But there’s a point on your third or fourth trip where the famous version of a city stops being the interesting version and you start dreaming of other destinations. That’s when you’ve got to dig deeper and discover how the locals are doing it.

Here’s how I’d define non-touristy, because the word gets thrown around until it means nothing. These Los Angeles recommendations aren’t secret. Some of them are busy. What they have in common is that when you’re standing in them, most of the people around you live here.

Note: Los Angeles has had a hard few years. The Palisades Fire in January 2025 took places that were on this list, and some of them have come back different. I’ve gone through every entry and marked what changed. If something here is closed by the time you read it, tell me and I’ll fix it.

1. Go on an urban hike at Griffith Park

Most visitors head straight for Runyon Canyon, which is just off Hollywood Boulevard and therefore one of the busiest small hiking areas in the city.

Just east of it is Griffith Park, and it’s a different scale entirely. Over 50 miles of trails, including the four-mile Mt Hollywood Trail, which is the one we did and the one I’d send you on. The views from the summit go out to the Hollywood Sign one way and back over the city the other.

Also inside the park is Bronson Canyon, known to most people as the Bronson Caves. It’s a short walk in from the parking area to a man-made tunnel cut into the rock, and it has stood in for more film and television locations than almost anywhere in LA. The Batcave entrance in the 1960s Batman series is this tunnel. Once you’ve seen it you start noticing it everywhere.

Practical. Free. Go early, because there’s almost no shade on the Mt Hollywood Trail and the LA sun is unforgiving by mid-morning. Bronson Caves is a much shorter walk and works for a hot day when you don’t want the full hike. About a 20-minute drive from Downtown.

Check out this video of a few LA hikes we’ve done for more inspiration…

2. Watch a movie among the headstones at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

For most visitors, Hollywood Forever is where Judy Garland is buried and not much else. Through summer and fall it becomes an outdoor cinema.

Cinespia runs screenings on the Fairbanks Lawn, projected onto the wall of a mausoleum, and it’s one of the most reliably sold-out events in the LA summer calendar. They screen classics, the sort of thing a crowd will shout lines at, and they occasionally run concerts.

The part that makes it work is that you bring everything. Your own food, your own wine and beer, blankets, low chairs, the lot. People take it seriously and arrive with proper picnics.

Practical. Tickets go on sale in advance and the good nights sell out. Arrive well before doors, because seating on the lawn is first come and the difference between arriving early and arriving on time is the difference between a good evening and watching from the back. Check what’s screening and what the current rules are on what you can bring, since those have tightened at some venues.

3. Taste Malibu wine at the Rosenthal estate, which came back after the fire

This one has changed completely and I’d rather tell you why than quietly update the address.

For years the Rosenthal tasting room sat right on the Pacific Coast Highway, across from the water, with live music in the backyard at weekends and food trucks outside. It was the only place in LA where you could taste wine with the ocean across the road. The January 2025 Palisades Fire took it.

They’ve reopened somewhere else, up on their own estate off Kanan Dume Road, with 28 acres of vines sitting at about 1,450 feet. Weekend tastings on Saturdays and Sundays, two sittings a day, by reservation. Vineyard tours as well.

It’s a different experience to the one the internet still describes. You’re in the hills now instead of on the sand, and the wine is being poured where it’s grown, which some people will prefer.

Practical. Reserve ahead at rosenthalestatewines.com. Weekends only, so plan around it. It’s a drive up into the Santa Monica Mountains rather than a stop on a coastal run, so give it an afternoon rather than an hour. Want more wine experiences in Malibu? I found this on Airbnb Experiences: Hike a hidden vineyard to a guided wine tasting

4. Climb the secret stairs for LA views most visitors never find

Before the freeways, Los Angeles neighborhoods were stitched together by more than 400 public staircases. They were how people got to school, to the market, to the streetcar. Most of them are still there and still public, and almost nobody uses them.

The two worth your time as a visitor: the Beachwood Canyon Stairs, which give you Hollywood Sign and Lake Hollywood views without the crowds at the usual viewpoints, and the run of stairs behind the Hollywood Bowl near the Hightower Elevator Tower, which is a strange piece of 1920s architecture in its own right and gives you the city from an angle no tour bus goes near.

Practical. Free, and harder work than they look. Proper shoes. They run through residential streets, so keep the noise down, and street parking around Beachwood is tight and heavily signed. For something unique and non-touristy you may enjoy riding behind the Hollywood Sign by Horseback.

5. Kayak down the Los Angeles River

Most people know the LA River as concrete. The drag race in Grease. The truck chase in Terminator 2.

There are stretches that aren’t concrete at all, and you can paddle them. Guided trips run through the recreation zones in the warmer months, through soft-bottom sections with herons and cormorants and enough greenery that you forget where you are until a train goes past.

The guides talk about the restoration work while you paddle, which is the actual point of the trip. There’s a long-running effort to bring the river back, and being on it is the fastest way to understand why people care.

Practical. Seasonal, and dependent on water levels, so check before you plan around it. Book ahead, as the operators run limited trips. No experience needed for the standard routes.

6. Catch an Improv Show

Los Angeles has the best improv scene in the country and it’s almost entirely invisible to visitors, who go to a big-name comedy club and pay four times as much.

The Groundlings on Melrose is the one I’d start with. It’s been running since the 1970s and the alumni list is absurd: Phil Hartman, Lisa Kudrow, Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy. They run shows most nights.

Upright Citizens Brigade still runs shows in LA, and it’s where Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Jason Sudeikis came through. Their Sunset theater has closed, so check the current venue when you book rather than turning up at the old address.

Tickets at this level of the scene run cheap, often under $20, and you’re watching people who will be on television in three years.

Practical. Book online. Weekend shows sell out, weeknights rarely do, and the weeknight shows are frequently better because the rooms are looser.

7. Go on a Brewery Crawl

San Diego takes the credit for California beer. Los Angeles quietly built a scene that you never have to drive far to find.

On the east side, Golden Road in Atwater Village and Eagle Rock Brewery are two of the longest-running. Downtown has Angel City, in a 1913 brick warehouse in the Arts District, which is worth going into for the building alone.

The South Bay has the highest concentration, and it’s where I’d actually send you. Smog City, Monkish and El Segundo Brewing are within a short drive of each other, and Monkish in particular has a following that people fly in for.

Practical. Pick one area rather than crossing the city. The South Bay cluster is the easiest to do on foot and rideshare. Most taprooms open early afternoon, and many are family friendly until the evening.

8. Visit a Bar that was Prohibition Speakeasy

Who says L.A. has no history and culture? Los Angeles is unique in that it’s home to multiple bars that are operating today that were speakeasy bars during prohibition.

Townhouse and the Del Monte Speakeasy on Windward Avenue in Venice is the real thing. The bar upstairs has been operating since 1915. The basement underneath was a working speakeasy through Prohibition, reached by a service lift, and it’s now a low-ceilinged room with live music and cocktails.

It celebrated its hundredth year in 2016, which tells you it survived the entire twentieth century in a neighborhood that has changed around it about six times.

Practical. The basement runs live music most nights, jazz and burlesque among it, often with a small cover. Get there early on weekends. It’s a two-minute walk from the Venice boardwalk, so it pairs with an afternoon down there. Here is a Hollywood Speakeasy Bar Tour you may enjoy.

9. See Greek and Roman art at the Getty Villa Museum

Everyone knows the Getty Center. Far fewer make it out to the Villa, and it’s the more unusual of the two.

The building is a recreation of the Villa dei Papiri, a Roman country house buried at Herculaneum by Vesuvius. Inside is J. Paul Getty’s collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities, including a Roman-era mummy and pieces going back thousands of years. Outside there’s a reflecting pool in a colonnaded garden with the Pacific behind it.

What changed, and you need to know this before you go. The Villa closed on 7 January 2025 because of the Palisades Fire and stayed closed for nearly six months, reopening on 27 June 2025. The collection was unharmed. The grounds were not, and more than 1,300 damaged trees were removed, so the setting looks different to every photograph you’ll find online.

Practical, and this is where people get caught out. Admission is free but you need a timed reservation, and they cap it at 500 visitors a day. It’s open Friday to Monday only, 10am to 5pm, not daily as it was before. Access is from Pacific Coast Highway only, since the Sunset Boulevard approach is closed. Parking is $25. Allow extra time for PCH traffic. If this is your thing, you may want to Tour The Getty Villa with art historian Nancy Real. It is a paid tour.

10. Sing karaoke in a private room in Koreatown

Koreatown covers about 2.7 square miles and parts of it do not close at all.

Karaoke here means a private room rather than a microphone in front of strangers. You book by the hour, you get a screen and a door that shuts, and whatever happens in there stays between you and the people who came with you. It’s the format that makes karaoke bearable for anyone who would rather die than perform in a bar.

Afterwards, Korean fried chicken, and street vendors selling kimbap and other snacks late into the night.

Practical. Book ahead at weekends. Rooms are charged by the hour and by size. Many venues are all ages earlier in the evening and over-21 later, so check when you book if you have teenagers with you. This made our list of things to do in LA with teens.

11. Walk the botanical gardens at the Huntington

The Huntington is one of the largest independent research libraries in the country, and unless you’re a scholar, you’d have no reason to go.

Then you find out about the gardens. 130 acres, roughly 83,000 plants across 16 themed gardens, including a Japanese garden with a moon bridge, a desert garden that looks like another planet, and a Chinese garden built around a lake.

It’s in San Marino, out past Pasadena, which is exactly why it stays quiet.

Practical. Ticketed, and timed tickets are the norm. Give it half a day minimum, because the grounds are much bigger than people expect and rushing them defeats the point. There’s a tea room that books out well ahead.

12. Paddle a Swan Boat on Echo Park Lake

Echo Park has been a public park since 1895, which makes it one of the oldest in Los Angeles, and the pedal-powered swan boats on the lake are the thing people photograph.

You get Downtown skyline views from the water, lotus beds that flower in summer, and a park that’s busy with locals and almost empty of visitors. The Lotus Festival runs here every year.

Practical. Rent by the half hour or hour and book ahead at weekends. Best late afternoon, when the light comes off the Downtown towers behind the lake. Book your swan boat rental in advance here and if you love fishing, you may enjoy this fishing lesson with a licensed guide.

13. Visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Another free museum to check out in LA is the LA County Museum of Art, which is the largest art museum in the western United States.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art holds around 152,000 objects spanning some 6,000 years, which makes it the largest art museum in the western United States.

Most people photograph Urban Light out the front, the field of 202 restored street lamps, and leave without going in. Worth going in.

Practical. Closed Wednesdays. Timed tickets, and advance booking is recommended because slots sell out. The campus is in the middle of a major building project, so check what’s open before you go.

14. Rollerskate the Venice Beach Boardwalk

I’ll concede this one straight away. Venice is not non-touristy and hasn’t been for years, and the Barbie film put the boardwalk skating scene in front of a few hundred million more people.

It’s here anyway, because skating it is a completely different experience to walking it. You can rent skates on the boardwalk. There’s Muscle Beach, the outdoor gym that’s been there since the 1930s, acroyoga groups, the skate park on the sand, and a stretch of people-watching that has no equal in the city.

We stood at the skate park rail on our last visit watching a girl of about 9 who was better than everyone else there, and I could have stayed an hour.

Practical. Daylight. Venice has an edge to it and an evening crowd that’s a different proposition. Rentals are along the boardwalk and cheap. You can rent rollerskates from this place. Exploring the boardwalk is a sure way to get a feel for local life in LA.

15. Cross the Sixth Street Viaduct

The old Sixth Street bridge came down in 2016 after the concrete started failing. What replaced it, opened in July 2022, is the most ambitious piece of public architecture Los Angeles has built this century: a series of paired arches over the river and the rail yards, lit at night, connecting Boyle Heights to the Arts District.

Angelenos adopted it instantly and argued about it just as fast. It’s become a place people go rather than a way to get somewhere.

Practical. There’s a pedestrian walkway, so walk it rather than drive it. Best at dusk when the arch lighting comes on and the Downtown skyline is behind you. Park on the Arts District side.

16. Eat your way through Smorgasburg on a Sunday

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Sundays at ROW DTLA, and it’s the closest thing Los Angeles has to a weekly gathering of its own food scene.

Dozens of independent vendors, heavy on the things LA actually does best, which means Mexican, Filipino, Thai, Salvadoran and whatever somebody has just invented. Many of the stalls are people testing an idea before they open somewhere permanent, so what you eat there this year turns up in a restaurant review next year.

Practical. Sundays only, daytime. Go hungry and go early, because the queues at the good stalls are long by midday. Bring cash as a backup. ROW DTLA has parking and it fills.

Where to go next in LA

If you want the famous version as well, and you should do it at least once, we’ve written the full guide to things to do in Los Angeles. For families, things to do in LA with kids and things to do in LA with teens. And Downtown LA has enough in it now for its own day. We’ve curated a list of Where To Stay In Los Angeles: The Best Neighborhoods & Hotels and compiled a 3 Day Los Angeles Itinerary.

Tell me which of these you get to. And if you find one that’s closed, tell me that too. Keeping a page like this honest is a job that never finishes.

More California Travel Tips

Need more inspiration about visiting LA? Here are some other helpful guides..

• Things to do in Ventura County
• Things to do in Orange County
• 10 Day Itinerary – Best Places to Visit in Southern California
• 10 Road trip ideas from Los Angeles

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Do you have any more non-touristy tips for Los Angeles? Let’s see your ideas in the comments!

She wanted to win an Oscar and standing on that stretch of pavement, surrounded by tourists and street performers and a lot of things I’d been quietly cynical about, she wasn’t being a tourist. She was doing reconnaissance.

That’s the shift. A small child comes to Los Angeles and sees a big fun place. A kid on the edge of their teens comes to LA and starts measuring themselves against it.

We’ve done LA a lot. As a couple, then with two little girls, then with Kalyra at 12 and Savannah at 6. Savannah is 15 now, and the trip I’d build for her today looks nothing like the one we took then.

What I do have is 16 years of writing about family travel and a lot of years on the road with both girls through their teens, across Australia, the US and Europe. I know what a 15-year-old wants from a city. I know what gets them out of the car and what makes them put the headphones back in. That part I’m sure of.

So, this is the LA I’d build for a teenager now. What we learned there, and what I know about the ones living in my house. When asked Savannah said visiting LA as a teenager, she wants to go to a WNBA game, a concert, go to the beach, and do some shopping!

Fair warning on one thing. Some of what follows is on our LA with kids guide too. I’m not hiding a good attraction from you because it also suits a 7-year-old. If Griffith Park is worth your afternoon, it’s worth your afternoon. What changes here is how you do it, what it costs, and which bits a teenager will actually get out of the car for.

How LA with teens is different to LA with younger kids

Three things shift, and if you plan for them the trip gets a lot easier.

Thrill tolerance goes up, and the good stuff opens. Most of the height restrictions that lock a small child out of the serious rides sit around 48 to 54 inches. A teenager clears every one of them, which means Six Flags Magic Mountain becomes available to you. It’s what’s missing from most family LA itineraries.

The camera becomes the point. A teenager photographing a mural wall is doing the same thing I do when I write a post about a place. They’re making a record and they’re deciding who they are in it. Plan for it. Build in the places that are worth photographing and stop rushing them. I love seeing what my girls stop to photograph. It shows me that they are engaged and what interests them.

They want some control. Hand your teenager one full day to plan. Give them a budget, give them the car’s constraints, and let them build it. Ours always come back with better days than I would have made, and the sulking drops to almost nothing, because it’s very hard to complain about an itinerary you wrote.

One more thing. LA an easy city in America to give a teenager a bit of independence in, because so much of it is walkable in pockets. Abbot Kinney, Third Street Promenade, Melrose, the Grove. You can sit with a coffee and let them go and be 15 for an hour.

How many days do you need in Los Angeles with teens

More than you think, and here’s why.

Distance in LA isn’t measured in miles. It’s measured in hours. Two places 12 miles apart can be 20 minutes or 70 minutes apart depending on when you leave, and a teenager stuck in the back of a rental car on the 405 is a specific kind of misery you only need to experience once.

So plan by neighborhood and focus on one area a day. That way you can park once and walk.

• 4 days covers a beach day, a Hollywood day, one theme park and one day in Griffith Park or Downtown. Tight.
• 6 days is the sweet spot for teens. It lets you do both Universal and Magic Mountain without them running back to back, which matters because two theme park days in a row will finish everybody.
• 8 days or more and you can add Malibu, a surf lesson, a day the teenager plans themselves, and a whole day where nobody does anything except sit on the sand.

We’ve never cracked LA in one trip. Don’t expect to.

Theme parks and thrills for teens in LA

1. Ride the coasters at Six Flags Magic Mountain

If your teenager likes roller coasters, this is the day they’ll talk about on the flight home.

I’ll tell you up front that we haven’t done this one yet. It’s the thing I’d book first on our next LA trip, and I’m putting it at the top of this guide anyway, because leaving it out to protect my own credentials would be useless to you. My two love theme parks and thrill rides, and I’ve watched them on enough coasters in enough countries to know exactly how this day would go.

Six Flags Magic Mountain sits in Valencia, about an hour north of central LA, and it’s built for exactly this age group. The park runs 16 operating roller coasters, which is one of the highest counts of any theme park in the world, and it’s stacked with the tall, fast, upside down category rather than the gentle family category.

The ones worth queueing for: Twisted Colossus, a hybrid steel and wood coaster that races two trains against each other. Tatsu, which flies you face down, and is the most unusual ride in the park. Full Throttle, which has a loop you go through twice, once forwards and once backwards. Goliath, for the drop. And Wonder Woman Flight of Courage, a single rail coaster that feels far more exposed than it looks from the queue.

Why it suits teens specifically. Almost every major ride here sits at a 48 to 54 inch minimum, which excludes a lot of younger children and means the park skews older. Your teenager will be surrounded by people their own age, which is a bigger deal than adults tend to remember.

Practical. It’s a full day and an early start, because the drive back into LA in the evening is slow. Buy tickets online in advance, which is always cheaper than the gate. Check the calendar before you commit, because the park runs reduced days outside peak season and it’s a long drive to a closed gate. Bring more water than you think and factor in the Valencia heat, which is noticeably hotter than the coast.

2. Spend a day at Universal Studios Hollywood

Grabbing a butterbeer and going on the Forbidden Journey are the first two things we do at Universal. That hasn’t changed in years and I doubt it ever will.

Universal Studios Hollywood is smaller than the Orlando park, and people say that like it’s a criticism. For a family with teenagers it’s an advantage. You can actually finish it in a day without a military plan.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is the draw for most teens, with Forbidden Journey inside Hogwarts Castle and the Flight of the Hippogriff outside it. Super Nintendo World is the newer addition, with Mario Kart Bowser’s Challenge as its centerpiece, an augmented reality ride where you wear a visor and actually throw shells at other karts.

And then there’s the Studio Tour, which is the thing that makes this park different to every other theme park on earth. It’s a working studio lot. You ride a tram through backlot streets that have stood in for New York and small-town America in hundreds of films, past the Bates Motel and the plane crash set from War of the Worlds.

Why it suits teens. The Studio Tour lands completely differently at 14 than it does at 7. A younger child sees a fun train ride through some houses. A teenager who has watched the films recognizes the streets, and that recognition is the whole experience.

Practical. Go on a weekday in term time if you possibly can. Universal City Walk sits outside the gates and is free to enter, so it’s a decent place to send teenagers for an hour while you sit down. The park is a 45 minute to an hour drive from most of the coast, so stay on the valley side the night before if you can. Get Skip the Line tickets to save you time!

3. Take the teens to Disneyland in Anaheim

I’ll be honest, this one baffles me.

I assumed Disneyland was something they’d grow out of. They have not. It sits at the top of the list every single time we talk about where to go next, and I’ve stopped arguing about it. Teens be teens.

And when I actually think about why, it makes sense. A teenager at Disneyland gets something a 7-year-old doesn’t. They can ride everything with no height restriction in their way, they can split off from you for a few hours and meet back at a churro cart, and they get to be uncomplicatedly delighted about something in a year of their life where that’s in short supply. That last part is worth the ticket on its own.

