Los Angeles with kids: Hollywood, La Brea & the coast
A Thanksgiving-week swing through Southern California, mixing the Hollywood classics with prehistoric tar, an aquarium afternoon, and long grey-sky walks on the Pacific.
This is the companion to our Los Angeles photo diary.
Hollywood & the hills
The Hollywood sign is best seen from a hillside viewpoint - it is smaller and more distant than the movies suggest, but unmistakably itself. The Walk of Fame and the old theatres are a fun, free wander if you keep expectations in check (it is touristy, and that is part of the charm).
The La Brea Tar Pits
An unexpected family highlight: actual pools of black asphalt bubbling up in the middle of the city, with a museum of the Ice Age creatures the tar trapped - mammoths, sabre-tooths, and all. Kids love that it is gross and real at the same time.
The aquarium & the coast
A SoCal aquarium is a reliable, weatherproof win - rays and sharks in the touch pools, jellyfish drifting in lit tanks. And the beaches - Venice and Santa Monica - are wide, flat, and atmospheric even under winter cloud, with the palm trees and the pier doing their postcard thing.
Getting around
LA is a driving city; a car is essential, and the distances are real. Plan around traffic, not mileage, and group sights by neighborhood to save your sanity.
Just want the pictures? They live in our Los Angeles photo diary.