Hello Tildes travelers,

I'm sure questions like this get asked often, but I'm having a hard time cutting through the SEO spam and AI BS about travel and feeling a bit overwhelmed at the options.

I digress, as the title states, my wife and I are heading to California in early June for a wedding in the bay area. Neither of us have been to California and wanted to make a big trip out of it, roughly eight-ish days with two being dedicated to wedding activities. We both are from the Midwest and really want to see what California has to offer. Ideally we would love some help with making an itinerary of things to do and places to see since its such a big state and with so much to do. A Few things we'd love to try and do: see Palm Springs (wife is an architect), explore LA, drive the coast, explore the bay area and finally see some giant sequoia trees. It sounds like a lot so I'm not sure how that all might shake out, or even if its possible in the given time frame. Which is why I am appealing to you all for some help.

Roughly, and I mean roughly our plan is this:

• Day 1: Fly into California
  • Arrive in Palm Springs (if we can) spend evening and the next day exploring the city
• Day 3: Drive into LA
  • Explore the city for the day and spend the evening in LA
• Day 4: Drive up the coast
  • Spend the day driving up the coast and end the evening staying in a coastal town (Stopping in Santa Barbra and staying Arroyo Grande or some similar town halfway to San Fran)
• Day 5: Arrive in San Fran
  • Spend the morning driving the rest of the coast and arrive in the bay area
  • Spend the early part of the day exploring San Fran then drive to Pleasanton (location of wedding)
  • Spend evening doing wedding things
• Day 6: Day of the wedding
  • Wedding stuff (woo!)
• Day 7: Drive from Fremont to Calaveras Big Trees State Park
  • Spend the day exploring some of the inner portion of California and get our big tree fix
  • Spend the evening driving home
• Day 8: Flyout of San Jose or Oakland

Does this seem doable? Is this stupid? Any thing you would change? Really we don't have anything done yet minus the RSVP and the dates specifically. I'm not looking for anything crazy specific, minute by minute to hour by hour. That is asking a lot for a random internet stranger but any help would be really appreciated.

Hey, I'm headed to San Diego in March after getting selected for a work conference. The last time I was in California was San Francisco more than a decade ago with my dad, so I'm excited to be visiting again.

The first few days will be the conference (which includes a recreational afternoon for networking, I picked the San Diego Zoo). I purposely scheduled my plane flight to be a few days after the conference ends to I can explore the city, but it'll be my first real solo trip; originally, my sister was going to tag along in my hotel room, but she had an injury and needed to drop out.

I fly in on March 18th, check out from the conference is the morning of Saturday the 21st, and I fly back home on the morning of the 24th. That gives me almost all of Saturday, and all of Sunday and Monday to explore the city.

Definitely, one of the things I want to check out is Balboa Park, though I would appreciate advice on specific museums, since I can't imagine it's possible to see even half of them in a day.

Another thing I've considered is a day trip to Tijuana to walk around. It's been a while since I had a good opportunity to practice my Spanish. Worst case scenario I can get a dental cleaning if I can't come up with any other ideas 😂.

Eating out alone isn't really something I've done before either. I think I want to do a nice sushi bar Omakase one night just to treat myself, if people have suggestions on where, and I'd love other suggestions for places to try where it wouldn't be too weird eating solo.

Does anyone have any suggestions for other things to do, places to see? Where I should stay after leaving the Marriott Marquis, since at >$500/night it's a little expensive for me? I won't be renting a car, so ideally, something either in walking distance or easily accessible via transit. I'll probably do a mix of ride shares and public transit for travel.

I'd love to hear ideas, along with what anyone else here has done in San Diego. Worst case scenario, I'm sure I'll figure it all out, but it's nice to poll the crowd sometimes.

Hi friends!

I know part of the Pacific Highway are broken right now, but I was just wondering if there was any tips/places to stop at on a trip from San Fran to San Diego that I'm planning on next month. (More specifically for a motorcycle trip, which comes with it's own interesting routes and stuff)

I've always wanted to do the journey, so me and a friend are planning on going from SF -> LA over 2 days, and I'm planning on taking the bike down to SD after staying in LA for a couple of days by myself afterwards!

My parents live in Los Angeles so I'm there often, but I feel like I've always done the big things that everyone's done (Hollywood Sign, Disneyland/Universal, Sunset Blvd (not worth it imo)) and eaten the popular foods (Leo's Tacos, Din Tai Fung, etc) so I'm wondering what other things I can do the next time I'm out there! I'm going out there for a bachelor party with a couple of friends in May, if that helps :)

A similar thing with Vegas, we'll be stopping by there for a couple of days after LA, and I know of all the popular things to do, mainly some gambling, buffets and shows, but is there anything outside of that that are considered -must do's- that we could check out?

I work remotely for a US tech start-up, and my work is flying me out for our company kickoff in Santa Barbara at the end of February. Because I want to spend as little time in Berlin February weather as possible and I want to meet up with some local(-ish) relatives, I'm flying in a week earlier than necessary. As a result, however, I'm going to have some free time to fill.

The biggest thing is that I'm going to have to find and pay for my own lodging while I'm there until the work event starts and I can check into the hotel my company booked. So if anyone has any personal experience with some cheap-but-not-sketchy lodging options in LA or Santa Barbara, I especially welcome that. I'm flying into LAX so I'm able to stay there before going down to Santa Barbara for the actual work event if it's cheaper or there's more to do there (which I kinda assume is the case on both counts, idk).

I've heard LA is generally pretty expensive. I'm not a huge party animal by any means, but I figure I should do more when I'm there than sitting in my hotel reading (especially if I want to kick the jetlag before all the work stuff starts). So I'd also love any recommendations for cheap but interesting stuff to do while I'm there. My cursory Google searches have turned up a bunch of Hollywood tourist type stuff and recommendations for outdoorsy activities like hiking, neither of which is my speed. But surely there's gotta be some interesting stuff for a nerdy introvert to check out!

I'm also a very food-motivated traveler, so any particular restaurant recommendations for while I'm there are very welcome -- especially stuff that's hard for me to find in Germany. Latin American food is especially high on my list ofc, and I'm also on the lookout for good wing places, since I know both of those things are very hard to find at home in Berlin. But I also welcome other recommendations, especially stuff that isn't gonna come up in a quick google search. Or authentic Chinese food (even though I'm not going to SF, I learned how to say 洛杉矶 in Chinese class back in the day so LA's gotta have at least somthing 😅). I'm also a coffee person, so I'd love to know about any particular standout local coffee shops (even though I'm sure there's way more than I could try in even a month in a city the size of LA).