The Los Angeles Coast  

An obvious but very stimulating link between The Southern Central Coast and The Southern Coast, this area provides a healthy taste of Los Angeles without straying from the calming influence of the Pacific Ocean. If the maelstrom that is the rest of LA really does beckon, however, it is a simple matter to venture deeper into the city using Los Angeles: The City.

From the north, the area around Malibu will surprise you with its ramshackle and under-developed appearance. This is due to the rolling canyons of the Santa Monica Mountains, which reach almost to the ocean. Nonetheless, with scores of rich and famous faces residing in hidden-away canyon homes or in million-dollar beachside residences, Malibu fully deserves its jet-set reputation.

Should Malibu prove irresistible, you should spend one of your two nights here, and the other in Santa Monica to the south in order to cover the best places to visit. Santa Monica looks and feels exactly like an LA coastal community should. Lined by palm trees, the town’s impossibly large beach plays host to sunbathers, cyclists and joggers, and is overlooked by an historic pier.

Enjoyable though Santa Monica is, it can’t match the anarchic spirit evident at Venice, a few miles south, which fulfils even the wildest expectation of what LA beach life might be all about. Take lunch beside Venice’s boardwalk and you’ll see the craziest parade in LA go by.

San Pedro is another possibility for an overnight stop. Long regarded by Angelenos as an uninteresting outpost, this former fishing village beside LA’s busy harbour is fast developing into a vibrant and intriguing place, and is also the major departure point for ferries to Catalina Island.

TRANSPORT

With patience and careful planning, you can explore this area mostly using LA’s MTA buses (https://www.metro.net), although no single service covers the whole route. An infrequent service links Malibu and Santa Monica (and makes a request-only stop at the J. Paul Getty Museum). Travelling south of Santa Monica is more difficult and can only be done by taking a bus from Santa Monica into Downtown Los Angeles, and from there taking the separate services to Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach, and San Pedro and Long Beach.