A 5-Day Itinerary of Things to do in Los Angeles

Travel

Jul 2

As a NY native, it’s always been a dream of mine to visit Cali (specifically LA) and it finally happened! The palm trees, the warmth, everything was such a vibe. Here is my LA dump on IG.

Our Stay

My little family made our way to the city of angels for 5 days from Thursday to Monday. We stayed in the downtown LA (DTLA) area at the most amazing hotel called Hotel Figueroa. This hotel is the definition of cute and aesthetic. When you check them out, you’ll see what I mean. Not only do they take pride is the aesthetics and architecture, their customer service was by far one of the best, if not the best, I’ve experienced.We booked a suite, since we have a toddler and need the additional space. You can see my hotel recap here and here.

Transportation

Those Uber prices are ridiculous, so we rented a car for the duration of our stay from SIXT. It was affordable and worth it because we were able to go all over LA, and not worry about the distance. Traffic is a bitch like everyone says, but honestly it wasn’t horrible. Definitely recommend renting a car if you go out there.

Eats

When it comes to food and eateries, there’s just so much to do, however I’ll list all the places we visited for breakfast, lunch and dinner so you don’t have to do all the work when planning your own trip. I always make sure I look up thorough reviews of a place before visiting because I hate disappointment lol:

Cafe Fig- This was a cafe located in the hotel. If you are a guest, each guest gets a two free coffee items per day. I took advantage of that and got my cold brews every morning and they were BOMB! I didn’t try their food but it all looked and smelled delicious.
Sparrow - This was a restaurant located in Hotel Figueroa, so we went here our first night for dinner. The grilled octopus- WOW!
Motiva Juice Bar- Got a quick morning pick me up smoothie here. Delish!
The Ivy- We went here for brunch; 20/10 regarding the food and the quaint vibes. Apparently celebrity spotting often happen here lol
Erewhon- the bougie version of Whole Foods is what they call this place. I got the infamous Hairy Bieber smoothie for $18, and it was worth it! This place is just an overpriced grocery store. You can see my review here.
Chill Since ‘93 - Their pizza was phenomenal! They are located in The Grove shopping mall. Cute lunch or dinner spot.
Egg N Bird- We stopped here right after we landed in LA because we were starving! So freaking good! This is a good lunch spot.
Jinya Ramen Bar- One night we were so tired and didn't want to go out for dinner, so we ordered ramen from this place, as well as some dumpling appetizers. It hit the spot. This works for lunch or dinner.
Belle’s Beach House- This place is in Venice Beach. It’s the perfect beachy lunch vibes, and their drinks are out of this world! Perfect for brunch or dinner. You can see my review of the spot here.
Water Grill- This is a fancier spot if you’re into that. We went here our 2nd to last night in LA. Literally everything we had on the menu wowed us! Their bread pudding was so good and I don’t usually eat bread pudding lol

Things to Do

There’s so much to do in LA (similar to NYC), so it’s impossible to do all the things in 5 days. We also have a 1.5 year old, so we’re always very conscious of making sure her experience is just as fun as ours. But, we definitely made sure to keep ourselves entertained as well during our time there. A lot of our activities were mainly centered around sightseeing, enjoying good food and just relaxing. Here are a few things we did, some as a family and one solo.

Beverly Hills
- Take a stoll on Rodeo Drive and the overall area. There are some great photo ops, the palm trees are a vibe and there’s tons of shopping! We visited some local boutiques, Sephora(of course lol), and the infamous Erewhon. It was an cute time.
- Beverly Hills Sign is always nice to check out.
- Here is a quick view driving around Beverly Hills.
Venice Beach
- Spend the 1/2 of a day and head to Venice Beach. We strolled the boardwalk, had brunch, lounged around and played in the sand with our daughter. She loved that! The aesthetics of the entire area was fascinating to witness since I’ve always seen it on TV lol Its vibrant, yet low-key at the same time. You can see my review here.
The Grove
- We made a quick stop here but this spot is great for shopping as well. This is where we had lunch at Chill Since ‘93.
Take a fitness class
- If you like working out, I always think it’s a great idea to try out a new workout class in a new city. Why not? I’m into pilates and barre workouts, so I did a class at a barre studio called Pure Barre. I’ve done a few of their classes before in NYC, so I knew the brand and what their classes were like. I did a 9:30am class, which was a perfect morning pick me up. You can see my experience on IG and TikTok.
Los Angeles Zoo
- This activity was stictly for our daughter, but it was definitely a good time. I would say it was comparable to The Bronx Zoo in terms of the size and variety of animals. It was a nice sun day so we all had a great time!