City edition
Where to stay in Los Angeles
Los Angeles is the city where choosing the address is the whole decision, because the alternative is an hour in the car. Every entry ends in the address’s own contact, at the address’s own price.
AKA Beverly Hills
North Crescent Drive, the Golden Triangle, Beverly Hills
Extended-stay hotel residences
One-bedrooms 98 and 106 m²; two-bedrooms to 147 m² (1,585 sq ft)
The nightly rate is not published; ask the address.
AKA West Hollywood
8500 Sunset Boulevard, the Sunset Strip
Extended-stay hotel residences
Studios over 65 m²; two-bedrooms 113 m² (1,213 sq ft) and up
The nightly rate is not published; ask the address.
Staying in Los Angeles
There is no centre here. Los Angeles is a run of separate places forty minutes apart, and the distance between two of them is measured in what the traffic is doing rather than in miles — the same drive is fifteen minutes at ten in the morning and an hour at six in the evening. So the only question that matters is what you want to be able to reach on foot, and you should choose the address entirely around that.
Two neighbourhoods are genuinely walkable, and both are in this edition: the Golden Triangle of Beverly Hills, and the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Everywhere else, you will drive. The city is also where the extended-stay residence is best developed in America — whole buildings of one- and two-bedroom apartments with a front desk, a pool and a gym, priced by the week or the month. They are much larger than their European equivalents: a studio here is often bigger than a one-bedroom in Paris.
Where to sleep, and what it means
- The Golden Triangle, Beverly Hills
- Between Wilshire, Santa Monica Boulevard and Canon Drive. The only part of the city where you can walk to the shops and the restaurants. Quiet residential streets one block back. Close to Cedars-Sinai.
- The Sunset Strip, West Hollywood
- On Sunset at the foot of the hills, between Beverly Hills and Hollywood. Walkable, loud, with the view over the basin. Ask for a high floor away from the boulevard.
- Santa Monica and Venice
- The beach, the ocean air and twenty degrees cooler in August. Forty minutes from the studios in traffic, which is the whole argument against it for a working stay.
- Downtown and the arts district
- The tall buildings, the concert hall, the lofts. The best value per square foot in the city, empty at the weekend, and a long way from everything else.
What a visitor asks first
- Do I need a car?
- Almost certainly yes, and your building will have parking — ask the nightly or monthly cost, because it is charged separately and it is not small. The exception is a stay built entirely inside Beverly Hills or on the Strip, where a car service for two trips a day costs less than parking and insurance.
- Which airport?
- LAX for long-haul from Europe, the Gulf and Asia, and allow ninety minutes from the west side at five in the afternoon. Burbank is far smaller, far faster and closer to the studios if you can find a flight into it. From LAX to Beverly Hills is thirty minutes at seven in the morning and an hour and a quarter at six.
- How often is the apartment cleaned?
- Weekly, in most extended-stay residences, not daily. This is the single most common surprise for a reader arriving from a hotel, and it is normal for the category rather than a failing. Ask what the schedule is and what extra daily housekeeping costs before you arrive.
The next city, before anyone else
The Letter is one city an issue and a handful of addresses, with the direct contact for each. It is free, it is the only thing we ask of a reader, and it costs you nothing on the stay you book afterwards.
Join the Letter
One city an issue, a handful of addresses, the direct contact for each. No password, no name, and every contact in the Collection opens for you.