At this age, they’d appreciate Disney’s famous Halloween Party even more. We visited with our teenage nieces who absolutely loved it!

Disneyland sits in Anaheim, about 45 minutes south of central LA without traffic and a good deal longer with it. Two parks, Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure, and a teenager will want both.

Practical. It’s a separate trip from your LA days, not an add-on to one. Stay in Anaheim the night before if you can. heck out the Disneyland Hotel and some vacation rentals near Disneyland. Buy tickets and make park reservations well ahead. We’ve written the whole thing up properly, including what a day actually costs and which rides are worth the wait: Our full Disneyland guide and our tips for a fun day at California Adventure Park (our favorite)

4. Learn to surf in Santa Monica or Malibu

This is the one I’d push hardest if your teenager is the sort who says they’re bored.

There is a particular thing that happens when a 14-year-old stands up on a surfboard for the first time. The performance of not being impressed, which teenagers work very hard at, falls off their face completely for about four seconds. Worth the money on its own. They may just discover a new hobby or a newfound sense of Zen.

Group lessons run along the beaches from Santa Monica down through the South Bay, and up at Malibu. Most operators supply the board and the wetsuit, and a first lesson usually runs around 90 minutes to 2 hours. Southern California water is colder than it looks in the photos, all year round. The wetsuit is not optional and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Practical. Book a morning lesson. The wind picks up through the afternoon, and the water gets choppier and harder to learn in. Malibu has the gentler, longer beginner waves. Santa Monica is easier to reach and cheaper to park at. Check Surf lesson options for Los Angeles.

5. Skate or bike the Venice Beach boardwalk

We were watching the Venice skate park a few years back when a girl of maybe 9 dropped in and absolutely slayed it, and the girls and I just stood there.

The skate park sits right on the sand and it’s free to watch, which makes it one of the best hours in LA that costs nothing. If your teenager skates, they can drop in themselves. If they don’t, it’s still worth standing at the rail for a while.

Then rent bikes. The path from Santa Monica down to Venice is about 3 miles, flat, and runs right along the water, and is the best way to see this stretch of coast. Rentals run roughly $7 an hour or $20 a day at the beach kiosks for regular bikes. Ebikes will be more. (Or rent in advance here) Rollerblades and skates are available too, and Venice has had a skating scene on that boardwalk since the 1970s.

The Santa Monica Pier sits at the other end of that bike path, and you’ll ride past it either way. I’ll be straight with you; we’re not great fans of Santa Monica. It feels touristy and manufactured to us, and we’d take the Santa Monica mountains over this beach any day. But the pier is one of the most photographed in the world, the Ferris wheel is solar powered and looks extraordinary at sunset, and a teenager who has seen it in about four hundred films is going to want to stand on it. Build in an hour before or after your ride, let them get the photo, and make up your own mind.

A warning, because you’re bringing a teenager. Venice is not a sanitized place. There’s open marijuana use, there’s a visible homeless population, and there are stretches of the boardwalk that feel edgy. We’ve never had a problem there and I’d take my teenagers again tomorrow. But go in daylight and with the expectation that they’ll see things you’ll end up talking about in the car. Decide for yourself whether that conversation is one you want to have on holiday.

Live music and sport for teens in LA

This section exists because I asked Savannah what she’d want to do in LA and her first answer had nothing to do with anything already on this page.

6. Watch an LA Sparks WNBA game at Crypto.com Arena

Savannah said a WNBA game is at the top of her things to do with teens in LA list. We’ve now done WNBA games in San Francisco and New York, following her Dallas Wings team and so I was not surprised that this was her immediate response.

The Los Angeles Sparks are one of the league’s original teams, founded before the first WNBA season in 1997. They’ve won three championships, in 2001, 2002 and 2016. Lisa Leslie and Candace Parker both built their careers here, and if your teenager follows the league at all those two names carry weight.

Why this works for teens in a way an NBA game doesn’t. Crypto.com Arena holds about 13,141 for Sparks games rather than the full NBA configuration, so you’re closer to the floor for a fraction of the price. Tickets are a different universe from Lakers tickets. The crowd is younger and louder and less corporate. And for a teenage girl in particular, watching women play professional sport in a packed arena does something that no amount of me telling her she can do anything has ever done. We recommend your teenage boys also watch the women carve up the court.

Practical. The WNBA season runs through the summer, so check the schedule against your dates early. Crypto.com Arena is in Downtown LA, which means you can pair a game with Grand Central Market the same day and park once.

If your teenager isn’t into basketball, LAFC and the Galaxy are the other easy option, and the Dodgers play at one of the great old ballparks in America.

7. See a concert at the Hollywood Bowl or the Greek Theatre

We travel for concerts. Taylor Swift in Philadelphia. Ariana Grande in New York. Billie Eilish in Charlotte. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about teenagers on the road, it’s that a gig will beat almost any museum you can name.

So look at what’s playing while you’re in LA. But pick your venue carefully, because this is where LA gives you something no other city can.

The Hollywood Bowl opened on 11 July 1922 and it’s the summer home of the LA Philharmonic. It seats about 17,500 in a natural amphitheater in the hills, and the list of people who’ve played it is absurd. The Beatles in 1964 and again in 1965. Jimi Hendrix in 1968. Billie Eilish in 2021, which is the one that got Savannah’s attention when I told her. Get tickets here.

The Greek Theatre was dedicated on 25 September 1930, sits inside Griffith Park, and holds about 5,900. It’s small enough that there’s no bad seat. Neil Diamond recorded Hot August Night here in 1972. The scene in A Star Is Born where Ally walks out on stage was filmed here. Get tickets here!

Years ago, we were lucky enough to be in town when Ben Harper was playing the Greek. Of course we went. I loved that venue and I’ve measured others against it since.

A valid point. A teenager can see their favorite artist in an arena in any city in the country. Seeing them under the hills at the Bowl, or in the trees at the Greek, is an LA memory rather than a concert memory. Pay the difference.

Practical. Both venues program mostly through the warmer months, so summer and early fall give you the most to choose from. Book as far ahead as you can. Parking at the Bowl is the hard part, and the park and ride buses from lots around the city are the easier option. Bring layers, because both are outdoors and the hills get cold once the sun goes down. You can bring your own food to the Hollywood Bowl and beer and wine only during LA Phil-presented events.

Photo spots and shopping for teens in LA

8. Photograph the Melrose Avenue murals + Shop

Melrose is covered in street art and this is where your teenager will be happiest with a camera in their hand.

The girls loved walking along Melrose Avenue and taking creative photos, and it’s one of the few LA activities where the teenager leads and the parent follows. The murals change constantly, because artists paint over each other, so what you find won’t be what you saw on Instagram last year. That’s the point of it.

Melrose also runs vintage and boutique shopping along the same stretch, which pairs perfectly. Photos, then browsing, then food. The shopping part is high on any teenager’s list! I like Melrose Ave for shopping as it’s more local than the big brand shopping centers you find in LA.

Practical. Parking on Melrose runs around $1 an hour in the metered stretches, which is the cheapest parking in this entire guide. Afternoon light is better for the walls. Start around Fairfax and walk east. You may enjoy this Melrose Ave Arts & Counter Culture Tour.

9. Book the Infinity Mirrored Room at The Broad

The Broad is a contemporary art museum in Downtown LA and general admission is free, permanently, for everyone.

We’re not big art or museum people. I’ve said that about the Getty and it’s still true. The Broad is the exception, and the reason is Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room, a small, mirrored chamber filled with hanging lights that you step into alone or in a tiny group for about a minute. It’s the most photographed artwork in Los Angeles and your teenager almost certainly already knows what it looks like.

The rest of the collection is strong too, with Basquiat, Warhol and Koons, and it’s a building worth walking through even if the art isn’t landing.

Practical (and what many people get wrong). General admission is free, but you need a timed ticket, and the Infinity Mirrored Room needs a separate advance reservation that goes fast. Book the moment you know your dates. The museum is closed Mondays. Walk-up tickets are released daily if you miss out, so it’s worth turning up and asking.

10. Walk Rodeo Drive and window shop in Beverly Hills

The girls loved pretending to be rich and famous here, and that is precisely what Rodeo Drive is for.

Three blocks of the most expensive retail in America, and you don’t have to spend a cent. Walk it, look at the prices in the windows, watch the cars. The Beverly Wilshire at the end of the street is the hotel from Pretty Woman. In current times, that may mean more to you than your teenagers!

Practical. Free to walk, obviously. Some of the side street parking in Beverly Hills gives you the first hour or two free, which is unusual for LA and worth looking for. Two hours is plenty here.

11. Walk the Hollywood Walk of Fame and see the TCL Chinese Theatre handprints

The Walk of Fame runs about 15 blocks along Hollywood Boulevard, it’s free, it’s a public footpath and it’s open all the time.

Let your teenager hunt for their own star rather than you finding it for them. The searching is the activity. Give them the name, point them at the right block, and let them go.

The TCL Chinese Theatre sits in the middle of it, and the forecourt holds handprints and footprints pressed into concrete going back to 1927. The Harry Potter cast left wand imprints, which is the one our girls went looking for first.

A note on expectations. Hollywood Boulevard is grubbier than the films suggest. Costumed characters will ask you for money for photos. Around Oscars season, sections get boarded up for the ceremony build. It’s still worth doing once, and going in with the right expectation is what makes it fun rather than disappointing.

12. Do the Hollywood behind the scenes walking tour

This is the one that turned my opinion on Hollywood around, and I want to be specific about why.

We’d walked the boulevard and I’d found it tacky. Then we did a guided walking tour with a local guide who took us through the history of the buildings we’d just walked past, what happened in them, who worked there, what the industry was actually like. And the same street stopped being a tourist strip and started being a place.

For a teenager with any interest in film, this is the highest value two hours in Hollywood.

Practical. Book ahead, wear proper shoes, and go in the morning before the heat. Maybe do this before you plan for anything else, as you may no longer need to do it, or you may discover something else you want to do after.

13. Take a tour of the movie star homes

We tried the self-guided version once with a map and it was a disaster. The guided open top van version was much better.

You get up into Bel Air, along Mulholland Drive, and out over the valleys and the gated communities of Beverly Hills. It’s beautiful, and it did more to make me appreciate LA than anything else we did.

