
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'.
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Britain has always loved nepo babies
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Spectator
2 hours ago
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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.