Whenever I entertain visitors from out of town, whether they stay at my place or a Los Angeles cheap hotel, I run through my head the usual list of places to take the tourists: Universal Theme Park at Universal City, downtown Hollywood and Grauman’s Chinese Theater, down to Anaheim for Disneyland and Downtown Disney, or out to Long Beach for a tour of the Queen Mary, or to the coast for a stop in Venice to see the beach. And then… my head runs dry of ideas. If I were more a little more adventurous, I could arrange for tours at the major studios themselves (almost every one of them offers private tours, but you have to know to call the studio and arrange for it), such as Paramount or Warner Brothers. That’s seems to be most of what tourists want to see… unless they’re into museums, and then we’re off to the Getty overlooking the Los Angeles Basin, or the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or up to Pasadena for the Norton Simon Museum, all of which offer some pretty amazing work: The Getty and Norton Simon both house impressive displays of impressionism, for instance.
Almost everyone who comes to L.A. wants to see stars, and if you know where to go in Beverly Hills and Hollywood, you may easily see any number of people. Just by dining out on occasion, I’ve seen (over several years, mind you) Natalie Portman, Robert Duval, Leonardo di Caprio, Adam Sandler, and many, many others. You can see some celebrities at The Ivy, an expensive restaurant on Robertson, although most of these people I’ve seen across the street in the more reasonably priced Newsroom, a cafe and bar. There’s not stars every day (or you may not recognize them), but if the paparazzi are outside, you can bet someone’s inside.
One place I take people first seems like a major tourist attraction: The Farmer’s Market on Third and Fairfax, and the relatively recent addition of The Grove, now several years old, an outdoor mall designed like a town square. But I don’t take people here for the movie theater or the restaurants. Instead, I take them to the top of the eight-story parking lot, from which you can get an incredible view 360 degree view of Los Angeles. It’s great for letting people know exactly where they are in the world.
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