- Everything you need to know
if you're planning a trip to Los Angeles.
I'm Chris, this is Yellow Productions.
I do travel guides that are fun in a form of entertaining,
and in this video, I'm gonna tell you
where to stay in Los Angeles, how to get in,
where to eat, things to do.
You will be a pro at planning your LA trip,
once you're done with this video.
The first thing you should know about Los Angeles
is Los Angeles is huge.
The Los Angeles metropolitan area is 4,000 square miles.
It's a really big place,
and it generally has no center.
While downtown Los Angeles right there
is the biggest collection of tall buildings,
there are lots of centers across Los Angeles,
and so there's not really one place
that you're gonna stay and walk around all of LA.
You're gonna be darting back and forth
around different parts of the city,
and it's so big that even if you're here for a month,
you won't be able to see all of it.
So you should definitely be choosy
about the things that you wanna see,
and make sure they're near each other
because you might pick one thing in Santa Monica,
and then one thing in downtown Los Angeles,
and realize it takes an hour to get between the two.
So don't make the mistake that a lot of tourists make
of spending all their time driving between attractions.
You really wanna spend a lot of time
making sure the things you're gonna see are
in about the same area each day.
The second thing you should know
before you come to Los Angeles is about traffic,
and Los Angeles has lots of traffic everywhere all the time.
Just go ahead and deal with it.
There's gonna be traffic.
When you're planning your movement through Los Angeles,
you'll look at something and say,
"It's five miles if I go on the freeway,
that should only take me five minutes."
Well, it very well might take you 20 minutes
or even an hour at rush hour.
So just plan to go a little bit slower.
Plan to have things take a while
between destinations,
that will ensure you have a much better time.
You should also know about the freeways here
in Los Angeles in that we give them names.
Most freeways around the US,
people refer to them as Interstate 95, Interstate 15,
but here we give them the proper the
in front of it, the 5, the 405.
They are so epic we put the word the in front of it.
You should know that Los Angeles actually
has a pretty good public transportation system,
provided you are going where it goes.
In particular, many people don't know
that Los Angeles actually has a subway.
It does.
I'm standing at the entrance to the Los Angeles subway
at the Hollywood and HighLand Station.
Probably, the most useful line for tourists is the red line.
This goes from downtown Los Angeles
basically up to Universal Studios,
and stops here along Hollywood Boulevard.
There's a whole bunch of other lines that you can take.
Summer underground, summer aboveground.
You can take trains from downtown LA all the way
to the beach in Santa Monica, which is pretty cool too.
And if you're going long distances from LA,
you can take the Amtrak trains all the way down
to downtown San Diego, which is a pretty nice day trip
or kinda weekend trip from Los Angeles.
Now, a lot of people ask me about the bus.
They say, "Chris, how are the buses in Los Angeles?"
There are a lot of buses in Los Angeles,
and a lot of people take them.
There's over a million bus boardings a day in Los Angeles,
but I don't think the buses are particularly friendly
to tourists.
So I would recommend you stick
to the train, the subway, Uber, taxi,
and Lyft to get your round where the train and subway.
Don't go if you're taking public transit.
Number four, parking.
So you're gonna need to park it at a lot of attractions.
The things to know is that parking
in Los Angeles is often valet, almost always costs money,
often very limited and has really small parking spaces.
The only place that you're really gonna get free parking
is when you're driving on the 405 freeway
and it's rush hour, and you're not going anywhere.
And so therefore, you're parked on the freeway.
That will likely be free.
If you're parking on the city streets,
particularly in downtown Los Angeles,
Beverly Hills, Santa Monica,
pay attention to the street signs.
They have bizarre regulations here
about what times you can and can't park.
Typically, during morning rush hour,
you can't park afternoon rush hour, you can't park.
There's two hours in the afternoon.
You can park one hour in the evening.
You can park...
It might have a sign that says, "Go away."
But pay attention to those signs,
you don't wanna get a ticket.
I have, so I'm telling you that from previous experience.
Number five thing to know
before coming to Los Angeles is about navigation.
So LA has a lot of roads and a lot of routes.
My number one recommendation is if you don't have a GPS
or a phone with GPS, get a GPS in your rental car.
You'll want it.
The roads here are super confusing.
The other thing I'll say is it's good ahead of time
just to kind of know the exit
that you're gonna take off the freeway.
Sometimes they're not super well signed
and the exits just appear out of nowhere.
