Santa Cruz sits between San Francisco and Monterey, so day trips run north up the coast, south around the bay or inland over the mountains. Distances below are from downtown Santa Cruz, and prices are in US dollars. On summer weekends Highway 1 slows to a crawl between Santa Cruz and Aptos, so allow extra time. Monterey and Cannery Row Monterey is about 45 miles south, roughly an hour without traffic.

Santa Cruz makes a good base for a long weekend or a longer coastal drive. This page sketches three routes and the practical details that decide them: parking, buses and park status. Prices are in US dollars and can change. A Three-Day Santa Cruz Plan Day 1, the shore. Spend the morning on the Boardwalk, which is free to enter, then walk the Wharf and finish with West Cliff Drive and Lighthouse Point at sunset.

Santa Cruz suits couples who like sea air, redwoods and an easy pace. The romance here is mostly outdoors: sunset on the water, a cliff walk and a dinner with a view. Prices are in US dollars, and operators change schedules by season, so check before you book. A Sunset Sail Chardonnay Sailing Charters sails from the FF Dock at the Santa Cruz Harbor. Its yachts, Chardonnay II and Chardonnay III, are both 70 feet long.

Santa Cruz has a handful of paid attractions that run on a schedule, plus several free ones. This page lists the main ones with the figures that matter when you plan: hours, fares and parking. All prices are in US dollars and can change, so confirm on the operator’s site. Roaring Camp Redwood Forest Steam Train Roaring Camp Railroads is at 5401 Graham Hill Road in Felton. The Redwood Forest Steam Train takes 75 minutes and departs daily.

Santa Cruz works well for families because several of the best stops are outdoors, close together and cheap or free to enter. Prices are in US dollars and can change, so check each site before you go. The Boardwalk The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is free to enter, and rides need a wristband or tickets. Wristbands run from about $34.95 to $69.95 depending on the date. Rides have minimum heights, and the Giant Dipper wooden coaster asks for about 50 inches, so measure children and check the chart at the entrance.

Santa Cruz packs a lot of looking into a small area. The Boardwalk and Wharf are on the Monterey Bay shore, downtown on Pacific Avenue is a few blocks inland, and West Cliff Drive and Natural Bridges run to the west. Prices are in US dollars and can change. West Cliff Drive and Lighthouse Point The cliff path gives wide views over the bay. Below Lighthouse Point is Steamer Lane, a surf break for experienced surfers that is fun to watch from above.

Santa Cruz is a coastal city of roughly 60,000 people on the north shore of Monterey Bay, about 75 miles south of San Francisco. Surf breaks, redwood forest and a seaside amusement park sit within a few miles of each other, so most visitors combine two or three of them in a day. Prices below are in US dollars and change with the season, so check each operator before you go.

Santa Cruz is easy to explore on foot. The routes below are self-guided, flat or gently graded, and mostly free. Distances come from park and city pages and can vary by route. West Cliff Drive The paved coastal path runs from the Wharf past Lighthouse Point to Natural Bridges, roughly 3 miles each way. It is flat and has ocean views the whole way. The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum at 701 West Cliff Drive is on the route and is open noon to 4pm, Thursday to Monday.

Los Angeles is not one walkable city; it is a set of walkable neighborhood bubbles seven or more miles apart. Walking between Hollywood and Downtown along commercial strip malls and freeway overpasses is exhausting and covers nothing worth seeing. Stick to one route per outing. Downtown: Historic Core to Bunker Hill, 2.5 miles Start at the 1939 Mission Moderne Union Station, cross Alameda St to Olvera Street, then walk south on Broadway to Grand Central Market for lunch among its 40-plus vendors.

Bunker Hill’s museum cluster and the Pacific Coast are both worth a full day of sightseeing on their own; trying to combine them costs 60 to 90 minutes of driving each way, so plan one region per day rather than a single sweeping loop. Griffith Observatory The 1935 Art Deco observatory on Mount Hollywood is free to enter, with Tesla coil demonstrations and public lawn telescopes at no charge. Samuel Oschin Planetarium shows run $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and students, $8 for children 5 to 12, sold only same-day at on-site kiosks.

Los Angeles rewards a slower pace better than a rushed one: a picnic dinner under the stars at the Hollywood Bowl, a lantern-lit walk along the Venice Canals, a gondola for two in Long Beach. None of it needs a car rental beyond what gets you to Malibu. The Hollywood Bowl, picnic included The Hollywood Bowl’s 17,500-seat hillside amphitheater hosts the LA Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel from June through September, and for official LA Phil classical and jazz concerts, the bench seats in the upper sections start at $1 to $15, while pool and garden box seats run $150 to $350 and up.

San Francisco rewards walking more than almost any American city its size, and four routes cover most of what a car would only get stuck trying to park near. Chinatown Enter through the Dragon Gate at Grant Avenue and Bush Street, then work north through Waverly Place, the “Street of Painted Balconies,” home to the Tianhou Temple founded in 1852. Ross Alley holds the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory at 56 Ross Alley, where cookies are still folded by hand for a small photo fee, and Stockton Street’s wet markets sell live seafood and produce a block over from the tourist shops on Grant.