It also produced my favorite line of any trip. Kalyra decided she’d one day own a house like Beyoncé and Jay Z’s, with a guest house for her Mumma. I’m holding her to it.

Practical. Open top vans mean sun. Hats and sunscreen. About 2 hours. Here is an open van tour of the Hollywood homes. We also did a celebrity homes tour of Malibu which we also enjoyed.

Studio tours and film sets for teens

14. Do the Warner Bros Studio Tour Hollywood

This is where Friends was filmed for 10 years. Not in New York. At the end of the tour you sit on the couch in the recreated Central Perk, and more than 20 years after the finale people still queue for it.

The Harry Potter archive section is the reason to bring a teenager. Original costumes, props, and the sorting hat, which sorted our two into Gryffindor, put me in Hufflepuff and landed Craig in Slytherin. Make of that what you will.

The lot is a working studio, so what’s filming changes constantly. Ask your guide what’s in production the week you visit. That’s the part you can’t get from a guidebook.

Practical. The Warner Bros Studio tour is recommended for ages 8 and up, so no issue at all with teenagers. It’s the most expensive studio tour in LA and it’s the best one. About 3 hours. Book well ahead.

Outdoor things to do in LA with teens

15. Hike Griffith Park for the Hollywood Sign views

I fell in love with Griffith Park. It’s one of the largest urban wilderness parks in the United States, it has over 50 miles of trails, and it’s free.

We did the Mt Hollywood summit trail, a 4 mile loop, and the views from the top were spectacular. You look out over the whole basin, and on a clear day you can see all the way to the ocean.

The thing to be clear about with teenagers. You cannot walk up to the Hollywood Sign itself as there is no legal trail to the letters. What you can do is get close enough for a very good photo, and Griffith Park is where you do it. Set that expectation in the car before you start walking, because a teenager who thinks they’re going to stand next to the sign is going to be annoyed at the top of a hill in the heat.

Practical. Free. Go early, because there’s very little shade on those trails and the LA sun is unforgiving by 11am. About a 20-minute drive from Downtown. Bring more water than feels sensible.

16. Visit Griffith Observatory after dark

Go at night. This place in LA great for teens is all about the starry skies.

Griffith Observatory is free to enter, it sits on the side of Mount Hollywood below the sign, and after sunset you get the whole city laid out below you in lights, plus public telescopes you can actually look through. The Samuel Oschin Planetarium runs shows for a separate ticket.

It was closed the day we hiked past it, which I’m still annoyed about.

Practical. Free admission. Closed Mondays. Open until 10pm Tuesday through Sunday, which is what makes the night visit possible. Parking nearby is paid and fills up, so go on a weeknight rather than a Saturday if you have the choice.

17. Hike Runyon Canyon

Short, paved, steep in places, and one of the most accessible hikes in LA. It’s also one of the busiest, full of runners and dogs and people who look like they’re on the way to an audition.

We came in from the Mulholland Drive side and walked to a couple of different viewpoints, spending a decent amount of time spying on Katy Perry’s swimming pool. We knew which house was hers thanks to the celebrity homes tour we’d done the week before, which felt like cheating and we did it anyway.

Practical. An hour or two. No shade to speak of. Street parking around the Fuller Avenue entrance is difficult, so allow time.

18. Hike in Malibu Creek State Park

The absolute highlight of our week in LA, and one of my favorite state parks anywhere.

It’s over 8,000 acres, it was owned by 20th Century Fox for decades, and MASH was filmed here. You can walk out to the old set site, where some of the rusted vehicles are still sitting in the grass. For a teenager, that combination of a proper hike and an actual film location does the job that neither would do alone.

There were two other people in the park the day we went.

Practical. Pair it with the Pacific Coast Highway drive back down into Santa Monica, which is one of the great drives in America. Take food, because there isn’t much out there.

Food and independence for teens in LA

19. Eat your way through Grand Central Market

The Grand Central Market is in Downtown LA and has been open since 1917 with Tacos Tumbras a Tomas trading over 50 years and getting through around 300 pounds of carnitas daily.

This is where you hand your teenager some cash and let them go and choose. It’s an easy independence exercise in LA, because they can’t get lost, everything is in one hall, and there’s Thai and Mexican and Salvadoran and ramen and a stall that’s been making egg sandwiches since the building opened. (They’re also very good!)

A food tour is worth considering here too. Several operators run guided tours of the market and the surrounding Downtown blocks, and a guide who can tell your teenager which stall has been there since 1917 and why turns lunch into the activity rather than the gap between activities. Here is one option for a food tour at the markets and this food tour also includes a stop at the Last Bookstore.

Practical. Go for an early lunch. It’s packed by 1pm. The Angels Flight funicular runs right across the street and costs $1.50 each way for a 298-foot ride, which is the shortest railway in the world and takes about a minute. Do it, it’s silly and it’s a dollar. If your teen is a book lover, I highly recommend visit to the Last Bookstore in Downtown LA. Our girls both loved it, as did I! Get your photo in the book hole! You can see more in our guide to Downtown LA.

20. Do a food tour at the Original Farmers Market and shop The Grove

The Original Farmers Market has been at 3rd and Fairfax since 1934 and it’s one of the few old pieces of Los Angeles still doing its original job. Over 100 grocers, restaurants and stalls under open-sided roofs, and a sign that just says “Meet Me at 3rd & Fairfax”, which tells you how long it’s been a meeting point.

I’ll be straight about my own reaction. I didn’t love it as much the second time, and I think that’s because I’ve since been to a lot of farmers markets around the world and it stopped feeling rare to me. That’s my problem, not the market’s. For a teenager who hasn’t done that, it lands.

The reason it’s in a LA with teens guide. There are guided food tours that run through the market, and a food tour is one of the few structured activities a teenager will actually engage with, because it’s eating and walking rather than looking and listening. Savannah loves food tours and asks for them by name. She was disappointed I did not include one on our recent San Francisco trip. On Craig’s trip with her to NYC they incorporated a lot of food experiences she had saved from Tik Tok.

And The Grove is right next door, which is the other half of why this pairs well. Open-air shopping, a fountain that does a show, and a trolley running between the two. You can hand your teenager an hour and a budget and go sit down. You may even spot a celebrity here and at the farmers market.

Practical. Free to walk into. The market is busiest at lunch. Book a food tour ahead rather than turning up hoping. Here is a food tour of the markets and West Hollywood (that also incorporates history). Here is a food tour just of the stalls at the Original Farmers Market. Parking is validated in the area but the terms change, so check on the day.

21. Sing karaoke in Koreatown

Koreatown covers about 2.7 square miles and some of it doesn’t sleep. Private karaoke rooms are the standard here rather than singing in front of strangers, which is exactly right for a teenager who would rather die than perform in a bar.

You book a room by the hour, you get a screen and microphones and your own door that shuts, and your family embarrasses itself in private. Korean fried chicken afterwards.

Practical. Book ahead on a weekend. Rooms are charged by the hour and by room size. Many venues are all ages until later in the evening, so go early with teens and check the policy when you book.

Is Los Angeles good for teenagers?

I found LA overrated on our early trips and I said so. What changed my mind was going enough times to stop trying to see the city and start seeing the neighborhoods. LA isn’t one place. It’s 88 incorporated cities pretending to be one, and once you stop expecting it to behave like a city with a center, it gets a lot better.

For teenagers specifically, it’s one of the best destinations in America. Some may think the thrill rides are the best in the country. The film industry connection makes abstract ambition feel real in a way no other city manages. And there’s enough variety that a family with a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old can both find their trip in the same week. And if you have younger kids mixed in with the older, they’ll also be entertained in LA.

Where to stay in LA with teens

Universal City or Burbank if theme parks are your focus. You’re close to Universal, closer to Magic Mountain, and out of the worst of the coastal traffic. See options for Universal City here. and Airbnb rental options here.

Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach if beaches and surfing are the focus. This is where we go now. It’s 10 to 15 minutes from LAX, the promenade is walkable, and there’s enough going on that teenagers can have some freedom. Hotel choice is limited, so a rental may work better. See options for hotels here and Manhattan Beach Airbnb rental options here

Hollywood if this is a first trip and the film stuff is the priority. Walkable to the boulevard, close to Griffith Park, and a reasonable base for everything else. See Hollywood hotel options here and Airbnb rental options here.

Downtown LA if you want the Broad, Grand Central Market, and a proper city feel. It’s improved a lot and the food is the best in the city. We have a review on the Hotel Indigo in Downtown LA (a chain we love) See more Downtown LA hotel options here and here are Airbnb options for Downtown LA.

Read more: Where To Stay In Los Angeles: The Best Neighborhoods & Hotels!

How to get around Los Angeles with teens

Rent a car. LA is a driving city and everything in this guide assumes you have one.

Rough drive times from LAX and add half again in rush hour: Manhattan and Hermosa Beach 10 to 15 minutes. Santa Monica and Venice 25 to 35. Downtown 30 to 45. Hollywood 35 to 50. Universal City and Burbank 45 minutes to an hour. Six Flags Magic Mountain is about an hour and a half from the coast.

Parking runs roughly $6 to $18 at the beaches, cheaper around Melrose, and paid at Griffith Observatory.

Metro Bike Share runs about $1.75 for 30 minutes or $5 for a day pass, which is a reasonable way to let older teenagers cover a neighborhood on their own.

NOTE: Prices can change, so do your due diligence in case they have increased since publishing this post. We stay on top of it as best we can, but nothing is guaranteed.

How to save money on LA attractions with teens

The biggest saving on attractions in LA is the Go City attraction discount pass, which bundles a large number of the attractions in this guide. It works out well if you’re doing three or more paid things.

Beyond that: the Broad is free. Griffith Park is free. Griffith Observatory is free. Runyon Canyon is free. The Walk of Fame is free. Venice skate park is free. Melrose murals are free. LA sunsets are free. You could build four very good days in LA with teenagers without paying for a single attraction, which is not true of most American cities.

Buy theme park tickets online in advance, always. Gate prices are the worst price.

If you go, come back and tell me what your teenager made of Magic Mountain. Mine would have lost their minds, and I’d like to know whether yours did.

