DESTINATION · LOS ANGELES
Los Angeles, where the best things are free
The Getty, Griffith Observatory, the beaches, the canyon walks and the murals cost nothing. What costs is the car you need to reach them and the room you sleep in.
- Airport
- LAX · USA
- On sale
- 12 of 12 months
- Airport spread
- £500 across 10 UK airports
Today's best fare
London Los Angeles
£321 £456 −30%
Measured on a live search, refreshed hourly. Prices move — confirm on Kiwi.com.
Departure airports
£500 apart, depending where you take off
Every UK airport searched separately for this destination, cheapest first, as a return fare for one person with taxes in. Manchester to Los Angeles and London to Los Angeles are not the same route and we do not price them as one. Each figure is a fare of one stop at most — the same limit as the price at the top of this page — and each is that airport's own cheapest week, so the dates change from row to row. Every link opens on the dates its price was found on.
10 of 10 airports have a fare to Los Angeles within one stop today. The rest either need two connections and most of a day to get there — which we will not print a price for — or did not answer the last search. London covers Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, City and Southend in one search.
The year, month by month
When Los Angeles is worth the airfare
Average daytime high for each month. The greyed months are ones we refuse to advertise — not because they are cheap, but because the place cannot deliver what the page promises.
- Jan 20°
- Feb 20°
- Mar 21°
- Apr 23°
- May 24°
- Jun 26°
- Jul 29°
- Aug 29°
- Sep 28°
- Oct 26°
- Nov 23°
- Dec 20° today's fare
12 of 12 months on sale. No closed season.
Los Angeles has a Mediterranean climate on a coast cooled by the California Current, and the result is a place with essentially two seasons: a dry one that lasts most of the year and a wet one that is short, intense and confined to the winter. Rain, when it comes, comes in a few days of proper downpour rather than a persistent drizzle, and it is the only thing that reliably disrupts a trip here.
The local weather feature to understand is the marine layer — a bank of low cloud that pushes in off the Pacific overnight and burns off through the morning, so a beach day that starts grey at nine is in full sun by midday. It is strongest in the early summer and catches out visitors who booked the coast and woke up to fog. Inland, over the hills in the Valley, none of this applies and the temperature is meaningfully higher. The other event worth knowing is the Santa Ana wind, which blows hot and dry off the desert a few times a year and raises the wildfire risk sharply.
There is no closed season and nothing here shuts, so the calendar is about price and crowds rather than possibility. The American summer holidays fill the beaches and the parks and lift hotel rates; the stretch after the American children return to school is warm, quiet and among the cheapest of the year. For a British traveller the autumn is usually the best-value window that still delivers the weather people come for.
Decide the car question before you book the hotel
A trip built around the beach and the Metro rail line works without one. A trip built around the canyons, the Getty and the Valley does not, and parking at your hotel will be charged nightly on top.
The case for it
Why Los Angeles
Los Angeles is not a city in the sense a British visitor means it. It is a basin a hundred kilometres across, held between mountains and the Pacific, filled with about eighty separate neighbourhoods that grew up around oil, citrus, aerospace and film. There is a downtown and almost nobody goes there for the reasons you would go to a downtown. What holds it together is the freeway system, which is why the first decision you make here is about a car.
The compensation is that its best assets are public. The Getty Center — Richard Meier's travertine complex on a ridge above the 405, with the Impressionists in it — charges nothing to get in. Griffith Observatory is free and has the view of the basin. The beaches from Santa Monica to Manhattan are free and continuous. The murals, the canyon trails and the farmers' markets are free. A well-planned week here can cost less on the ground than one in New York.
The reservations are traffic and distance, and they are worse than the map suggests. Fifteen miles can take an hour twice a day, the neighbourhoods you want are scattered across the basin rather than clustered, and the public transport, though genuinely better than its reputation, does not go everywhere. Anyone imagining a walkable city is going to spend the week in a hire car being frustrated, and anyone booking without deciding where their days will actually be spent will lose most of them to the road.
On the ground
Five things worth doing
- 01
Spend a morning at the Getty Center
Free admission, always, to a hilltop museum with Van Gogh's Irises, a Rembrandt or two and gardens that are worth the trip on their own. Parking is $20 (about £16) and free after five on a Thursday; the Metro 761 bus stops at the gate if you would rather not. A funicular takes you from the car park to the top. Allow three hours minimum. The Getty Villa in Malibu is a separate site, also free, also charging for parking, and needs its own booking.
