Los Angeles city guide: Where to find the best LA hotels, restaurants, markets and movie locations from Breaking Bad and La La Land to Barbie

My red-carpet moment came courtesy of the Oscars Experience at the Academy Museum where, for 10 dollars, you can step out on stage to hold aloft a real-life Oscar, with a mini-film of the occasion sent straight to your email, for posterity. Ah well, this is LA, and a gal can dream.

City of angels, city of stars, Los Angeles is, perhaps most of all, a city of dreamers. But these dreamers make their dreams happen. This metropolis, spread out in a vast basin between the Pacific ocean and a ring of California hills, is home to 10 million dreamers, so no wonder it pulses with an energy that is intoxicating and infectious.

With so much to experience in LA, you could go with the flow, or you could have a plan. We had a plan. This five-day trip was a series of curated adventures, much of it into lesser-known neighbourhoods, with time for rest, play, exploration, shopping, lots of food - and a few unforgettable movie moments, because it would be rude not to.

Our first full day began at the Angel’s Flight funicular railway, opened in 1901 to take wealthy residents from their uptown villas to downtown and back. Here we met Nancy of Six Taste Tours for a culinary walking adventure, starting with breakfast at Grand Central Market, a street food emporium filled with noise and colour, stalls of tacos, ramen, vegan dishes, it’s all here. Sarita’s Pupuseria is where the La La Land couple have their first date, and Joe Chiquitos is famous for its Breakfast Burritos. Nearby Biddy Mason Park (look up Biddy Mason - what a woman) is home to Maccheroni Republic and its delectable, filled pasta dishes. We also popped into The Last Book Store (no food relevance, Nancy just knew we would like it), a galleried and magical old-fashioned bookstore that’s straight outta Harry Potter (it’s actually used as a location in Gone Girl).

It was LA Fashion Week so, early that evening, we headed for LA’s fashion, flower and jewellery district and found ourselves on a behind-the-scenes tour of The New Mart (newmart.net), downtown LA’s first high rise building and home to fashion-forward brand showrooms and all sorts of technical whizz-bang know-how (it holds sample sales on the last Friday of every month). This is just one of many, many places in LA where you can see people of all ages making things happen, pulling off the spectacular, striving to live out their dreams. AI runways, digital dressing rooms, here we come.

Sadly, we missed the catwalk show being prepped there because we had a date at the Crypto.com (an actual stadium, not a digital one) where we witnessed actual star basketball player Lebron James and the LA Lakers beat the 76ers. For a US live sport newbie like me, this was quite the experience, a high energy, flashing lights and pumping beats experience, although the scoring system was confusing and the presence of the cheerleading Laker Girls was perplexing. Leaving the stadium after the game, drifting through the late evening carnival of fans and street-sellers, was mesmerisingly filmic.

The next morning, we took it easy-breezy and headed for breakfast at Larchmont Village, a pretty, laid-back, residential neighbourhood with a wide main street of cutesy boutiques, perfect for spending a couple of hours of coffee-grabbing and gentle shopping, while also browsing realtors’ windows (property is not as expensive as I’d expected - see how I am already becoming an Angeleno in my head). Shout out here for the breakfast at Great White (LA avocado dishes are, in general, phenomenal).

Then it was off to the Academy Museum (academymuseum.org) to receive our Oscars. It opened three years ago on Wilshire and Fairfax, bringing the history of world film-making to life with four floors of story and memorabilia, screens and screens of classic movie moments, rows of real Oscars, real costumes and real film critters, including the stomach-bursting creature from Aliens and Jaws just hanging from the ceiling – plus panoramic views from the rooftop and a very a cool gift shop (I bought a Godfather mug, a gold pen and a fridge magnet – and I still regret not buying the Hollywood snow globe).

After culture, it’s time for lunch and more shopping at the Original Farmers Market, founded in 1934, and next to it, The Grove outdoor shopping village, as featured in The Hills and Modern Family, with swoon-inducing brands including Byredo, a new Gucci store coming, a huge Sephora and the La La Land coffee shop. It’s both bustling and tranquil, with fountains at its heart and valet parking (LA folk are obsessed with parking, but huge vehicles are the norm).

In a city packed with possibilities, a base that doubles as a haven is essential. We stayed at the new AC Hotel Downtown Los Angeles, which shares a building with sister hotel The Moxy. The AC has a sky lobby on the 34th floor, with vistas out to the Hollywood sign in yonder hills.

We arrived there lateish on our first night, after an (albeit very comfortable)11-hour Aer Lingus flight from Dublin (after first flying to there from Leeds-Bradford) but we soon pepped up at the heavenly 34th floor La Lo La Rooftop, treated to tapas, cocktails, and more heavenly views over the city. What a welcome.

The AC/Moxy is a hit with locals because of Level 8, a dining and entertainment complex of eight jaw-droppingly opulent venues, separate but also accessed via hidden interconnecting doors, one behind a fireplace, another through a bookcase.

