Questions and Answers

Dear Everyone!

I’m soon driving between Santa Barbara towards LAX (we land in SBA early and depart out of LAX late in the evening) there are three things I want to do;

1. Eat/drink somewhere “cool” on the coast, ideally around the Malibu area.
2. Visit the Griffiths Observatory at Sunset? (is this a good idea)
3. Cycle bikes on the Venice boardwalk.

Conscious it is a lot to tick off in one day, but if anyone had any hints and tips I’d be really grateful.

Look forward to hearing from you all.

(PS: if anyone ever wants advice on travelling around the UK, France or Italy I will always be willing to help!)

Fabrice.

Define “late in the evening” for your LAX departure – and is it domestic or international? And what day of the week are you traveling. LAX can be an absolute zoo even at midnight so you’ll want to arrive in plenty of time.

[QUOTE=”MidSouth Skier, post: 51439, member: 184″]Define “late in the evening” for your LAX departure – and is it domestic or international? And what day of the week are you traveling. LAX can be an absolute zoo even at midnight so you’ll want to arrive in plenty of time.[/QUOTE]
We’re on the 9.05pm BA268 to LHR, I intend to get there about 7pm or just before. My flight is booked for Tuesday 13 November 2018.

I’d plan to get your rental car back by 6 pm because traffic at LAX can be brutal. You may be better off since you’re flying on a Tuesday vs. on the weekend but there’s often construction in the area or even on the airport property.

Will let folks more familiar with the area speak to your activities.

Two weeks ago on a Wednesday afternoon at 5pm leaving the UCLA campus for LAX took me an hour for the ten mile drive. You might do a bit better being able to use the faster carpool lane. Remember, the daylight is short in November and it starts to get dark just after 5pm.

I’ve eaten at the Moonshadows restaurant in Malibu a few times and I highly recommend it. Also, Venice Beach is a fun event even in November, weather permitting.

Personally, I would ditch either the restaurant in Malibu, or Griffith Park (and timing the latter for sunset might be hard anyway), for the traffic reasons [USER=1566]@Gia[/USER] mentioned. It’s going to take you much longer to get between places than you think, and Griffith Park is at least an hour from LAX. You won’t want to backtrack from Venice Beach to the Hollywood Hills and then back to LAX.

If you decide to revamp your itinerary a bit, I might suggest taking the train from Santa Barbara to LA (maybe to Burbank airport and hire a car if you don’t want to do all public transit). That’s one of the few scenic/efficient train routes in the country, and avoids some of the traffic snarls.