Guide to LA ahead of FIFA World Cup including its very space-age stadium
Seeing the steering wheel spin of its own accord was as nerve-racking as watching a London cab's meter spinning… But as the Waymo (an app like Uber, but no driver) safely navigated the streets, it gave a surreal taste of the future.
And like any traveller landing at LAX for the first time I had plenty of preconceptions. But no matter if your movie taste is more Barbie than Blade Runner, LA is full of surprises.
Thought the City of Angels was too big or busy for your little angels? Think again. It has entertainment for kids of all ages. Even big kids like me in their mid-40s. Ironically the home of the silver screen is perfect for a screen break, as it offers enough stimulation for even TikTok-addicted teenagers to put phones away.
LA hosts the World Cup next year and the Olympics in 2028. For sports-loving families, catching a game while in LA is a great option. LA Clippers-owner Steve Ballmer sank £1.5billion into the Intuit Dome basketball arena - and boy, can you tell. The former Microsoft CEO wanted the world's best arena for his NBA team. Befitting a tech titan's toy, it is completely space-age.
For starters, after booking a seat online, you upload a selfie on to the Clippers' app and your face acts as your ticket – you literally just walk in. Want a drink, hot dog or jersey? Pick one up from any bar or shop and stroll away. Facial recognition is also linked to your Google or Apple Pay. Pretty cool.
I also caught the Lakers at the downtown Crypto.com Arena. Murals of late Lakers' legend Kobe Bryant can be found all over LA and there are always A-list celebrities courtside.
The short trip to Anaheim for the original Disneyland will be on most family agendas. Mickey, Minnie and co have entertained generations there since 1955 and the park marks its 70th in July.
In truth, every day at Disneyland is a celebration, particularly for younger visitors. The clear ride highlight was the incredible Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Space Mountain also continues to wow and the Guardians of the Galaxy ride was exhilarating.
Top tip, download the Disneyland app before arriving for live updates on queues, navigation and details of when popular parades take place. Viewing the fireworks displays from Main Street is a must.
Of all the insider movie trivia gained during (ace) tours of Universal Studios and Warner Bros, the most jaw-dropping was that the latter employs gardeners to pick individual leaves from trees so Mafia sets convincingly replicate New York (the Big Apple has an autumn, LA doesn't).
Warner Bros is a working studio and the 90-minute tour is unmissable. TV fans can sit on famous sofas from Friends and The Big Bang Theory, and seeing the tricks performed to create your favourite shows is eye-opening.
As well as an equally informative tour – including sets from Psycho, Jaws and King Kong – Universal Studios is a full-blown theme park too. The coolest ride is the immersive MarioKart: Bowser's Challenge in Super Nintendo World.
Imagine playing MarioKart with friends, while wearing 3D goggles and simultaneously spinning around in a dodgem car and you're not far off.
Theme-park tickets, food and merchandise mount up, so it is a relief some top attractions are free. California's golden sands are legendary, and Venice and Santa Monica beaches are easy excursions. The 2.5 mile walk between Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach Skatepark is a gem. And where else could you join posers pumping iron on Muscle Beach, watch skaters flip epic tricks, and barter for souvenirs with the merchants of Venice boardwalk?
Another fab free excursion is to Griffith Park – named after a Welsh mining magnate who donated it to LA, though on the negative side of the ledger he later shot his wife. That nugget was a line from our guide from Bikes and Hikes LA, who as an actor played a doctor on ER. Before you ask, no, it wasn't a down-on-his-luck George Clooney…
While Griffith Park is totally free, the guide (Michael) elevated the experience.
The massive park on Mount Hollywood has brilliant views, hiking trails and is a great vantage point for photos of the Hollywood sign. Griffith Observatory is another free and fun way of learning about the stars. Checking how much you'd weigh on different planets is interactive amusement, at least until you get to Jupiter and the needle rockets.
As well as celestial stars it regularly hosts cinematic ones, appearing in scores of movies, including La La Land.
