Californian cities are generous with their charms, beguiling visitors with seductive scenery, thrillingly diverse neighbourhoods and infectious energy. This is a seriously food-loving state, and California’s farm-to-table dining scene is the envy of the world. As well as culinary clout, cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco offer travellers an abundance of cultural riches, with world-class galleries and museums, a star-studded pop cultural heritage, and progressive arts and design districts that still set the creative agenda today.
San Diego
Possibly California’s most liveable town, San Diego’s laidback vibe and community spirit belies its status as America’s eight largest city. Life is always sunny in this easy-breezy surfer’s paradise, where year-round temperatures hover in the mid twenties, a vibrant bar and nightlife scene thrives and an outdoorsy spirit prevails. Local farmers markets are attended with religious zeal and yoga-zen locals debate where to get the best fish tacos. The border with Mexico is just 17 miles south, and this proximity is present in everything from the food to the architecture.
It’s worth noting that San Diego is easily reached by road or rail from Los Angeles, and can be explored on bike or by foot, with a little bit of help from Uber. And there’s much to discover: families and culture-craving city breakers can easily tick off the city’s world-renowned zoo, Legoland, SeaWorld and the proliferation of museums and venues of Balboa Park. Upmarket La Jolla is renowned for pristine golden sands, five-star hotels, seductive Mediterranean-style architecture and an art deco Playhouse. Trendy North Park, meanwhile, offers an appealing array of coffee shops, galleries, vintage boutiques and the city’s most dynamic restaurant row, 30th Street, enlivened by a healthy local craft beer scene.
San Francisco
Even compared to other Californian cities, San Francisco steals the crown for being as beautiful as it is brilliant, with the cultural heft of a financial powerhouse, perfectly positioned among rolling hills, soaring redwoods and vast beaches. And it’s this combination of high-octane urban energy and eye-wateringly beautiful scenery that has seduced international travellers for decades, making it prime city break material for travellers who love the good life: organic cuisine, live music, uplifting art and awe-inspiring architecture.
Synonymous with the beat poets, jazz, and alternative rock, San Francisco possesses a powerful progressive spirit, having nurtured the 1960s counterculture movement and pushed LGBTQ rights to the fore in the 1970s and 80s. And much as it’s thrilling to wander the streets of Haight-Ashbury, past the former pads of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead, San Francisco’s creative and political spirit is now better sensed on a tour of the murals in the Mission District. This is a city that cherishes cult cartoon museums as much as world-class galleries, where people are as obsessed with a new taco food truck off Grant Avenue as they are with a champagne bar in Hayes Valley. And its compact, navigable nature is all the more remarkable given the variety of experiences on offer. Travellers can tick off unforgettable experiences such as cycling over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito, and still be back in the city for dinner at the Ferry Building.
Palm Springs
In recent years, this decadent desert hideaway of the Rat Pack in the 1950s and 1960s has reemerged as a winning hangout for 21st century hipster hedonists, architecture aficionados, culture cravers, golf fanatics and spa-seekers. Just 90 minutes from Los Angeles, Palm Springs is once again an idyllic weekend retreat for well-heeled city dwellers, who come to marvel at midcentury architecture, dine on spectacular sushi at stylish restaurants and sink into a springs-fed hot pool at a boutique spa hotel.
Palm Springs’s healthy proliferation of boutique hotels and spas do their best to keep you poolside, cocktail-in-hand, but there’s plenty to explore in town. Every February, Modernism Week celebrates Palm Springs retro-chic charms, a total treat for lovers of midcentury design and architecture. But every day of the year, exploring Palm Springs feels like dipping into Hollywood’s golden age, with art deco poolside cocktail bars and awe-inspiring Modernist architecture giving your weekend a stylish upgrade. And with year-round sunshine, stunning mountain backdrops and plenty of courses laid out by famous designers, it’s also a top destination for golfers of all abilities.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is still the ultimate city break for a full immersion in cinematic history, whether by faithfully touring the studios, or simply raising a glass to the stars of the past in an Art Deco cocktail bar. For first-time visitors, Los Angeles is perhaps best understood as a collection of different neighbourhoods, all with their own distinct flavour. There’s the glamour of Hollywood’s grande dame hotels in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, the hipster vibe of Venice beach, the wholesome beach flair of swish Santa Monica, and the recent proliferation of art galleries in the culturally resurgent DTLA (downtown). Ignore people who say you can’t visit Los Angeles without a car; just pick a neighbourhood or two and explore on foot, bike or Uber. Exuding golden age glamour and laden with cinematic significance, West Hollywood belongs firmly on the culture-obsessed traveller’s bucket list, with hip eateries, stylish boutique hotels and designer boutiques, sustained by a longstanding LGBTQ community. Meanwhile the beach-fringed suburb of Santa Monica offers travellers a distinctly more carefree and laidback LA experience than elsewhere in the city.
Santa Barbara
An easy AmTrak jaunt or beautiful coastal drive north of Los Angeles brings you to the serene, sophisticated city of Santa Barbara, which immediately seduces travellers with evocative Spanish Mission-style architecture, a world-class farm-to-table culinary scene and a thrilling trail of winery tasting rooms and microbreweries, all set against the bucolic backdrop of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Confident, cultured and charming, Santa Barbara and its environs has long been the ultimate retreat for movie moguls, stars, artists and British royals.
State Street is lined with high-end fashion and design stores, while the Funk Zone houses independent galleries and urban wineries in converted warehouses decorated with street art. Stearns Wharf delivers some old school coastal Americana, and Santa Barbara’s Urban Wine Trail takes in some 30 walkable wineries – although wine-loving, car-free travellers can also easily Uber into the Santa Ynez Valley wine region for a bespoke tasting tour around family run estates and biodynamic wineries.
Be enchanted by the Golden State
Exhilarating cities, stunning national parks, fabulous food and golden beaches: California really does have it all.
Discover why the Golden State should be top of your travel bucket-list, whether it’s taking a long-anticipated road trip, drinking award-winning wine in Napa, spotting celebs in Los Angeles or walking San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
Plan your California trip with Trailfinders
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