder about what to do, so your suggestions are very helpful!

 

 

 

September- October are often our hottest months because of the Santa Ana winds that come in. If you want to keep it simple and don’t need to see Hollywood or Amusement parks, than you could Uber over to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, walk along the marina and have lunch at Seaside Village. All of this is a short ride Uber ride to the Queen Mary if you have time. Then it’s a short ride back to the ship.

 

 

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One thing I'd actually recommend AGAINST is any special trip to the see the Hollywood sign.

 

You can only get so close

 

[YOUTUBE]20mVpwStB5o[/YOUTUBE]

 

You can probably see it from the plane

 

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Or other places like local malls

 

[YOUTUBE]DUxjGLNSJ8Y[/YOUTUBE]

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September- October are often our hottest months because of the Santa Ana winds that come in. If you want to keep it simple and don’t need to see Hollywood or Amusement parks, than you could Uber over to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, walk along the marina and have lunch at Seaside Village. All of this is a short ride Uber ride to the Queen Mary if you have time. Then it’s a short ride back to the ship.

 

 

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Thank you for the suggestions! Will definitely keep in mind. And thanks for the heads up about the weather, too - I had no idea Sept/Oct can be hot in LA (that's when it starts to cool down where I'm from!)

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Thank you for the suggestions! Will definitely keep in mind. And thanks for the heads up about the weather, too - I had no idea Sept/Oct can be hot in LA (that's when it starts to cool down where I'm from!)

 

 

 

In recent years with the warmer ocean temperatures we’ve also had some monsoonal rains come up from Mexico. So just look ahead and you should be fine.

 

 

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Weather can be very variable at this time of year (March thru May). We've had some overcast days recently, but today it might actually get into the 90s due to the Santa Ana winds (I live where it's really windy -- my community is one of the go-to's for news crews shooting a wind story) and I'm about to go on a highway that gets very affected by windy conditions as it goes through the mountains:o:o.

 

We have a condition in May called "May Gray" and in June called "June Gloom." For a reason.

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Yeah...lots of fun today...

High in Downtown LA of 96...94 in Woodland Hills, 93 in Camarillo...San Gabriel Valley 95... Yes, it's April 9...and SNOWING in a lot of the rest of the country...

 

Of course, people visiting here from colder places think this is heaven...they can go home and show off their tans...

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Yeah...lots of fun today...

 

High in Downtown LA of 96...94 in Woodland Hills, 93 in Camarillo...San Gabriel Valley 95... Yes, it's April 9...and SNOWING in a lot of the rest of the country...

 

 

 

 

 

But it should be noted that today’s weather is the exception for April. Normally we can have some really pleasant days but not that hot. And of course at the coast it is cooler... but not much on Santa Ana days!

 

 

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