The Petersen Museum on Wilshire Boulevard is impossibly striking and home to not only Michael Knight's KITT and Herbie, the Batmobile and Lightning McQueen, but 250 other significant vehicles.
LA is also well served by art museums for those after culture. The Broad in downtown boasts a stunning collection of contemporary works by Warhol, Basquiat and Koons and is also free.
The magic cast by tacos in LA is intoxicating and I was enchanted. Angelenos insist LA dining doesn't get more authentic than at its 4,000 roadside taco trucks. I can honestly say I didn't have one mediocre taco – they were uniformly excellent and a bargain option for family dining.
To push the taco boat out a little, head to Holbox inside the Mercado la Paloma in south LA. There aren't many Michelin-starred restaurants where you just turn up and join the queue. The 20-minute wait was rewarded by a counter seat where I could watch chefs expertly assemble spankingly fresh seafood tacos.
Octopuses, scallops and Baja California Kanpachi with a bewildering array of salsas were among the delights I dived into. A final bill – including tip and tax – of $44 was an absolute steal.
LA is a seriously exciting food city, though prices can seem high. For those staying downtown, Asterid by Ray Garcia is a swanky option where the short rib lives long in the memory.
In the Arts District, De La Nonna is great value and a cut above most Italians, with its salads and vegetable-led dishes enticing, not to mention a killer cocktail list. On Venice's Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Gjelina is a celeb magnet. By LA standards it's affordable and the Mediterranean-inspired food really lets the Californian produce sing.
LA has more than 1,000 hotels to suit all budgets, but I definitely backed a winner at the W Hollywood. Having recently undergone a £38million refurb, it is a glam choice, right on Hollywood Boulevard (Katharine Hepburn and Doris Day have Walk of Fame stars outside).
The stylish rooms are huge, with great design touches. A rooftop pool offers breathtaking views and was a stunning spot for a dawn dip to defeat jet lag. Downstairs the Living Room is the sort of grand lobby bar American hotels do so well – great for first-rate drinks and people-watching. Breakfast, while pricey, was spectacular and sets you up until dinnertime.
I also stayed at the Omni, located at California Plaza, near the Grand Central Market and downtown attractions. My comfortable room was massive and overlooked Angels Flight, the funicular railway – a staple movie backdrop.
The service at the Omni stood out and the breakfast avocado toast at its Noé restaurant put UK versions to shame and was almost too pretty to eat. Almost.
LA is famously vast and everything you have heard about its rush-hour traffic is true. Unlike London, where tourists rarely leave Zone 1, LA's attractions are spread out. Pre-planning which attractions can be visited on the same day is key.
Most visitors – particularly those enjoying a wider Californian trip – will hire a car. For part of my stay I did without and found a combination of public transport and ride-hailing apps worked well. (LA's public transport doesn't have a great reputation locally, but I personally found it OK).
The $11billion rail line from LAX to downtown is due to open for the World Cup and Metro extensions to Beverly Hills are being built. The bus network is more comprehensive than Metro, but unlike Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves in Speed, you definitely won't stay above 50mph for long…
Movie directors know a great ending sets up the sequel by leaving the audience wanting more. It is just the same with holidays and on that score LA absolutely delivered.
There is so much to see and do that you can only really scratch the surface in one trip.
