Help Deciding LA Trip

[mastodon]

We will begin the trip with 3 nights in San Diego and have 3/4 nights atcDLR. Now for the other 3 nights we want to go to Universal, LA spots like walk of fame, observatory, Hollywood sign, etc. and one beach day. Thought about staying at the Hilton Universal for 2 nights to do universal one day and sightseeing the other day. The question is do we go down to Huntington Beach to spend a night or to Santa Monica? Is it better to stay the 3 nights in Santa Monica or is it too far from Hollywood sights and universal?

 

[theluckyrabbit]

Santa Monica will be far for Hollywood sightseeing, especially when you factor in traffic both ways. Would it be possible for you to fit in a day at Huntington Beach on your way from San Diego to DLR? Universal should take one day at most and the Walk of Fame, Hollywood sign, Dolby Theater, Chinese Theatre, etc. can all be seen from one location (Hollywood & Highland center), then the rest of that day can be spent at the Observatory. So staying at the Hilton Universal should be fine for those 2 days.

 

[mastodon]

How far from the Hilton to Santa Monica? We thought about staying over one night in Huntington Beach but the checking in/checking out sort of takes away a lot of the time...We wanted just a day to unwind from all the craziness. We would like to at least see the pier at Santa Monica so thought maybe we should tack on the beach there.

 

[buzz242]

The ' Hop on, hop off' sightseeing tour bus leaves from the Chinese Theatre and I believe one of the routes takes in Santa Monica beach and Venice beach, you could leave your car at Hollywood and Highland for the day. We plan to try this when we visit in August as we've tried all the other routes on previous trips.
We stopped at Huntington Beach when we travelled from San Diego to Anaheim a couple of years ago, we left SD mid morning and spent a couple of hours before arriving at our hotel in Anaheim mid afternoon.