2 week trip to San Fran - LA - Vegas in June

JoeA3

Hi there,
2 of us are looking at doing a bit of a blowout trip to the USA in mid-June-ish, specifically aiming for California.

I'm wondering what you guys think of this itinerary:

- Fly direct to San Francisco (via Heathrow with BA looks like best value at the moment)
- 3-4 nights in San Fran (incl a trip to Alcatraz)
- Hire a car and take the Pacific Coast Highway
- 1 night in Monterey
- 1 night in Santa Barbara
- 2 nights in LA / Hollywood
- Flight from LA to Las Vegas (flights are very cheap). Or perhaps just drive it?
- 4 nights in Las Vegas, taking in a trip to the Grand Canyon
- Fly home, with a 2-3 night stop over in NYC (shopping, sightseeing, etc)

Does all that sound do-able? Are there any of those stops we should perhaps avoid in favour of spending more time elsewhere? E.g. Yosemite? Looking at the map, Yosemite seems a good bit off track from the Coast Highway, so I'm thinking if we did that we'd have to spend at least 2 days there too. From what I read though, it's really worth seeing!

In terms of flights, BA seem to offer the best deals... using Sky Scanner, flights seem reasonable enough for all those stopping points at the moment. I haven't even looked at hotels yet, but we'd like something decent-ish without going mad on the cost!

Thanks in advance for any tips / advice.

seamus

That's almost exactly the same trip we took for our honeymoon with the exception of the stopover in New York.

My advice is to ditch the stopover in LA. Take an extra night in San Fran (or Santa Barbara, nice town), and an extra night in Vegas.

You can drive from S.Barbara to LA, have a wander around Hollywood Blvd, then go catch a flight to Vegas that evening. Unless you're interested in a bus tour of stars homes, there is literally nothing else to do in LA except spend two hours on Hollywood.

You could drive from LA to Vegas, but it's a relatively long drive (awesome though) from San Fran. So the appeal of a huge non-stop journey across primarily desert may have grown a bit thin by that stage. Take the 90 minute flight to Vegas and you get to spend more time in Vegas.

mitosis

I'd ditch 2 nights in Vegas and go to Yosemite for one and take the other to NY

JoeA3

Thanks a lot guys, great advice!

Seamus - that confirms what I've read elsewhere about LA, so I think we will take your advice on that one. A huge sprawling city with not much to see other than skyscrapers doesn't really appeal to us. Would definitely like to see the Hollywood stuff though, purely for the novelty (I've seen that in the movies!) factor.

Will look more into the possibility of Yosemite too.

donegal.

yosemite is amazing, but you'd have to cut out the coastal route completely . SF to yosemite is about a 5 hr drive. Maybe a night in somewhere like Jackson on the way.
yosemite to LV is about a 8 hr drive.
Moterey to santa barbara is a long drive.
2 days in LA ? spend 1 in disneyland.
If you still have the rental car in Vegas, spend a day at lake mead swiming/boating etc and drive over Hoover dam on the way.

gaillimh

donegal. wrote: »

yosemite is amazing, but you'd have to cut out the coastal route completely . SF to yosemite is about a 5 hr drive. Maybe a night in somewhere like Jackson on the way.
yosemite to LV is about a 8 hr drive.
Moterey to santa barbara is a long drive.
2 days in LA ? spend 1 in disneyland.
If you still have the rental car in Vegas, spend a day at lake mead swiming/boating etc and drive over Hoover dam on the way.

Why not use the 2 days you had planned for LA to stay in Santa Monica?
It is a very short drive into Hollywood,Beverly Hills etc from there and it is a nice beachside city in itself.
Plenty of nice restaurants,bars,shopping etc there to keep you occupied for the 2 days.
I stayed there in October 2011 for 4 nights and enjoyed it.and that was without a car.
With a car it is a perfect base for LA.It is nothing like downtown LA or Hollywood which I found were not nice areas.
Would definitely recommend a stay there.

lil_lisa

Keep in mind, during the summer months, a LOT of touristy places can be very busy (especially Alcatraz) if you're planning on visiting specific places I'd look into buying tours/tickets ahead of time.

twowheelsonly

Once you've settled on some sort of itinerary price it up and then try a travel agent as well.
Myself and my 'Second-In-Command' went on a multi-stop trip to the States last October (including a cruise) for the first time and it cost €4,500 through a travel agent. The cheapest that I could get the exact same trip online was just under €6,500!! Every which way I tried to price it - different hotels, flights etc was working out over €5k every time so we were delighted.

We were even more delighted when we got caught out by Hurricane Sandy and had to spend an unexpected 5 extra days there!! The travel agents earned their money on that one :-)

The trip you want certainly sounds do-able but I too would be inclined to fly the longer legs rather than drive. Unless you really love driving then the novelty will soon wear off.