If you take maybe one exit before or afterwards,
you might end up in some super sketchy neighborhood
that you really don't wanna be.
So pay attention to take the right exit.
The other thing to know is
because Los Angeles has a lot of distinct cities,
the roads that run through LA can be really long.
It can be a 40-mile street that runs through Los Angeles,
but it goes through 10 different cities,
and the street numbering will update every time it goes
into a different city.
2000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills
and 2000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles,
and those are two different places.
So make sure you're entering the city
along with the address.
'Cause if you enter a different city,
you'll be at a different place,
and not where you want to go.
The sixth thing you wanna know
before coming to Los Angeles is about the weather.
LA, contrary to what you've heard,
is not always sunny and warm.
Yes, today happens to be a sunny day,
but it is not always sunny,
and it's not always warm, particularly at night.
It actually can get really cold.
A lot of people only come with shorts and a t-shirt.
But I'll tell you, nighttime in the winter,
you will want a jacket,
and you'll probably want long pants.
I, as a Southern California local,
I'll wear shorts all the time,
but I'll generally put on a fleece,
and sometimes even a beanie if it gets cold.
So do check the weather forecast,
and don't just pay attention to daytime high,
pay attention to the nighttime low.
And the other thing to know
is that inland Los Angeles can be 30 degrees warmer
than coastal Los Angeles.
So you might hear the weather forecast
in Santa Monica, and it's 70 degrees,
but if you go out to Pomona, it can be 100 degrees,
and that is really not an exaggeration.
Those can be actual temperatures
at noon on any given day here in LA.
The other thing to know is about the ocean water.
You might be coming to Los Angeles to go to the beach.
The ocean water is not like Hawaii.
Here it is cold pretty much all year round.
The summer high for the ocean water is 70 degrees.
That's about as high as it gets.
The warm, warmest days will be 72.
That'll typically be in August or September.
In December, January,
the water temperature will be 55 degrees.
As LA or Southern California locals,
we can tell the tourists
because those are the people in the water,
not in the summer, that don't have wetsuits on.
Pretty much all the locals will have wetsuits on.
You can rent those if you come to the beach.
You'll also want to bring lots of sunscreen.
I feel like in Southern California,
we're pretty close to the sun here,
particularly if you go to the beach.
And so it's pretty easy to burn like a crisp.
Bring sunglasses, the sun's bright.
You'll want them.
A lot of activities are outside here.
And the last thing related to the weather to know
is LA is considered a desert.
And so it's very, very dry.
Your skin can get really, really dry here
after being here for a while,
particularly if you're not used to this kind of a climate.
Seven thing to know
about LA is LA is really unlike the rest of California.
California is a really big state,
and Los Angeles can often feel
like its own different country.
I'm from San Diego, and when I come up to Los Angeles,
I do feel like I've traveled a long, long way
to a very different place,
even though it's only 80 or 90 miles away.
In particular, if you want to feel the most out
of this world,
and you're actually in a different country completely,
check out Venice Beach,
which is just south of Santa Monica.
The Venice Beach Boardwalk, it's famous.
There is nothing
like Venice Beach anywhere else in the world.
Crazy boardwalk with some of the most interesting characters
that I think you will see anywhere.
You should also know that if you've come
to Hollywood to look for stars
about the only stars you're gonna see here are these
in the sidewalk.
I ran into Ryzen
who's gonna tell us a little bit more
about what you should know about Hollywood.
- Hollywood, Hollywood is a interesting place.
You may think you're gonna see stars when you come here,
but you're gonna see just people like you.
There's gonna be a lot of different artistic people,
crazy people, lot of wild people.
You're gonna get a lot of wildness
that you didn't really expect, okay?
The wildness could be from a character
to the guy on the street, to the guitar player,
or to the guy that randomly runs up to you.
So Hollywood is interesting.
Be ready for something new and exciting.
That's what I can say.
Thank you.
- Now you should also know
that there's a few different Hollywood neighborhoods.
There's North Hollywood, there's East Hollywood.
Those are all different than Hollywood.
And if you get approached by someone here
in Hollywood Boulevard to invite you
to a 30-minute sitcom taping,
know that that's probably gonna take you four hours.
"Jimmy Kimmel Live!" films right here
on Hollywood Boulevard.
Actually, his theater is right back that way,
but that's a one-hour show.
But again, plan to spend four hours,
if you're gonna do that, that's about half your day,
if you're a tourist.