Here are a few more tips for a visit to LA: A3 Day Los Angeles Itinerary, Unmissable Things to Do in Los Angeles, Non-Touristy Things to Do in Los Angeles, and Exciting Road Trips from Los Angeles: Maps & Itineraries

I sat here eating my dinner a little baffled. We were going to a basketball game. Even more baffling was her request for a two-hour get ready time frame in our dodgy hotel room. Couldn’t we spend that afternoon finding a San Francisco bakery and a good flat white instead?

No. This was the dream.

We were visiting San Francisco after five days on the Majestic Mountain Loop, legs still heavy from the Sierra Nevada. As San Francisco was not new to us, this visit was purely about the basketball.

Savannah is s a die-hard WNBA fan, Paige Bueckers is her idol, and the Wings were in town to play the Golden State Valkyries. Everything else on our trip was a bonus wrapped around this night.

So, I gave up the flat white, went back to our tiny hotel room, and waited the better part of 90 minutes while she got herself ready. Jersey on. Nerves buzzing.

Getting to the Chase Center

The Chase Center sits in Mission Bay, and it’s an easy one to reach. Buses and the Metro both run there, and here’s the part that made me happy: if you’ve got a ticket to the game, your transit is free the whole day. Have your ticket ready to show when boarding. We took advantage of that while exploring San Francisco during the day!

We caught the bus in and took the train home. Somewhere on the way back it ran above ground, then dipped below without warning, which had us both looking at each other like, where are we going? We could walk from the station (Union Square) back to our hotel, and walk to the bus on the way out, so we never touched a car all night.

Where to eat before the game

Right on the complex, Thrive City has outdoor space, shops, and somewhere to eat before tip-off. We found a burger joint, Gott’s Roadside, that had me at gluten-free buns. You order at the counter, then grab a spot at the long community tables inside or out.

The burgers were delicious and reasonably priced (get the Texas Avocado), and they had a gluten-free beer on tap, plus Pliny the Elder, which is a rare thing to spot. It’s a Russian River beer that people will line up for hours to get on release day, so I was not going to walk past it. Well since I’m gluten free, I kinda did, but not without first ordering it and drinking it in my mind. (I have tried it before and loved it)

Other places to eat at Thrive City include Fikscue Craft Barbecue, Dumpling time, Che Fico Pizzeria, Burma Love, Senor Sisig, and Cupcakin’ Bake Shop. there’s also Golden State Cider, Pilz Coffee, and Harmonic Brewing to quench your thirst.

A ten-minute walk away is Spark Social, a food truck park and beer garden with a happy hour bar. We went there first, then decided it wasn’t the vibe we wanted before the game and doubled back to be near the arena. Both work. It depends how much time you’ve got.

The moment that made the whole trip

We got there early, on purpose, to watch the Wings warm up.

Down in the bottom corner of our section, you could stand right above the tunnel where the players come off the court to the locker room. Savannah spotted Paige Bueckers signing autographs as we walked in, and by the time we got to the corner she’d moved on. Missed her by a minute. I could see the disappointment settle in.

So I did what any Australian mother would do. I decided we’d use our accent.

Alanna Smith plays for the Wings, and she’s one of ours. Born in Hobart, raised through Melbourne, a reigning Defensive Player of the Year and an Olympian. Savannah was mortified. She could see exactly what I was about to do and wanted the ground to swallow her.

I waited at the corner while Alanna signed her way down the line. As she came past, I leaned over and yelled, “Aussie Oi!”

She looked straight up, beaming, and we had ourselves a little conversation across the barrier. We talked Tasmania and Melbourne and how much she’s loving it over here. I told her we’re Aussies too, living in North Carolina, and we’d come because my girl is a big fan. And there was Savannah, who’d been dying of embarrassment thirty seconds earlier, sidling up beside me with the biggest grin, brave enough now to catch Alanna’s eye and get one back.

That’s the thing I keep coming back to. Your uniqueness is an advantage if you’ll use it. A yelled “Aussie Oi” from a mum who didn’t care about looking silly got her daughter a moment she’ll have forever.

Then another player came past, one who used to run for the NC State Wolfpack, right near where we live. Aziaha James. So, I called out “Wolfpack” and threw up the sign. She caught it just as she reached the tunnel, turned, beamed, and gave it right back.

Two moments, before the game had even started, and Savannah was already floating.

The Wings vs Vakyries game itself

I did not expect to be entertained the way I was.

The women on the court were brilliant, and so was everything happening around them. Dance routines and giveaways through every timeout, glitter and color across the crowd, the energy climbing all night. The locals were loud behind their Valkyries, and there was a healthy scattering of Wings jerseys in the mix too. Savannah wore her Bueckers jersey. I wore a shirt that said “I’m in my Dallas Wings era.” We were all in.

She got to watch Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd play, her two favorite players, on the same floor. That alone had her buzzing.

The Wings didn’t get the win. They hung in for a while, then the Valkyries pulled away for a 91-80 final. Savannah didn’t care one bit. She was high the entire night, and when it was over she told me it was the best night of her life.

What one game did

She hasn’t come back down.

A month later, Craig took her to see the Wings play the Liberty in Brooklyn, and you can read about their game night here. Between the two of us, we’ve now taken her to WNBA games on both coasts, and she’s already plotting the next one.

She’s talking about a career in the league now. Working in it somehow, off the court. She’s researching what those jobs look like and eyeing the North Carolina Courage, the women’s pro soccer team ten minutes from our house, for somewhere to start young. The Courage play soccer, and it’s women’s pro sport right on her doorstep. I told her what I believe. It all starts small.

I’d said yes to that game as a favor to my teen. It turned out to be the best thing we did, and I’m so glad I didn’t talk her out of a single second of it.

How to see a WNBA game at the Chase Center

Here’s what I’d tell you if you’re planning to take your own teen.

Getting tickets

Buy through Ticketmaster as that’s the official ticket seller. OR resale through a reputable resale site like SeatGeek or Gametime. The Valkyries have sold out most of their games since they launched in 2025, so the marquee opponents and weekend games get pricey and go early. Buy ahead for those. Midweek games against lower-profile teams are your cheaper window, sometimes from around $30 to $60 in the upper bowl, though prices move with demand, so check the day you book.

One thing that saved us money: we’d bought the few remaining non-resale seats that were in the nosebleeds. We then upgraded once we were inside the arena, which came in cheaper than buying those closer seats through resale would have. Worth asking about upgrades when you arrive.

Our upgraded tickets landed us in the Ultra Club section, which I had no idea about until we arrived in it. This was more of a private area with its own bar and eatery. The bar tender was telling me how it’s the only two-story bar at the Chase Centre. So, if you want more of a private experience like this the following sections offer them:

• Sections 126-129: Cache Creek Club
• Sections 101 – 106: United Globe Club
• Sections 113 – 118: Ult4ra Club

Note: I’m taking an educated guess, that since Paige Beuckers and Azzi Fudd are two of the WNBA’s highest profile players, seeing the Dalas Wings play in San Francisco meant higher priced tickets.

Getting there and parking

Take transit. The arena sits in Mission Bay, and the Muni Metro T Third line stops at the UCSF/Chase Center station right at the south entrance. Your game ticket doubles as a free Muni ride for the whole day, so there’s no reason to pay for anything extra. You can also come by BART with a transfer to Muni, or by ferry.

If you must drive, know that on-site parking is limited and expensive, usually $30 to $60 or more, and it sells out. Prepay through Ticketmaster or the Chase Center parking page rather than rolling up and hoping. Street parking around Mission Bay is permit-only with aggressive towing on game nights. Leave the car.

The T metro line serves Chase Center, and additional S trains run on event days. The 78X bus also runs between Chase Center and 16th St Mission BART Station 2.5 hours before and 1 hour after events.

What to bring

Chase Center doesn’t allow backpacks of any kind, even small or clear ones, so bring a small purse or clutch instead. Bags get searched, and a clear one moves you through faster. There’s a bag valet on site if you turn up with something that won’t pass. Bag sizes and prohibited items change, so check the official Chase Center site before you go. Reusable water bottles are not permitted. This was a boo hoo for me. So bad for the environment. Water fountains are in the arena, which will also save you money! If you have to buy one water bottle then refill it.

When to arrive

Get there early. Doors usually open about 90 minutes before tip-off, and that pre-game window, when the players are loose and close to the stands, is where our whole night turned. Give yourself time to eat, and to catch the warm-ups. Thrive City is worth a wander too. If you’ve got a younger fan with you, ask guest services about a first-game certificate.

Where to eat

Thrive City on the complex has plenty of choices, including the burger spot we loved, and Spark Social is a short walk away for food trucks and a beer garden. Eat before you head in, since arena concessions run steep.

We did not experience eating inside the Chase Center, but they have a wide variety of eateries that serve fresh, from-scratch local favorites and dishes representing the diverse culinary experience of the Bay Area. Expect your usual venue food – burgers, hot dogs, BBQ, Mexican, and pizza but since it’s California focused, they’ll all probably be good. They’ve also got you covered with bars pouring expensive drinks! You know it!

Why it’s a great teen night

A WNBA game is warm and family-friendly, often more affordable than the men’s Golden State basketball game, with an atmosphere that pulls everyone in. Women’s sport is having its moment, and your teen will want to be in the building for it.

Where to stay near the Chase Center

We stayed across town this trip, so I can’t tell you I’ve slept in these. What I can tell you is where I’d book if the game were the point. On a sold-out night, Terry Francois Boulevard backs up for blocks and rideshares surge, so a hotel you can walk back to after the final buzzer is worth a lot.

Closest to the arena

LUMA Hotel San Francisco is the closest hotel to the Chase Center, about a 6-to-10-minute walk from the door. It’s a modern build in Mission Bay with a rooftop bar, and it sits right by the Mission Rock subway station if you want to shoot up to Union Square or Chinatown during the day. This is the one I’d book first for a game.

Hotel VIA is a short walk the other way, across from Oracle Park, with a rooftop bar that looks over the ballpark and the bay. Handy if you’re pairing your WNBA night with a Giants game.

A flat walk or one stop away

The San Francisco Marriott Marquis sits in SoMa, roughly a 15-to-20-minute flat walk to the arena, or one quick stop on the T Third line. Now I have stayed here before and loved it. It’s the one with the iconic View Lounge on the top floor, and the views over the city are worth the elevator ride. A solid pick if you want a bigger hotel with more on site.