Edit: Not sure if I can name the Travel Agents we went with but feel free to PM me here if you like.

seamus

+1 on the travel agent. A lot of people scoff at them nowadays but for this kind of multi-stop trip they're great. We got a quote from the travel agent on our trip and I went and attempted to price it up myself online. I managed to get the flights marginally cheaper (€100-odd cheaper in total), but it was the hotels I was killed on. No matter where I checked I just couldn't match the TA's prices. It was about €1,000 cheaper to book through the TA than to book it myself.

We went with trailfinders.

JoeA3

Thanks again guys... I've used Trailfinders in the past a couple of times and I was very happy with their prices/service, so I'll check them out again! I suppose there's a perception alright that travel agents are obsolete but I think for long haul trips like this they still seem very competitive, particularly with the hotels.

As a treat (to myself!) I'd love to get a decent set of wheels for the car hire, maybe a Mustang convertible or something!

seamus

Went with a convertible Mustang ourselves. Worth it. Got burned to **** driving from Monterey to Santa Barbara with the top down. Worth it

The Bishop Basher

gaillimh wrote: »

Why not use the 2 days you had planned for LA to stay in Santa Monica?
It is a very short drive into Hollywood,Beverly Hills etc from there and it is a nice beachside city in itself.
Plenty of nice restaurants,bars,shopping etc there to keep you occupied for the 2 days.
I stayed there in October 2011 for 4 nights and enjoyed it.and that was without a car.
With a car it is a perfect base for LA.It is nothing like downtown LA or Hollywood which I found were not nice areas.
Would definitely recommend a stay there.

We did 2 days in Santa Monica and loved it. Spent one day on a tour around LA and loved it. Was a quick and easy way to check out all the sites hassle free. Spent the second day at Universal Studios and it was a fantastic day. I think I would have spent the third day lounging around Venice Beach if i'd had the time, that place is crazy

Definately worth seeing so don't cut yourself short but I agree that it's not the nicest of cities and it would be difficult to fill more then a few days.

InTheTrees

Looks like a great itinerary.

I would take one day off Vegas and add it to LA.

(Dont believe the anti-LA sentiment, if you appreciate a convertible Mustang then you'll enjoy Los Angeles, its an incredible city.)

InTheTrees

JoeA3 wrote: »

A huge sprawling city with not much to see other than skyscrapers doesn't really appeal to us. Would definitely like to see the Hollywood stuff though, purely for the novelty (I've seen that in the movies!) factor.

The case for Los angeles...

For one thing its pretty unique among US cities in that the "skyscrapers" are confined to a small area that you probably wont ever go near. You may come across one or two buildings over ten stories dotted around santa monica maybe but thats about it. It is sprawling thats true, when the place was being planned in the 20's and 30's they really thought the car was the future so its really spread out.

Which is mainly why man invented convertibles. And you will have one.

There's many miles of beaches. Venice beach, Santa Monica, Malibu. The pacific coast highway.

Then there's Hollywood. The sunset strip. Mulholland drive through the hollywood hills. Beverley Hills. The shops on Rodeo drive.

There's disneyland and Universal. And the theme parks. And the Movie Studio tours.

And you've seen all these places in Films too, it will feel strangely familiar; The Avenues of tall palm trees, and the beaches, etc.

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=34.067845,-118.401603&spn=0.001533,0.002862&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=34.067892,-118.401695&panoid=zIkID_J8OE8LK3ut_qXnHg&cbp=12,128.65,,0,-0.76

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=34.017162,-118.501694&spn=0.024544,0.045791&t=m&z=15&layer=c&cbll=34.017162,-118.501694&panoid=V3eqUTZ_DCk5oJHZLLiXTQ&cbp=12,291.83,,0,-2.19

JoeA3

Thank you to all for the excellent feedback and advice! Just to let ye know, we have it all booked this morning. We went with Trailfinders in the end, because, like Seamus said, when I started pricing it up on my own, I could not beat their prices. They do particularly good value on hotels and car hire - when I compared trailfinders hotel quotes with the hotel's own websites, there was no comparison. Trailfinders much cheaper for the same thing.

So our itinerary is now roughly as follows

- Direct to San Fran via Heathrow
- San Fran for 4 nights (Trailfinders have included an Alcatraz and cable cars tour in here)
- Monterey 1 night
- Santa Barbara 2 nights
- Santa Monica 1 night
- (Car hire to cover the above road trip - Ford Mustang or similar )
- Flight from LA to Las Vegas
- 5 nights in Vegas
- Vegas to NYC
- 2 nights in NYC
- Home!

The Bishop Basher

Sounds great. Enjoy

Pugins

If you can book for the night time Alcatraz tour. It's great. When we did it you could sign up on the night for extra small groups(free) tours. We did the medical wing one. Very interesting and spooky the guy brought us up with a hurricane lamp. Was well worth doing.