Exclusive Los Angeles Experiences: Rodeo Drive, the Getty & Helicopter Tours

Los Angeles rewards visitors who treat it less as a single city than as a loose federation of very specific pleasures — a shopping street, a hilltop museum, a coastline best seen from above. Its best experiences rarely sit next to one another, which is precisely why they reward planning.

Rodeo Drive

Three palm-lined blocks in the heart of the area covered in our Beverly Hills guide, Rodeo Drive has functioned as the city's flagship luxury shopping address for decades, its boutiques as much a photo opportunity as a place to buy anything. A short walk connects it directly to The Beverly Hills Hotel and The Peninsula, both detailed in our hotels guide.

The Getty Center & Getty Villa

Perched on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains, the Getty Center pairs an internationally significant art collection with architecture and gardens built specifically to be experienced as a single work — and with sweeping views across the basin toward the ocean. Its sister site, the Getty Villa near Malibu, recreates a first-century Roman country house to house the collection's antiquities, making the pair a natural day built around both art and the coastal drive between them.

Private Helicopter Tours

A helicopter tour remains the fastest way to understand how Los Angeles actually fits together — the Hollywood Hills, the coastline toward Malibu, and the grid of the basin all visible in a single flight that would otherwise take hours by car. Many routes include a mountaintop or beach landing, turning the tour into a full excursion rather than a simple flyover.

A Day on the Malibu Coast

Beyond the beach clubs and private homes described in our areas guide, Malibu's canyons hold a growing wine scene, with tasting rooms built into the same hills that shelter the coastline's most private estates — a quieter, more agricultural counterpoint to the coastline's beach-club reputation.

Planning Around the City

Los Angeles's scale means transit time is the real variable in any itinerary — Rodeo Drive and the Getty Center sit comfortably within a single day, while Malibu excursions are best planned as their own half-day or full-day trip. Weekday mornings offer noticeably lighter traffic than weekend afternoons for any drive along the coast.