Rent an apartment

If you’re traveling as a family and want a kitchen and some room to spread out, look at Airbnb or Vrbo in Mission Bay, Dogpatch, or Potrero Hill. Several sit within a 5-to-15-minute walk of the arena, and you’ll often get more space for your money than a downtown hotel room. Search stays near the Chase Center here

One honest note: you don’t have to stay near the arena at all. Your game ticket makes Muni free for the whole day, so anywhere on a Muni line gets you there and back easily. Staying close just saves you the shuffle on a packed night. For options across the rest of the city, see our full guide to where to stay in San Francisco.

FAQs about seeing a WNBA game at the Chase Center

What else we did with our 3 days in San Francisco

The game was the anchor, and we built a full trip of teen-friendly days around it:

• Walked from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge
• Rode in a driverless Waymo
• Photographed the Painted Ladies
• Lost a few hours in the California Academy of Sciences
• Wandered Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park
• Found a secret hill with an epic view.
• Also found a coffee shop with the best view of the bridge.

For the full run-down, prices, and where we ate, see our complete guide to things to do in San Francisco with teens. Included are additional ideas we did not do on this trip, but have on previous trips so can personally vouch they are worth your time.

Final thoughts

I’ll be watching more WNBA with Savannah, whether I planned to or not. That’s what these trips do at this age. You say yes to their thing, the thing you didn’t quite get, and you end up standing in a corner above a tunnel yelling “Aussie Oi” and watching your kid light up.

Take them to the game. Say the embarrassing thing. It might be the night they remember most. If you’re planning a WNBA trip with your teen and have a question, comment below, I’d love to help.

More San Francisco Travel Tips

Need more inspiration for your trip to San Francisco? Here are some other helpful guides…

• Where to stay in San Francisco
• Things To Do in The Presidio of San Francisco [More Than Just A Park]
• What Shouldn’t You Miss In San Francisco? Must-Do Tourist Attractions
• Things To Know Before You Go To San Francisco
• Fun Things To Do in San Francisco With Kids
• San Francisco in a Day: How To Spend 24 Hours

No. This was Savannah’s dream.

When I first surprised her with tickets, she screamed, dropped to the floor, and rolled around in tears at our dining room table. So I gave up the coffee idea, went back to our shabby little hotel room, and waited the better part of an hour while she got herself ready for a WNBA game at the Chase Center.

14-year-old Savannah and I rolled into the city that day off five days on the Majestic Mountain Loop, legs still tired from the Sierra Nevada. San Francisco after all that granite and pine felt loud and bright and full of people. This is not our first time visiting San Francisco. It’s the fourth time for me and Savannah visited for five days when she was seven. We’ve now experienced San Francisco as a solo traveler, couples’ travelers, with younger kids, and now with teens. I can confirm that it’s a pretty great city to take a teen. 

Every place on this list is somewhere we’ve been with our own teen, or somewhere I’d happily send yours. I’ve kept it to what actually lands with this age group, the stuff Savannah cared about and the things Kalyra loved back when she was a teen too. Some we did on this trip. Some we’ve done on the many visits before it. I’ll tell you which is which as we go.

1. Catch a WNBA game at the Chase Center

A WNBA game at the Chase Center was the reason we were in San Francisco. Savannah is a die-hard WNBA fan, and the Dallas Wings were playing the Golden State Valkyries at the Chase Center in Mission Bay. The women on the court were brilliant, but so was everything around them.

Dancers and games and giveaways through every timeout, glitter and color in the crowd, the local crowd roaring for the Valkyries and a fair scattering of Wings jerseys dotted through it. Savannah wore her player jersey. I wore a shirt that said, “I’m in my Dallas Wings era.” We committed.

Getting there is easy. Buses and the Metro both run to the arena, and with an event ticket the ride is free. Right on the complex, Thrive City has outdoor space and somewhere to eat before tip-off. We found a burger joint with gluten-free buns, reasonable prices, community-style tables, and a gluten-free beer on tap that made me very happy.

A WNBA game is a brilliant teen night out. The tickets can be more affordable than the men’s game, the atmosphere is warm and family-friendly, and women’s sport is having a moment your teen will want to be part of. There’s a whole story behind our night here, from an Aussie player who stopped to talk to us to the seats we upgraded on a whim. I gave it its own post so ready our full guide to seeing a game at the Chase Center.

2. Walk from Fisherman’s Wharf to the Golden Gate Bridge

Because we clearly hadn’t walked enough in the Sierra Nevada (), we decided to walk from Fisherman’s Wharf all the way around to the Golden Gate Bridge. Savannah grumbled at the start. Then the clouds began to clear, the bridge came into focus, and she came around.

We popped into Ghirardelli Square first so she could taste the chocolate at its original home. We grabbed a couple to go. The raspberry dark chocolate is mine.

The path runs along the marina, and we stopped at Equator Coffees to fuel up. Then the Palace of Fine Arts, which was on Savannah’s list after she found it on TikTok, forgetting we’d photographed her there as a kid. It’s a slice of ancient Rome dropped into San Francisco. Get your shots from across the pond, then wander in under the rotunda.

We carried on past Crissy Field, out onto the pier for the bridge views, and up toward the fort. This was the one window on our whole trip where the clouds pulled back and the bridge stood there in full red. We took far too many photos and regretted none of them.

At the end, the Roundhouse Cafe. It’s round, as promised, with windows giving you the full sweep of the bridge. We’d walked about 4.5 miles by then, so we sat with an Equator Coffees and watched the clouds roll back in over the water. The photo I caught of Savannah there, with the bridge out the window, is one of her favorites.

You don’t have to walk back. Buses run from the bridge to wherever you’re headed. And if your teen has more in the tank than mine did, the trail keeps going to Baker Beach and Lands End out to the Sutro Baths. On earlier trips, Craig and I have rented bikes and ridden across the bridge to Sausalito for a picnic, then caught the ferry home. I tried to sell Savannah on it. She said no. Your teen might say yes. I’d rate it as a top thing to do with teens in SF. Here are various bike rentals, including ebikes, which we never had the option for!

3. Explore the Presidio

Right by the bridge is the Presidio, an old army base turned parkland that we’ve loved on past trips. On summer Sundays there are food trucks and community gatherings on the lawn, and it’s a lovely spot to spread out for a picnic.

There’s more here for teens than you’d expect. Tucked into the woods are Andy Goldsworthy’s sculptures, and tracking them down feels like a treasure hunt (Woodline is my favorite). There’s a hidden Yoda statue at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, home to Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. And for Disney fans, the Walt Disney Family Museum tells the story of how one persistent, creative man built a whole world, through interactive exhibits that pull you right in. I came away moved by how many times he failed before it worked.

I’ve rounded those up along with more of the city’s quieter finds, including colorful mosaic tile steps made for the photos your teen will want in our hidden gems in San Francisco post, and there’s plenty more in our full Presidio guide.

4. See the sea lions and shop at Pier 39

Savannah wanted the sea lions, so we hopped out at Pier 39 and Fisherman’s Wharf for a bit. The seals don’t need long. A few minutes of watching them snooze, slide off into the water, and bark at each other, and you’ve had the experience.

The shops right there are made for teens. I’d braced for tourist-trap prices and was pleasantly surprised. Savannah grabbed a San Francisco hoodie, which we needed more than expected. It was much chillier than we’d realized coming off 90-degree Yosemite. We picked up a t-shirt for Craig too.

While you’re here, Umbrella Alley is a community art space packed with murals and interactive photo spots, and it’s very much a teen’s kind of stop. We missed it this time. You may also want the famous clam chowder bread bowl from Boudin Bakery.

5. Take a ride in a Waymo

The driverless cars were a novelty when we visited, so I’m putting them on the list as a San Francisco attraction for teens in their own right. You’ll spot them everywhere, white Jaguars with a spinning sensor on the roof. Savannah begged me to get in one. I love trying new things, so I said yes.

It was a lot of fun. Easy to use, priced like an Uber, no tipping. A little unnerving at first to sit in a car with no one driving. We laughed and shrieked our way from the Painted Ladies down to Fisherman’s Wharf, and the car took the turns with ease, stuck to the speed limit, let us pick the music, and didn’t make small talk. At one point it read a car that looked parked, understood it wasn’t, and smoothly went around. Very impressive.

We did it once more because Savannah wanted to ride up front. I’m still not sure how I feel about driverless cars and what they mean for jobs down the line. As a one-off with your teen, it’s a memory. I’d still rather walk or take the bus most of the time.

6. Photograph the Painted Ladies

Savannah is a Full House kid, so the Painted Ladies were non-negotiable. We walked there from our hotel, through a few different neighborhoods, and stopped at Ritual Coffee on the way for a cup in their little outdoor seating area.

There isn’t much to do at the Painted Ladies beyond photograph that famous row of townhomes, and that’s fine. Go early and you’ll have them to yourself. We’ve been here around lunchtime before, when the park across from them fills up with people picnicking, which is lovely in its own right.

7. Explore the California Academy of Sciences

I’d assumed a 14-year-old would be over science museums. Savannah asked to go. I’m so glad she did, because I loved it, and it’s a museum that works for any age.

It’s split into the earth’s different environments, and the rainforest section feels like an actual rainforest, high humidity, parrots overhead, butterflies drifting past your head as you climb the canopy. The aquarium has stingrays, coral, and every kind of fish. We’d been hoping to see the Pacific octopus, especially after reading Remarkably Bright Creatures and watching the film together, but it was tucked away that day. The penguin feeding is a highlight, and I loved the connection to the conservation work the Academy does with penguins in South Africa, a beach I’ve actually sat on.

Savannah’s favorite was Vivid, a new exhibit we walked into with no idea what it was. You step into rooms where the walls and ceilings become ecosystems, ultra high-definition projections, soundscapes, even scents. It’s sensory and beautiful, and it stopped her in her tracks.

Prices are steep, so it’s worth it if your teen is the kind who’ll happily sink a few hours in. The Go City tourist pass takes the sting off admission. There’s a planetarium too. We couldn’t line up a show time, but I’d build one in if you can. When you’re done, walk across the parking lot to the de Young Museum and ride up to the viewing room. It’s free, a little hazy through the glass, and the view over the park and the city is worth the elevator.