The Mr Wanderlust piano bar has a trapeze artist twirling from a chandelier. Just standing beside the poolside in The Golden Hour bar made me feel like a movie actor (or maybe a supporting artist who has just been given a line). We ate at Que Barbaro, a wonderful South American grill, while Japanese cuisine features at Maison Kasai and Lucky Mizu. We finished the night at Sinners y Santos nightclub, which opened last September, designed to look and feel like the inside of a church, but dark, deeply hedonistic, and with a wrestling platform above the bar where scantily-clad chaps and gals writhe on and off the ropes on the hour. Yes, really.

The next morning, we were up with the lark (almost) to learn about LA’s beginnings with LA Walking Tours (lawalkingtours.com, from $20pp), meeting at the impressive Union Station, the ticket concourse of which was used as a bank in Catch Me If You Can and for the Oscars ceremony during Covid. This district of LA is the seat of its Spanish heritage. LA was part of Mexico until 1948, and became the 32st US stage in 1950 (not long after gold had been discovered there). In 1876, when the trains arrived, the city had a population of 100,000. By 1930 it was 1.2m. The Avila Adobe is LA's oldest house still standing in its original location, originally built in 1818 by Francisco José Avila. Those palm trees eveywhere across the city are not native but were planted for the 1932 Olympics. See, I learned so much, so saw much, and I think it was on this tour that I fell in love with LA.

It was time for lunch and so we made for Smorgasburg LA, a huge open-air food market, to eat street food (chicken tacos for me) among the 100-odd traders that gather every Sunday behind ROW DTLA, a downtown art and creative district with a cool, up-and-coming vibe.

At the Sunset Junction on the Santa Monica Boulevard, we found our second hotel, the ultra-relaxed Silver Lake Pool & Inn (palisociety.com), just 20 minutes away from downtown LA, and another pinch-me moment as I walked into my large, artsy-retro style room with a clever bench built in at the back of the bed, screening off the sink and wardrobe area, a fully stocked drinks bar, a cake, a 55in TV – and a view out to the Griffith Observatory. This was simply divine, and there was plenty of time to lounge about and change for dinner.

Nearby tapas restaurant Baccari (eatwithbacari.com) is a Venetian-inspired restaurant, very popular, with a large twinkling outdoor garden and a menu of delicious small plates (the caramelised cauliflower is a dream). Next morning’s breakfast at Honey Hi (honeyhi.co) on Sunset Boulevard (I chose the avocado toast again – it’s given a different twist at each establishment in LA) fortified us for what turned out to be a whole day of adventure and exploration. First off, a visit to Echo Park, where we spent an hour messing about on the lake in a swan pedalo (wheelfunrentals.com), and then took a leisurely lunch at El Compadre on Sunset Boulevard, a restaurant with a traditional Mexican atmosphere, lots of ironwork and hearty family recipes.

The biggest adventure was about to happen. The Wild Backside of Griffith Park Tour with E-Bike Tours LA (ebiketoursla.com)

is a three-hour cycling trip up and into the LA hills. Founded in January, our guide was Aussie Gavin Brennan, who led us on an all-terrain, exhilarating, picturesque tour (mostly on roads but quiet ones) stopping to admire and photograph vistas of gleaming towers, sprawling movie studios, and across to the iconic Hollywood sign, and then, oh joy, to the Griffith Observatory where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone were swept up in galaxy of La La Land romance. This was an experience and a half, one I am glad I took and will never forget, although faster than I had expected. We slept well that night.

On the final day, we headed to the Culver City district for a studio tour of Sony Pictures (sonypicturesstudiotours.com).

which houses Columbia Pictures and TriStar. The building, opened in 1912, was the original MGM studios and, and it’s a fascinating two-hour guided walk through a working film and TV studios (there were lots of production people about while we were there; apparently Will Smith was spotted the day before). Founded in 1912, this is where films including The Wizard of Oz, Men in Black and Spider-Man were made. We walked through its avenues lined with white studio buildings, stepped into the sound-making studio, then visited the Scoring Room, which is a bit of a legend. It's surprisingly rough and ready, with old cork wall panels that cannot be changed because the sound is just not the same. Here is where Judy Garland recorded Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and you can almost see and hear her standing right there. And this room is still used today.

Our final stop before heading to LAX was Venice Beach, a place I had long wanted to see. With its endless swathes of sand, its skate park, its promenade of tourist shops (I bought three T-shirts, a mug and a snow globe) and all those palm trees, this seaside oasis is iconically recognisable to lovers of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and now Barbie (see if you can spot the shop from which Barbie and Ken emerge dressed as disco cowboys).

For more information on LA, go to discoverlosangeles.com. Aer Lingus has connections from Leeds-Bradford and Manchester to Los Angeles – see here – via Dublin where customers can preclear US Immigration. Economy fares from UK start from £229 each-way and business class from £1,299 return. Visit aerlingus.com. The AC Downtown Los Angeles has rooms from $209 per night, and Silver Lake Pool & Inn has rooms from $325 per night).

I had time to meander through the nearby Venice Canals and along Abbot Kinney shopping boulevard (I wish I’d bought that tiny transparent clutch bag) before heading back to the front for early evening drinks on the rooftop of Hotel Erwin, feeling a little melancholy that we were soon to leave as we watched Venice Beach prepare to reach the end of another day of sun.

Sadly, my LA adventure was at an end, but what an experience, what a dream it was. I would do it all again, in a heartbeat, and I now believe that I can make it happen.