- 02
Go up to Griffith Observatory at dusk
Free to enter, free to look through the telescopes on a clear evening, and the single best view of the basin — downtown, the Hollywood sign, and the grid going out to the sea. Parking on the hill is $10 an hour, so most people take the DASH Observatory bus for about forty pence with a TAP card. Go an hour before sunset and stay for the lights coming on. The walk up from Fern Dell is forty minutes and free.
- 03
Walk the beach from Santa Monica to Venice
Free, about four kilometres of paved path along the sand, and the most concentrated hour of Los Angeles you can have without a car. The pier at one end, the canals and the skate park at the other, and the boardwalk in between. Bicycles hire for around £8 an hour along the front. Do it in the morning: the marine layer usually burns off by eleven, and the boardwalk in the afternoon is a slower and more crowded proposition.
- 04
Do Universal Studios or skip it deliberately
The Hollywood park costs roughly $101 to $149 (about £80 to £118) depending on the date, and the backlot tram tour is the thing it has that Florida does not. It is a full day and it is expensive, so treat it as the trip's one big ticket rather than an afternoon. The alternative that costs nothing is a studio audience ticket for a television taping, which are given away free and are a far stranger and more Los Angeles experience.
- 05
Drive Mulholland and the canyons
The road along the ridge between the basin and the Valley is free and is the best hour you will spend in the hire car — pullouts on both sides, the whole city on one hand and the Valley on the other. Combine it with a canyon walk: Runyon Canyon for the crowd and the view, Temescal for the quiet. Go early. The overlooks fill from mid-morning and the light for photographs is much better before nine than at midday.
After the flight
What it costs once you land
Everyday prices away from the beachfront and Hollywood Boulevard. Two things inflate every figure: sales tax of around 9.5% added at the till rather than shown, and a tipping expectation of 18 to 20% on anything with table service.
- Beer, neighbourhood bar £6 before tax and tip; supermarket beer is a fraction of it
- Dinner for two, mid-range £60 before tax and tip, which add about a quarter
- LAX to Santa Monica £28 Uber or Lyft; the LAX/Metro Transit Center connects to the rail network
- Car hire, per day £35 add parking, which is charged nearly everywhere and adds up fast
- Metro day cap £4 TAP card; fares cap daily, and the rail network is better than its reputation
- Two tacos from a truck £5
Checked August 2026. Sources at the foot of this page.
Before you book
Practical, for a British passport
Entry rules are for a British Citizen passport holder and come from gov.uk, read on 2026-08-07. They change; check before you fly.
- Airport
- LAX, in the south-west of the basin and forty minutes to two hours from wherever you are staying depending entirely on the hour. The people-mover to the new transit centre finally connects it to the rail network. Burbank (BUR) is the second airport, far smaller and much easier, and worth checking if a fare offers it.
- Entry
- ESTA. USD 40 (about £32) — $10 charged on application, $30 more only if approved. Up to up to 90 days. Valid for the length of your planned stay. The fee rose from $21 to $40 on 30 September 2025, so any figure under thirty pounds you read elsewhere is out of date. An approved ESTA lasts two years or until the passport expires, whichever comes first — worth checking before you rebook, because one bought for a previous trip may still be live. Apply on esta.cbp.dhs.gov; the paid lookalike sites charge several times the fee for the same form. An ESTA is permission to fly, not permission to enter: the officer at the border decides that.
- Currency
- US dollar. Cards work everywhere and cash is rarely needed except at some food trucks. Sales tax of around 9.5% in Los Angeles County is added at the till rather than shown on the shelf, and tipping at 18 to 20% is expected wherever there is table service.
- Language
- English, with Spanish spoken by around half the county. No barrier. The pharmacy vocabulary differs — paracetamol is Tylenol or acetaminophen — and British medicine strengths are not sold here.
- Time zone
- Eight hours behind the UK. California changes its clocks on different dates from Britain, so for a couple of weeks each spring and autumn the gap is seven hours — check it against your actual travel dates before booking a connection.
- Plugs
- Type A and B, 120V. A British type-G plug does not fit and the voltage is half of home. Chargers cope; hair appliances bought in Britain generally do not.
- Health
- The GHIC is worthless and American healthcare is the most expensive anywhere — an ambulance and one night in hospital runs to five figures. Comprehensive insurance is the most important purchase of the trip and pre-existing conditions must be declared. Urgent care clinics are the cheap middle option between a pharmacy and an emergency room.