You can buy your ticket in advance here, which is a lot cheaper than what we paid upon arrival!!

8. Spend time in Golden Gate Park (bike it even)

You’re already in Golden Gate Park at the Academy, so give it some time. It’s big, with sculptures and botanical gardens threaded through it, and on an earlier trip we rented bikes to cover more of it (see here for bike rentals). You can even spot the resident bison.

Craig and I have done the Japanese Tea Garden here, and the afternoon tea is exactly the kind of thing my teens would love. There’s an entry fee, so weigh the interest against the budget. If a picnic is more your speed, the park is made for it.

9. Wander Haight-Ashbury

We walked through the park to Haight-Ashbury, home of the 60s and 70s hippies, and a place I’ve always liked. It’s where Kalyra bought her first pair of Doc Martens as a teen. If your teen is into thrift stores, vintage racks, colorful buildings, murals, and a slightly alternative feel, this is their corner of the city.

It’s a good lunch stop too. We ate at Hippie Thai, where I had a Pad Thai I’d put up against some of the best Thai I’ve eaten in a long while. San Francisco is a serious food city, and I knew Haight would deliver something authentic.

10. Climb up to Buena Vista Park

A couple of streets from Haight is a quieter find: Buena Vista Park. After five days of hiking, we groaned at how steep the short climb to the top is. It’s worth every step. The views over the city are beautiful, and on a clear day you’ll catch the red of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance. We got lucky and did.

From there, walk a few blocks to Third Wheel Coffee on the corner. Excellent coffee, and a good place to land after the hill.

11. Wander Union Square and Chinatown after dark

On our first evening, after dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Peruvian spot, we wandered past the hearts in Union Square for a couple of photos, then through the gate into Chinatown. It was quiet at that hour, so Savannah didn’t get the full bustle of it, but it was a lovely walk all the same. We’ve brought both girls here on earlier trips and they’ve always enjoyed it.

In the daytime, there’s more. The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory in Ross Alley has been making cookies by hand since 1962, and you can watch the fortunes go in, sample a few, and buy a box. Ross Alley itself has real history, from the Tong Wars to scenes in Karate Kid II. Up on Waverly Place, the Tin How Temple is one of the oldest Chinese temples still running in the country.

On the edge of Chinatown, where it meets North Beach, is Jack Kerouac Alley, with murals worth a look and City Lights Booksellers on the Italian side. Savannah is an avid reader, so we went in. It’s the most famous bookstore in the city, tied to Kerouac and the Beat writers who used to drink at Vesuvio Cafe across the alley. If your teen loves books, they’ll love it here.

12. Ride a cable car

This one stayed on Savannah’s list and, somehow, we never checked it off. She loved hanging off the side of one as a kid, and I think riding those hills as a teen would be an even bigger buzz. There are three lines now, the Powell-Mason, the Powell-Hyde, and the California Street line. Do the Powell-Hyde from the wharf up to Union Square for the classic ride.

13. Visit Alcatraz

Savannah wanted to go back to Alcatraz, but we’d done it before and ran out of time this trip. It’s one of the best things to do in San Francisco. Kalyra surprised me by how much she got into it, and both girls came away full of questions, about the two men who escaped and where they might have ended up, about the fact that the guards’ children lived on the island and loved it. Walking into those cells and feeling what the prisoners felt is unnerving, and Savannah was a little freaked out. A good, quiet lesson in staying on the right side of the law. Book well ahead, it sells out.

Book your Alcatraz tickets in advance. Here are options. I love the look of the night tour. Adding it for next San Fransico trip!

14. Take in the view from Coit Tower

I really wanted to get Savannah up Coit Tower, and she was keen, but by the end of the trip she was spent. It has one of the prettiest panoramas in the city, a full 360 that had me thinking of Greece the last time I stood up there. It’s $10 to ride to the top, and worth it for views that reach the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, and Angel Island. Don’t skip the murals downstairs, painted during the Depression. It sits on the edge of the North Beach Italian quarter, so pair it with lunch there.

15. Snap fun photos at the 3D Museum of Illusions

Walking through Fisherman’s Wharf, we passed the 3D Museum of Illusions and both got a hit of memory from doing it years ago. Savannah lit up talking about it and wanted to go again. Put it on the list. Your teen gets a stack of fun photos and some clever art in the same stop.

16. Zip around in a GoCar

Savannah brought up the GoCars more than once, and I kicked myself for not planning them in. They’re the little yellow two-seaters that scoot around the city on a guided route you can follow or ignore. It’s a fun way to see the sights, and teens love them. If time allows, hire one for longer and take the routes out through the Presidio and Golden Gate Park.

Check whether your car or travel insurance covers excess for a motorbike, which is how GoCars are classed. It can be an included attraction on the Go City tourist pass. OR rent them in advance here.

17. Take a day trip to Muir Woods

If your teen hasn’t stood among redwoods before and you’ve got the time, drive out to Muir Woods National Monument. It’s a green world under the tallest trees you’ll see, and you can take it all in on an easy 2-mile loop in a couple of hours. Book your parking slot online before you go, you can’t get in without one, and an America the Beautiful national parks pass covers your entry. If you don’t have a car, it is probably easier to join one of these tours.

18. Chase street art in the Mission District

If your schedule stretches, the Mission District is a fun one for teens. It’s an outdoor gallery of murals with Latino roots and a creative streak, great food, and exactly the kind of backdrops they want for their feed. Walk Clarion Alley, between 17th and 18th, and Mission and Valencia. More than 700 murals have gone up there since 1992, many carrying messages about the community. Balmy Alley has more.

While you’re here, Mission Dolores Park is a good gathering spot with fine city views, and two of the best ice cream places in town are close: Smitten and Bi-Rite Creamery. If your teen loves a pastry, Tartine Bakery is here too. They also bake bread San Franciscans are obsessed with. Here is a food and history walking tour of the Mission District which takes in the murals.

Where to eat in San Francisco with teens

I’ll be honest, our food ran hot and cold this trip. Savannah’s a fussy eater and our tastes pull in different directions, so I couldn’t camp out in Thai and Vietnamese spots the way I wanted to, and we grabbed a lot of bits and pieces on the run.

The wins were worth it though.

The best meal we had was at Barbara in North Beach, the Italian quarter. Italian is the cuisine you can trust almost anywhere, and Barbara is a lively Roman spot on a light-filled corner, with a little table tucked into the window nook. Rome is one of our favorite cities, and this felt like it.

I had a gluten-free rigatoni with sausage and mushroom, an Aperol spritz, and a glass of Italian red. Savannah had a lasagna she loved. The prices were kind for that neighborhood, which isn’t easy to find. Skip dessert there and walk down to Victoria Pastry Company for tiramisu instead.

My favorite breakfast came from Reveille Coffee in a beautiful flatiron building across from Vesuvio. Clean design, excellent coffee, and a plantain bowl I’m still thinking about.

A few we couldn’t fit but would happily chase next time: Arsicault Bakery, whose chocolate croissant has been named the best in the country (I’m gluten-free and stole a bite when we visited years ago, no regrets), Butter & Crumble near Coit Tower for laminated pastries and crumble cakes (get there before they sell out around midday), and Foreign Cinema in the Mission, where they screen films while you eat. On an earlier visit we also loved the Ferry Building, a landmark since 1898 with a farmers market on Saturdays, bay views, and a whole store dedicated to gluten-free pastries that had my name on it.

A few more we’d add next time

Since we’ve covered so much of the city over the years, these are the ones I’d fold in on a future trip.

• A bay cruise. Savannah wanted one. I’m cautious given how often San Francisco sits under cloud and cold, and I’d hate to pay for a cruise and see nothing while we shiver. A sunset sailing might be the sweet spot.
• A ghost tour. A favorite way to get to know any city, as long as your teen is fine with a bit of spook. Mine would be.
• A food tour. We do a lot of these, and even fussy Savannah tries more when she’s on one. In a food city like this, pick a neighborhood whose cuisine you love, Chinatown or North Beach, and go.

Where to stay in San Francisco with a teen

I’m not going to send you where Savannah and I stayed, because it isn’t worth sending you to. We were there during the soccer World Cup in peak summer, hotel rooms were averaging $600 a night, and there was almost nothing left. We dug deep and landed in a hostel-style room with a shared bathroom. Savannah got a taste of the not-so-privileged life she’s been living and was mortified. I’ve done plenty of hostels and shared bathrooms in my time, so it was fine for me. And I was happy she was having a toughen up buttercup moment. She would not recommend it, and neither would I, because I want your teen to have a better first impression of this city than that. And it wasn’t in the best area either; I think we saw a few deals go down. 

Where you stay depends on what you’re doing, but I’d point you to Fisherman’s Wharf or Union Square. On past trips we’ve loved Hotel Zoe near the waterfront, two blocks from the water with a good seafood restaurant on site. The Beacon Grand in Union Square gave our family of four two interconnecting rooms, a free wine hour with city views, and transport at the door.

And the Marriott Marquis has the View Lounge up top that Savannah was gutted to miss once she heard I’d been. It’s totally worth adding to your San Francisco teen itinerary even if you don’t stay there!  Rooms were large here and the hotel nice.

For the full run-down, see our where to stay in San Francisco guide and see options for Airbnb rentals, which we have not done.

Getting around and getting from the airport

San Francisco is one of the easiest cities to get around. From the airport, grab a cab or take the train downtown, which ran us about 30 minutes and cost very little. I love the public transport here. Tap your credit or debit card on and off, on the trains and the buses both.

Two things worth knowing. If you’re holding a ticket to a concert or a sporting event, the buses are free for the entire day. And anyone under 19 rides free, all the time. For a family with a teen, that adds up fast. Buses come all the time. I just used google to plan out my routes and see when the buses were coming. 

FAQs about visiting San Francisco with teens

Is San Francisco good for teens?

Yes. The city is a patchwork of neighborhoods with their own personalities, so there’s sure to be one that clicks with your teen. The food scene is among the best in the country, there are photo spots everywhere they’ll want them, and the museums, galleries, and attractions cover just about any interest. It’s easy to get around, and your teen won’t be bored.

Is San Francisco safe for teens to walk around?