I don't know if it's worth it really,
if you're just here for a few days.
Number nine, something you're gonna hear a lot
when you come to LA is the term the Valley.
People will say things like,
"Oh, I'll come in all the way from the Valley for this."
What valley are they talking about?
They're talking about the San Fernando Valley,
and the San Fernando Valley is the valley just north
of Los Angeles.
This gets the term valley girl, the valley accent,
the valley or the city's primarily of Burbank, Studio City,
North Hollywood, and Van Nuys.
So if someone says, "I'm from the Valley,
or, "we're gonna go to the Valley,"
or, "that's in the Valley,"
that's the valley north of Los Angeles.
Number 10, and this kinda takes us back
to number eight related to Hollywood, is that some
of LA's most known attractions are the most rundown.
Lots of LA can be really seedy,
and when people think of Hollywood
or people think of Venice Beach,
they think of glamor and glitz, and all that stuff.
And I am here to tell you that there's not a lot
of glamor and glitz at most of LA's popular attractions.
They are certainly classic attractions,
but don't expect them to be nice.
Actually, take your expectations if they're up here,
and bring them way down here for about how nice they are.
The nicest things you'll find
in LA are things that are really owned
and run by private companies or corporations.
L.A. LIVE, the district behind me, really quite nice.
There's a lot of places.
The public places in LA, often not so nice,
and can be run down.
'Cause it's such a big city,
the tax dollars kinda go everywhere.
The nicest public building you're gonna find
is probably Union Station,
which is in downtown Los Angeles.
Check that out.
Also, you can go over to LA City Hall,
see a view from the top,
and see just what I mean about things being run down.
LA City Hall has really seen some better days.
11 thing to know about LA
is that from a dress code, LA is pretty casual.
A lot of people think,
"Oh, it's a high end restaurant, I'll need to go.
I'll need to wear a suit and tie."
I'm here to tell you that shorts and t-shirt
and flip flops will get you
into 98% of all establishments in Los Angeles.
I'm sure some people say,
"Well, Chris, but there's this place
and there's that place."
And yeah, there's a few here
and there that have a dress code,
and they want you to wear a shirt,
and there's like 0.001%
that you have to wear a shirt and a tie.
But that is pretty rare.
You'll fit in fine with shorts and a t-shirt.
Number 12, bring your own shopping bag.
California recently passed a law that supermarkets
and food places have to charge 10 cents for shopping bags.
So if you don't wanna pay 10 cents for a shopping bag,
bring that shopping bag, or you buy a shopping bag once,
bring it back to the store.
If you're going to a restaurant,
then they don't charge you to a shopping bag.
So you might wanna get some fast food, get a bag,
and then you can take it to the supermarket.
And the last thing to know
about coming to LA is Mexican food is awesome here.
If you're coming to LA, and maybe you say,
"Well, hey, I don't like Mexican food
'cause Mexican food's not very good."
I'll probably tell you, you haven't had good Mexican food.
I lived on the East Coast for a while,
and people would always say,
"Chris, I'm gonna take you
to this really great Mexican restaurant."
And after I went to about the sixth
or seventh one, I was like,
"Please don't take me to anymore Mexican restaurants
because they're all bad."
I will tell you here in LA,
they are all almost very, very good.
My favorite Mexican restaurant in LA is called King Taco.
It is a chain of taco places.
They sell tacos, burritos, nachos, tamales.
And then basically, you pick what meat you want in it.
It's pretty simple.
The taco's like a $1.59.
Some of the best carne asada that I feel I've had anywhere,
and just really simple, really tasty.
I'll also tell you, you won't find this at King Taco,
but you'll find it at a lot of other Mexican restaurants.
Get the fish tacos.
Fish tacos are a Baja California specialty in Mexico.
And so since we're just right north of Baja California,
you'll find lots of fish tacos as well.
It's funny, there's actually a place
in LA called the Best Fish Tacos in Ensenada.
Ensenada's in Mexico, but it's in LA.
So just kind of a funny name for a place.
And fellow explorers,
the last thing you should know before you come
to Los Angeles is I have a ton more videos on LA.
You'll find the link here
to my entire series on Los Angeles.
You'll also find it in the description below.
You'll find videos like how to ride the subway,
what are the best cheap eats, where are the food halls?
And many more.
So as usual, I won't say goodbye
'cause I'm gonna see you in one of those videos.