San Francisco’s best views mostly cost nothing; the ticket prices below cluster around the handful that do charge. Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill The 1933 Art Deco tower sits atop Telegraph Hill, reached by climbing the Filbert Street Steps through private gardens where a flock of wild parrots often gathers. The ground floor’s 1934 WPA murals of California labor are free to view; the elevator to the observation deck runs $10 to $12, with hours posted at sfrecpark.

Los Angeles County covers over 4,000 square miles, and mixing Downtown, Hollywood and the coast into a single day just buys you traffic. Grouping by neighborhood, one region per day, is what actually gets you through a multi-day trip without losing hours on the freeway. Day 1: Downtown arts and architecture Start at the 1939 Mission Moderne Union Station, walk to Grand Central Market for lunch among its 40-plus vendors, then ride the 298-foot Angels Flight funicular up Bunker Hill for $1 (50 cents with a TAP card).

The best romantic evening in San Francisco starts on the water and ends on a hill, and neither needs a car. A sunset sail past Alcatraz Adventure Cat Sailing Charters runs sunset catamaran cruises from Pier 39 or Aquatic Park, past Alcatraz and under the Golden Gate Bridge as the city lights come on, for $65 to $85 a person. Check current sunset sail dates on Viator before picking an evening, since the best departures fill first in summer.

Exposition Park holds two of the best family museums in the city within a five-minute walk of each other, and both cost nothing to get in. Pair them with a zoo, an aquarium an hour south, or a puppet show, and a family day in LA does not need a theme park to work. California Science Center At 700 Exposition Park Dr, permanent galleries covering ecology, air and space are free with no ticket required; IMAX documentaries run $9.

Four days is enough to cover the historic core, the park, the waterfront and one trip out of town, without doubling back across the city more than once a day. Where to base yourself A hotel near Union Square or the Embarcadero keeps every day below within a short cable car or walk of home base. Compare San Francisco hotels on Booking.com before fixing dates, since Alcatraz tickets and the Muir Woods reservation for day four should be booked around whatever nights you land on.

A rainy-day museum and an outdoor sea lion dock cover most ages in San Francisco, and both sit close enough together to do in one day. California Academy of Sciences and the Exploratorium The Academy, in Golden Gate Park, packs the Steinhart Aquarium, Morrison Planetarium and a four-story rainforest dome under one living roof, with African penguin feedings twice daily; check calacademy.org for that day’s dynamic ticket price before you go.

Griffith Observatory and Santa Monica are inside the city itself, not day trips. A real day trip from Los Angeles clears the metro area entirely, and the four below are the ones that actually work in a single day. Catalina Island by catamaran Catalina Express runs high-speed catamarans from Downtown Long Beach and San Pedro to Avalon in about 60 minutes. Adult round trip fare runs roughly $84 to $92, plus a mandatory $10 round-trip Avalon wharfage tax, for a total near $94 to $102; children 2 to 11 run about $75 round trip.

A day trip has to leave the city, not just cross a park; everything below is at least a short drive or a ferry ride from downtown, with real logistics attached. Muir Woods and Sausalito, 45 minutes north Muir Woods holds old-growth coastal redwoods up to 250 feet tall, some more than 800 years old. Every visitor arriving by car or shuttle now needs a pre-paid, timed reservation booked at gomuirwoods.

Shipped guides tend to lump every studio experience into one line, but the four major Los Angeles studio tours are different products with different ages, lengths and prices. Sorting them out first saves a wasted morning at the ticket window. Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood At 3400 Warner Blvd in Burbank, the standard tour runs three hours: an hour on a guided golf cart through backlot sets and soundstages, then two hours self-guided through Stage 48’s Script to Screen exhibit, the Friends fountain set and Harry Potter props.

Most San Francisco attractions sell timed tickets, not walk-up ones, and the two that matter most, Alcatraz and the cable car, work on completely different booking rules. Alcatraz Island: book weeks, not days, ahead Alcatraz City Cruises, sailing from Pier 33, is the sole authorized concessionaire; a Day Tour runs $47.95 adult and a Night Tour $56.90, both including the cellhouse audio tour. Summer and holiday dates sell out three to six weeks in advance, and the night tour sells out even faster.

Ask five people waiting in the Alcatraz ferry line what else is worth doing in San Francisco and you will get five different answers, because the city rewards whichever direction you point it in: water, hills, or park. Alcatraz first, because it sells out Alcatraz City Cruises, departing Pier 33, is the only authorized operator to the island; the Day Tour runs $47.95 for an adult and includes the audio tour narrated by former inmates and officers through the cellhouse and D-Block.

Los Angeles is 88 separate incorporated cities stitched together by freeway, and no single afternoon covers Highland Park, Downtown and the Westside without an hour lost to traffic. The activities below sit close enough together, mostly in and around Downtown LA, to actually string into one day. Grand Central Market, since 1917 At 317 S Broadway in the Historic Core, Grand Central Market has run continuously since 1917 and now holds 40-plus independent vendors: Eggslut for breakfast, Wexler’s Deli for house-smoked pastrami, Villa Moreliana for Michoacán-style carnitas, and McConnell’s for ice cream after.