Los Angeles or San Francisco: which should you visit first?

21.07.2023 - 08:42 / roughguides.com / Frank Gehry

They’re two of the biggest cities in the United States. They’re two of the most famous cities in the world. Los Angeles and San Francisco have been written about, sung about, and eulogised a thousand times on the silver screen.

But which of these West Coast heavyweights should be first on your travel list? Here’s our lowdown on what they have to offer.

Let’s face it, both US cities have some seriously memorable views.

San Francisco is a much easier city to get a handle on, and you can start putting everything into place from the top of Alamo Hill in the Western Addition. The view across Alamo Square is a postcard seller’s dream, the Painted Ladies (a row of colourful Victorian houses) providing the scenic foreground to a cityscape that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge.

Given Los Angeles’ rambling sprawl, it’s harder to find one defining vista of this city, but the lookout from the Griffith Observatory in Hollywood comes closest. You’ll probably recognise its distinctive facade from Rebel Without a Cause and La La Land, and if you head up here just before dusk, the views are just as stellar, with the lights of Downtown’s skyscrapers twinkling into life in the valley below.

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Historically, Downtown LA has been the city’s forgotten central suburb, easily outshone by the sparkle of Hollywood. But in recent years, the district has undergone a renaissance. Skid Row – the area with the largest concentration of homeless people in America – is a reminder that there’s unfortunately still a long way to go, but elsewhere DTLA is on the up.

The grand old buildings and movie palaces of Broadway have been restored, Frank Gehry’s futuristic-looking Walt Disney Concert Hall has added some heavyweight cultural panache, and Koreatown and the Arts District are awash with trendy restaurants and bars and cutting-edge galleries such as Hauser & Wirth.

It’s fair to say that Mission district in San Francisco has been on visitors’ radars a tad longer. The city was officially founded here in 1776, around the iconic Mission Dolores, the old Spanish mission that still dominates 16th Street and gives the district its name.

Despite being San Francisco’s oldest neighbourhood, the Mission has constantly reinvented itself to remain its hippest one as well. Here a strong Latino culture runs alongside cool boutiques, vintage clothes shops, edgy galleries and, on and around Balmy Alley, the city’s largest concentration of murals.

Find out more about trendiest neighbourhoods with our in-depth guide to the best places to stay in San Francisco or check our guide on the most hyped areas to stay in LA to get the full picture.

Well, they don’t come much bigger than the Golden Gate Bridge, which spans the