And in the immortal words of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger – 'I'll be back'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Statesman
an hour ago
- New Statesman
Britain has always loved nepo babies
Photo by Lodovico Colli di Felizzano/WWD It's like a Mario Puzo novel: the Beckhams are brawling. If you are to take the Daily Mail at their word, David and Victoria 'have become estranged' from the eldest son Brooklyn, who is supposedly trapped in a prenup arrangement with notorious actress-heiress Nicola Peltz Beckham. To add insult to injury, online onlookers have started to make fun of Cruz Beckham, 20, for playing guitar in an indie rock band. 'Are you going to stick with this job or going to become a race car driver next or something?' asked one TikTok commenter under some clips of him mid-shred. 'Wrong brother mate,' he replied. Perhaps Cruz is right to distance himself from his sibling, who has accidentally become a boogeyman for his downwardly-mobile contemporaries. In 2025, many are struggling just to get a job interview – but Brooklyn has been a model, a hapless online chef, a hot-sauce entrepreneur and a not-very-good published photographer. ('Elephants in Kenya,' goes a caption from his photography book, next to an image of an elephant-shaped shadow. 'So hard to photograph but incredible to see.') Brooklyn is the archetypal 'nepo baby,' allowed to fail upwards because of celebrity parents. 'The entertainment industry has never been a meritocracy,' began the New York Magazine cover story that helped popularise the term three years ago. But the article went on to claim we were living in a 'nepo-baby boom,' surrounded by an unusual number of actors and singers leeching off their famous relatives. When you look at the rest of human history it seems likely that we've just stepped slightly out of a 200-year lacuna. Our modern conception of the celebrity – a unique talent nurtured by press – is relatively new. It most likely began on the Victorian stage with the astronomical success of non-nepo Sarah Bernhardt; Clara Bow, the first woman famed for her non-inherited but natural 'It' factor, came out of nowhere a century ago. Millennia have been spent going the other way. All the major ancient pantheons had twisty family trees; biblical figures in the Old Testament constantly begat other figures. And most world civilisations on record have been ruled by nepo babies, or at least by those who have plotted to depose them. We have had no time to rejig our expectations. It's no longer in vogue to say that our remaining monarchs have a direct stamp of approval from God – but there are few other conclusions to make about our new celebrity class. Minor sightings result in hysteria; red carpets command press cavalcades; props, costumes and personal belongings make big money at auction. Why wouldn't these supernatural qualities pass from generation to generation? The religious have collected sacred relics for centuries; surely the most exciting relic to see, the one bearing the largest volume of original biological detritus, is a living child. Like every great historical dynasty, the Beckhams are doing a public service by moving fact to the more interesting realm of fiction. Ask any casting agent from the world of reality TV: those with enough talent to rise up through meritocracy are too busy grinding on the job to produce any good interpersonal drama. But intergenerational sagas are everywhere in literature because the plots never get old; as Tolstoy said, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Brooklyn's troubles in the kitchen and on safari have a Waughesque air about them; the battle between the Peltzes and the Beckhams seems to have been lifted word-for-word from the soap opera Dynasty. And we cannot help but root for Cruz, who would probably be the earnest, field-tilling character in a long Russian novel collaged together from the Sidebar of Shame. He will never manage to dissociate himself from the rest. But he shouldn't have to. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe I am not a nepo baby; before becoming a journalist I knew nobody in the industry, although I did once try to stake a Tess of the d'Urbervilles-style claim to literary status after hearing that one of my ancestors supposedly fled Nazi Germany with Thomas Mann. Those of us who jeer at the nepo babies have no idea how romantic and fun it feels to almost be one. We should make fewer complaints and start falsifying our family trees; it's time to operate by the real rules of Qing China or Plantagenet England. All of history is ours to play with. [See more: Stop taking Glastonbury so seriously] Related
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
BBC true crime series unveils 'Bad Nanny' who scammed vulnerable families
