One Week in LA: An Offbeat Itinerary
A full week keeps the 6 day route ’s Hollywood, beach, Downtown, Beverly Hills, Museum Row, and Griffith Park spine, then finishes in Pasadena before you fly home. Rent a car for the whole week; LA’s Metro covers useful corridors but nothing close to a full grid, and seven days of rideshares between spread-out neighborhoods costs noticeably more than the car did. It stays inside the city and Pasadena the entire time; Universal Studios, Anaheim, and anything past the county line stay off this route.
| Day | Focus |
|---|---|
| 1 | Hollywood Boulevard and the Griffith Observatory view |
| 2 | Santa Monica, Venice, and the canals most visitors miss |
| 3 | Downtown: a funicular, a film-famous lobby, and a museum that lies |
| 4 | Beverly Hills and West Hollywood |
| 5 | Museum Row: the Getty, LACMA, and the tar pits next door |
| 6 | Griffith Park, properly, plus Silver Lake |
| 7 | Pasadena, then home |
Book these before you go
- Compare hotel rates in Los Angeles before picking a base for a full week
- Reserve Getty Center timed entry free, but recommended ahead for Day 5
- Book a Downtown LA architecture walking tour for Day 3
Day 1: Hollywood, then the hill above it
Hollywood Boulevard delivers precisely what you’d expect: gritty, crowded sidewalks, souvenir shops, costumed characters asking for a tip after the photo, not before. Thirty to forty-five minutes near the TCL Chinese Theatre forecourt is genuinely enough.
Where can you actually see the Hollywood Sign?
Nowhere up close, this week or any other; there’s no gate or visitor center at the sign itself. Drive up to Griffith Observatory by early afternoon, before the lot fills for the day; admission and parking are both free, and the view over the entire basin beats the sign itself. Dinner in Los Feliz or Silver Lake.
Day 2: Santa Monica and Venice
Park once near the pier and leave it there all day. Walk the pier, head south along the boardwalk into Venice, about twenty minutes on foot, and detour into the Venice Canals at the 25th or 27th Avenue entrance, free since 1905 and missed by most visitors who spend the whole day on the sand nearby. Lunch on Abbot Kinney Boulevard, an afternoon on the sand, dinner by the water or a short drive inland.
Day 3: Downtown, a funicular, and a museum that lies to you
Angels Flight for $1.50, then the Bradbury Building’s free lobby, weekdays 9am-5pm and Saturday 10am-5pm, the same skylit atrium Blade Runner used for its finale. Grand Central Market for breakfast, then the Arts District for mural-covered warehouse blocks, or the Broad, free but timed-ticket only, released monthly. Olvera Street near Union Station rounds out the historic corner of the day, dinner back in the Arts District.
Day 4: Beverly Hills and West Hollywood
Rodeo Drive for the window-shopping tour of luxury retail, then Beverly Gardens Park for the small hillside Beverly Hills sign, quieter and far less photographed than the one you skipped on Day 1. Melrose Avenue in the afternoon, West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip by evening.
Day 5: Museum Row
The Getty Center in the morning, free to enter, never free to park at, $20 a car standard and cheaper after 3pm (up to $25 in the summer peak window), reached only by its own tram from the hillside garage. LACMA down the road reopened its entire collection in the new David Geffen Galleries on May 4, 2026, replacing the classic buildings from the old postcards completely. The La Brea Tar Pits next door are still quietly bubbling asphalt in the middle of a city block. Dinner at the Original Farmers Market in Fairfax Village.
Day 6: Griffith Park, properly
You’ll have driven past the edges of Griffith Park twice by now without seeing much of it. Spend the morning on the Fern Dell trail or the Old Zoo Trail, where the crumbling cages of LA’s original 1912 zoo sit half-swallowed by the hillside. The Autry Museum of the American West is worth an hour, and the century-old Griffith Park carousel is worth five minutes regardless of whether you brought children. Afternoon in Los Feliz or Silver Lake, dinner in Koreatown, whose all-you-can-eat spreads run thirty to fifty dollars a person and quietly outclass most of the restaurants you’ll have eaten at all week.
Day 7: Pasadena, then home
Is Pasadena actually part of Los Angeles, or a day trip?
Neither exactly. Pasadena sits twenty to thirty minutes from Downtown and functions almost like its own small city that LA absorbed generations ago, close enough to stay inside a city-only itinerary without the day-trip logistics of Malibu or Anaheim. Spend the morning in Old Town Pasadena, restored 1890s storefronts now full of cafes and shops, then the Norton Simon Museum, a compact, genuinely excellent collection that gets a fraction of LACMA’s crowds. Walk or drive past the Rose Bowl if you’ve got time. Lunch back in Old Town before you head to LAX.
Build real time into that last airport run; traffic to LAX varies wildly by hour and rideshare pricing spikes around flight-heavy departure windows. Our hidden-gems guide and Los Angeles places page cover a handful of stops, Watts Towers and the Museum of Jurassic Technology among them, that a week-long trip has room to swap in if any single day above runs short.