- Safety
- No FCDO warning against travel. Los Angeles is safe in the areas visitors use, with the usual caveat that the basin changes character block by block rather than district by district. Do not leave anything visible in a hire car, ever — smash-and-grab from parked cars at trailheads and beach lots is the commonest crime against visitors here.
A bed
Where to stay in Los Angeles
The city's hotel stock is broad and mostly mid-tier, so filtered for the top-rated properties any one area returns a short list. Choose by where your days will actually be, because crossing the basin twice a day is the thing that ruins trips here.
Hollywood
Central to the things visitors come for — the Walk of Fame, Griffith, the canyons, Universal over the hill — and on the Metro B line, which is the one rail link that genuinely helps. The widest choice of rooms of the three. Hollywood Boulevard itself is tawdry and best treated as a thing you walk down once, and the surrounding blocks vary sharply.
Stays in Hollywood Opens in a new tab WALKABLE AND COASTALSanta Monica
The one part of Los Angeles that works like a town: the pier, the promenade, the beach path to Venice, restaurants you can walk to and the E line running east to downtown. The best base for anyone who would rather not drive every day. It is expensive, the marine layer sits over it longer than inland, and everything on the eastern side of the basin is a long way away.
Stays in Santa Monica Opens in a new tab CHEAPEST AND BEST CONNECTEDDowntown Los Angeles
Where every rail line meets, which makes it the most car-free base in the city, and where rates run well below the west side. Grand Central Market, the Broad and Disney Hall are all here. It empties at night in parts and the streets change character quickly block to block — a real consideration rather than a reputational one.
Stays in Downtown Los Angeles Opens in a new tabEvery area pinned on one map, set to the dates of the fare above. Change them for your own trip and it reloads live availability.
Open the Los Angeles map Opens in a new tabGetting around
Decide about the car first, because everything else follows from it. A trip based in Santa Monica or downtown and built around the beach, the museums on the rail line and one or two Ubers works without one, and saves the hire cost, the fuel, and the parking that is charged at almost every hotel and attraction. A trip that wants the canyons, Malibu, the Getty and the Valley needs one, and the freeway system is genuinely straightforward once you accept that the traffic is not.
The Metro is better than its reputation and improving. The B line runs Hollywood to downtown, the E line runs Santa Monica to downtown, and a TAP card caps the daily fare at about four pounds. It will not take you to the Getty or into the hills, and it is slower than driving outside rush hour, but at rush hour it is faster. The DASH neighbourhood buses cost pennies and cover the last mile in several districts.
Uber and Lyft are ubiquitous and are how most visitors move when they have not hired a car — a cross-town run is ten to twenty-five pounds and surge pricing is real at airport times. Whatever you drive or park, take nothing visible out of the boot: the trailhead and beach car parks are worked systematically, and hire cars are obvious.
Food and local tips
Los Angeles is the best Mexican food city outside Mexico and the best Korean food city outside Korea, and neither is a claim about restaurants — it is a claim about lunch. The taco trucks are the institution: a handful of fillings, corn tortillas, five pounds for two and a drink, cash sometimes only, and consistently better than the sit-down places. Koreatown is a proper neighbourhood rather than a strip, and the barbecue houses there run late and are priced for residents.
The other habit worth adopting is the farmers' market. There is one somewhere in the city most days, they are free to walk into, and the prepared-food stalls are as good as anything in a restaurant at a third of the cost. Remember the arithmetic that applies across America: the menu price is not the price, with about 9.5% tax at the till and 18 to 20% expected on top, so a fifty-pound dinner is closer to sixty-two.
Al pastor from a truck, after ten at night
Pork off a vertical spit with pineapple, onion and coriander on doubled corn tortillas. About £2 each, cash, from a truck that will not be there at lunchtime — and better than most restaurant meals in the city.
Ready for Los Angeles?
Pick your departure airport and see what the route costs today from each of the ten we track.
See the £321 fare Opens in a new tabSame band
Other long-haul destinations
Where the numbers came from
- Getty Center parking, Griffith Observatory and DASH bus costs griffithobservatory.lacity.gov Opens in a new tab read 2026-08-08
- Universal Studios Hollywood ticket range and Metro TAP fare cap thebettervacation.com Opens in a new tab read 2026-08-08
- The ESTA fee increase and US entry rules cbp.gov Opens in a new tab read 2026-08-08
- Entry rules for a British Citizen passport gov.ukOpens in a new tab read 2026-08-07