Serial con-artist Samantha Cookes assumed multiple identities and made up wild stories. BBC's documentary tonight sheds a light on the true crime case Like an evil Mary Poppins, serial con-artist Samantha Cookes posed as a nanny and scammed families with disabled children - even taking their money for a fake trip to Lapland. Gripping two-parter Bad Nanny (Tues 8th July, BBC1, 10.45pm) rakes over all the shocking details of this true crime case, that saw Cookes assume multiple identities, including a child therapist, an arts teacher and a surrogate mother, to con families in the UK and Ireland between 2011 and 2024. She even posed on TikTok as Carrie Jade Williams, a terminally ill woman and disability activist, winning the sympathy and support of thousands. But when one of her posts went viral, some followers became suspicious and began to dig, discovering her real name was Samantha Cookes, a fraud with multiple aliases and a troubling history. Speaking for the first time, Katie and Luke in North Yorkshire describe how she posed as a surrogate mother, defrauding them of their savings. Mother-of-three Layla describes how she believed she was hiring 'Lucy Hart', a Mary Poppins-like au pair at their home in County Offaly. When Layla became suspicious, 'Lucy' vanished, leaving an ominous note that left Layla fearing for her children. And Dublin mums Lorraine and Lynn reveal how they hired 'Lucy Fitzwilliams' as a child therapist for their disabled children, eventually handed over desposits for a fake trip to Lapland. 'Lucy' also told wild stories, pretending she was the 3M company heiress and was set to marry a pastor. Lorraine says: 'She took advantage of people's trust and their emotions and vulnerability.' Bad Nanny is airing on BBC One tonight at 10.45pm There's plenty more on TV tonight - here's the best of the rest... TRAINWRECK: THE REAL PROJECT X, NETFLIX The Trainwreck documentary series revisits headline-making events that went terribly wrong. This latest instalment recounts what happened when a teen's birthday invite accidentally went viral on Facebook, leading to a full-blown riot. In 2012, a teenage girl in the small Netherlands town of Haren created a Facebook event for her sixteenth birthday party, but made the page public instead of private. Inspired by a love of the Hollywood movie Project X, which saw three high school seniors throw a party that spiralled out of control, Dutch teenagers made the event go viral, and soon thousands of people had RSVP'd. Despite warnings, police and local authorities didn't seem to think that anyone would turn up, so no provisions were made to entertain the 3,000 young people who arrived in Haren. Before long the quiet Dutch town became host to a night of drunken chaos, the birthday girl fled her home and riot police were deployed. If it wasn't true, you'd never believe it… SHARKS UP CLOSE WITH BERTIE GREGORY, NAT GEO WILD, 8pm Wildlife filmmaker Bertie Gregory is a braver man than most as he gets extremely up close to some scary-looking sharks. Arriving on the coast of South Africa, he says: 'I have dived with a lot of sharks around the world, but I have never seen the most famous and the most feared - the Great White. I'm going to try something that my mum really doesn't want me to do. I'm going to dive with a Great White Shark without a cage.' There is only one place where this is possible, thanks to its shallow waters, which prevent sharks from attacking from below, and clear visibility, which allows the team to see the predators coming. It still doesn't feel completely reassuring. Bertie works alongside local shark spotters, a community-led initiative developed in response to past fatal shark attacks. Their shared mission is to explore how humans and Great White sharks might coexist in these waters. With a cage, I'd suggest… A YORKSHIRE FARM, 5, 7pm As a new series kicks off, farmers Rob and Dave Nicholson pick sloes from their farm hedgerows before turning them into artisanal chocolate. JB Gill takes a trip to the rolling hills of Wales, visiting a farmer who is reaping the rewards from a rather unusual diversification - he's making medicine from daffodils. And on his farm in the Cotswolds, Adam Henson works hard looking after his native pigs, which are some of the rarest breeds in the UK. EMMERDALE, ITV1, 7.30pm Joe is fearful as the harassment campaign against him continues with an envelope containing a blackmail demand for £100,000 being placed in the Home Farm kitchen. Unsure of who else to trust, Joe shows the blackmail demand to Sam, but he's none-the-wiser. When Ross confronts Robert about the missing weed, Robert threatens to cancel the land deal with Moira, forcing Ross to back down. Forced to take Gabby's car to Kammy at the garage, Vinny faces unavoidable questions about his sexuality.
Spectator
2 hours ago
- Spectator
Period talk needs to stop. Period
When the supermodel Brooks Nader's period started at Wimbledon, naturally she turned to social media. 'Tries to be chic. Starts period at Wimbledon,' Nader wrote, alongside a snap on TikTok showing blood stains on the back of her skirt. 'A canon event for all us girlies!', someone bleated in response. The American model was praised for being 'real' and 'NORMALISING' periods. May I be the first to say: Nader should have kept this to herself. This is just the latest example of a disturbing tendency among women to overshare about their menstrual cycles. Nader flaunting her uterine shedding in a white designer outfit is being hailed as a victory for feminism. Her fans would lead us to believe she is single handedly upholding the very notion of women's empowerment. She isn't. The grisly celebration of women bleeding only confirms the way menstruation has become a hot topic. Women are obsessed with talking about their periods, in what we are told is not an icky example of TMI (too much information), but a brave victory towards finally ending the (alleged) shame and stigma surrounding periods. BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty has spoken frankly about her experience of debilitating painful periods, giving talks at book festivals and popping up on the radio to speak about her menstrual cycle. Her BBC colleague Emma Barnett has written a whole book, Period: It's About Bloody Time, on women's bleeding. Davina McCall has made an industry out of women not having periods, cashing in on the menopause©. McCall has released two documentaries on the subject – Davina McCall: Sex, Myths and the Menopause and Davina McCall: Sex, Mind and The Menopause – and co-authored a book called Menopausing. Am I the only one longing for a time when professional women were not reduced to talking about their hormones? This onslaught of menstrual chat has become so bloody relentless. 'It's that time of the month again…to shout about periods!' the Wellbeing of Women website says, having celebrated Menstrual Hygiene Day on 28 May. No, it isn't. Bookshop shelves are streaked with the blood red covers of tomes imploring readers that it's Not Just a Period (although it is). Oscar-winning films explore the impact of our time of the month. Athletes, pop-stars and actresses clamour to share yucky details of what it's like to dare to appear in public while having their periods. Do these ladies not realise that women have been doing this for centuries without fuss? The excessive sharing of details about bodily fluids is bad enough, but what's worse is how totally disingenuous the whole conversation around the 'shattering the shame' of periods is. Sure, in some countries around the world women are still compelled to isolate themselves or hide during their periods. This is appalling. These women deserve our help. But that's hardly the case in the UK, where it's been years since Kiran Gandhi ran the London Marathon 'free-bleeding' with crimson stains streaming down the inner thighs of her red leggings. That was in 2015. We've seen it all before. Women have been making art out of their menstrual blood since the 1970s. A decade on, the enthusiasm for celebrating women's periods is becoming unbearable. Our foremothers fought hard for women not to be defined by their bodies; they pushed back against the limiting notion that women are too fragile, or emotional at certain times of the month, to function. They resisted the attempt by some men to reduce us to our child-birthing capacities. But by focusing obsessively on periods, women risk reinforcing that message. A recent survey of Gen Zers found that 78 per cent of them supported companies bringing in menstrual leave. Some countries, including Spain, have implemented such policies, although luckily Italy saw sense – perhaps realising that this idea risks reinforcing harmful sexist stereotypes, not least the idea that women might be emotionally unstable during their periods or incapable of normally functioning in a workplace. This, of course, is a notion that's been used forever to keep women out of public spaces. This whole discussion of periods is especially triggering for me as I grew up with hippies. I was thus forced to see in my first period with a family celebration. My teenage years were haunted by trips to Glastonbury (the hippie town not the festival) where we celebrated the sacred yoni (google it. Or on second thoughts, don't). You can't imagine what it does to a teenage girl's sense of her body to be inundated with images of trees carved into the shape of vaginas and sung chants celebrating her divine feminine flow. If anything, it was that creepy perving that made me ashamed of my period in the first place. It showed me first-hand how a culture that ostensibly celebrates 'earth mothers' is used by leftie men to keep women as breeding grounds, home makers and carers. Meanwhile, men get to do the fun stuff like getting stoned and whittling spoons. It's the year 2025, and I refuse to believe that anyone is really still ashamed of having periods – and I'm sick of hearing about them. While it's true that women wait too long for gynaecological care, it doesn't mean we have to ruin every dinner party with chats about periods. God knows I'm a prolific over-sharer, but even to me that feels a bit bloody much.