In a lot of areas, yes, especially around Fisherman’s Wharf and the more visited neighborhoods. Some pockets aren’t as safe, so do your research on where you’re staying and where you’re wandering. Around our hotel, I wouldn’t have let Savannah walk alone, and definitely not after dark.

How many days do you need in San Francisco?

Three days is a good amount. There’s enough here to fill more if you want to. Two days or one still works, you’ll just be moving fast, and teens don’t always love being rushed.

What is there to do in San Francisco with teens at night?

Look for an event like a WNBA game, or a concert if one lines up. A relaxed dinner somewhere good goes a long way with this age group. And a wander around Fisherman’s Wharf to see what’s happening is an easy way to end a day. And of course, one of those ghost tours! 

Final thoughts

San Francisco surprised me with a teen. I expected the eye-rolls and got a kid who wanted the science museum, the Painted Ladies, the bookstore, the sea lions, and above all, her team on the court. She said it was the best night of her life, and she hasn’t stopped planning the next one. Which she got just a few weeks later watching the Dallas Wings play the NY Liberty in New York City. Craig took her to NYC for three days while I was in Slovenia. Of course she came home begging to go to the DC game, but we denied that one! 

That’s the thing about traveling with them at this age. You get these windows where they let you back in, and you see who they’re becoming. Take the walk. Say yes to the driverless car. Help them pursue their dreams. That’s what the teen years are built for. Savannah is now researching potential careers in the WNBA! That makes the investment into travel so worth it. 

If you’ve got a San Francisco question I haven’t answered here, drop a comment below. I’d love to help you plan it. Here are some things to know before visiting San Francisco!

Thank goodness for small phone slip miracles and stunning nature to prove her point. Her mesmerizing beauty trumps all pokes, dings, and disappearing messages. A Majestic Mountain Loop road trip is always a great idea.

Visit California’s Majestic Mountain Loop connects Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia in a single circuit starting and ending near Fresno. The total driving distance is around 200 miles.

Three national parks in six days sounds like a lot. And it is, if you rush it. But we flew into Fresno, which puts you right in the middle of all three, and the route falls into a natural loop. No backtracking. No brutal long-haul driving days. Just a very good road trip through the Sierra Nevada with two base towns that people underestimate. Here’s how my teenager and i did it on this amazing mother daughter road trip (all inspired by her travel dreams).

The route

Fresno (fly in) → Bass Lake/Oakhurst → Yosemite (2 days) → Kings Canyon → Visalia → Sequoia → Fresno (fly out)

We actually drove to San Francisco for three days and flew out of there. Totally doable as its 3 hours from Visalia; it’s also 3 hours from LA, so you have great options.

One rental car. One loop. About 1 hour of driving on your first day, and 1 – 2.5 hours on the days you shift south and move between destinations.

Staying near the southern gate of Yosemite is what makes most sense for this Majestic Mountain Loop road trip. Otherwise, it will add a lot of extra driving time when you move from Yosemite to Kings Canyon.

Day 1: Arrive in Fresno, drive to Bass Lake

Fresno airport is blessedly small. You’re through baggage claim and into a rental car in under 20 minutes. Head northeast on Highway 41 and in about an hour you’re in the Sierra Nevada foothills, which feel nothing like the California most people picture.

Bass Lake is a reservoir community that sits 15 miles below the Yosemite south entrance. It’s calm, scenic, and completely unbothered by its proximity to one of the most visited national parks on earth. People come here to boat, swim, and paddle, to eat on the water, and to watch the light go gold across the lake in the evening. It’s the chill to the Yosemite intensity you need.

Arrive in the afternoon and spend time relaxing in your cabin or swimming at the lake. We picked up lunch from Miller’s Landing Resort where we were staying before taking a swim.

Then for dinner we drove 30 minutes to the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad Moonlight Special for a three-hour evening logger steam train ride through the Sierra Nevada. Enjoy dinner, a narrow-gauge logging railroad, and a live singalong around a campfire. Savannah and I enjoyed it more than we thought we would.

This first night is recovery time. Eat well in Oakhurst (the nearest town, 10 minutes away), get to bed early. Everything that matters starts tomorrow.

Where to stay: The Bass Lake area has plenty of lake cabins to rent, Millers Landing Resort and the Pines Resort. Oakhurst has standard hotel options. Either works. Oakhurst is more practical if you want to be near food and coffee in the morning without driving. And for a quicker drive into Yosemite NP. The other option, closer to the park entrance is Tenaya Lodge where I have stayed twice and loved it. It will be further away from Bass Lake, however.

Day 2: Yosemite Valley and the Mist Trail

Get up early. Get yourself through the south entrance and down into the Valley by 8am if you can manage it. Honestly, I say 7am if you’re doing the Mist Trail, or any of the longer hikes.The crowds build fast. By 10 the parking is complicated and by noon the valley floor has the energy of a theme park.

Start with the Mist Trail while you have fresh legs. It’s 3 miles round-trip to Vernal Falls, 7 if you push to Nevada Falls. The last quarter mile to Vernal Falls gets soaked in spray from the waterfall as you climb the stone steps. On a sunny morning you walk straight through a rainbow. Savannah said it was her favorite Yosemite memory.

After the hike, the rest of the valley is a slow wander. A short trail to Yosemite Falls El Capitan meadow, lying on the grass watching climbers that you can barely see. Tubing down the river. The valley floor views of Half Dome. Lunch at Curry Village (or pack a picnic). None of it feels like effort. The scale of the place does the work.

Head back to Bass Lake by mid-afternoon. Be sure to stop at Tunnel View on the way out for one of the best Yosemite views. You can also do it in the morning, but lighting is better in the afternoon.

Drive time from Bass Lake to the Valley floor: about 90 minutes each way.

Day 3: Glacier Point (and options if you have energy)

The Glacier Point Road is one of the better drives in California and most people don’t take it until they’ve already spent a day staring at Half Dome from below. Coming to Glacier Point after the valley is a different experience. You’re now at 7,200 feet, looking directly across at Half Dome, the valley spread below you. If you hiked the Mist Trail yesterday, you can probably see where you were standing.

Get there before 9am. By 10 the parking fills and the viewing area gets crowded in a way that undercuts the whole experience.

If time allows after Glacier Point, Taft Point is 2 miles away on a flat trail that ends at a granite ledge over a 3,000-foot drop with no guardrails. It’s a different kind of dizzying. Worth it if your legs are willing.

On your way back toward Oakhurst, the Mariposa Grove is a worthwhile stop: Yosemite’s grove of giant sequoias, with a 2-mile walk to the Grizzly Giant. It’s a natural bridge into what comes later in the trip when you encounter sequoias again in Sequoia National Park. The trees in Mariposa are old and enormous, and the grove is often quieter than you’d expect given the park traffic.

Alternatively, if you only wanted one day in Yosemite, you could move Glacier Point to the afternoon of the first day, and leave this day to relax at Bass Lake, or Tenaya Lodge if you choose to stay there. You can read our Bass Lake & Yosemite guide to see other options for things to do and places to eat.

Have an early night as tomorrow will be an early start.

Read More: This was my fourth visit to Yosemite National Park. Here are some more guides to help you -plan: amazing things to do in Yosemite with kids (or not), 3 day Yosemite NP itinerary, and the Half Dome Plan B.

Day 4: Kings Canyon then Visalia

Drive 2 hours from Bass Lake to the entrance of Kings Canyon National Park. It’s smaller and lessor visited than the other two parks but well worth a day of your time.

Begin with General Grant, the world’s third largest sequoia at the Grant Grove, another sequoia cluster inside the Kings Canyon section of the park. Then the road tips you into the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway and the whole character of the landscape changes.

The descent is 4,000 feet and the canyon walls close in on both sides as you drop. It’s narrow and dramatic in a way that California’s mountain driving often isn’t. At the bottom, Cedar Grove opens up into a wide, flat meadow with the Kings River running through it, turquoise from glacier melt, cold even in summer.

Enjoy seven miles of hiking along the South Fork Kings River. The trail starts at Roads End (the same trail that takes you to Mist Falls) and follows the river to Zumwalt Meadow. (see All Trails Map) Enjoy Roaring River Falls and Junction View on your drive back out (better with the afternoon light).

It will take about 2.5 hours to drive from the valley floor to Visalia. The Kings Canyon Scenic Byway takes about an hour.

Visalia gets overlooked by most people planning this route, and that’s their loss. It is the gateway town to Kings Canyon and Sequoia so makes sense to base yourself there for the next two nights.

It has a proper downtown with good restaurants. Not tourist restaurants. The kind of restaurants that exist because a city of 140,000 people needs somewhere to eat on a Saturday night. This area is also one of the biggest agricultural areas in the country, so you can expect food made from fresh, local produce. We had one of our best meals of the trip here, the carne en su jugo at El Tarasco.

Where to stay: The city also has reasonably priced hotels that haven’t decided they can charge national park rates just because they’re within driving distance. We stayed at the Comfort Suites Visalia – Convention Center in Downtown and liked it. I have penciled in the boutique Darling Hotel for my next stay!

Day 5: Sequoia National Park

Start early again – you really want to beat those crowds – and head straight to Moro Rock It’s a 350-step climb up a granite dome to a 360-degree view of the Great Western Divide. Because of its narrowness just one shuttle bus load will feel like a ride line at Disney. This is the view people don’t anticipate. They come for the trees, and they leave talking about this. The mountains go further than you can see.

From there, head to the next busiest attraction. We escaped the middle of the day crowds, but it was slowly building. Even then we skipped waiting in the line for the General Sherman tree photo next to the sign. I can only imagine how painful that would have been by the afternoon.

The most important thing to know about General Sherman is that the number (52,508 cubic feet of volume, making it the world’s largest living tree) means nothing until you’re standing next to it.

It’s a half mile walk down from the trailhead parking. The tree doesn’t try to impress you. It just exists at a scale that takes a moment to process. We stood there longer than I expected to.

If you have afternoon energy left: the Congress Trail loops through a dense collection of sequoias from the Sherman Tree trailhead. Mostly flat, under 2 miles. The sequoias here come at you in groups. The names are all slightly absurd (The Senate, The House) but the trees themselves earn it. We share other hike ideas in our guide to Visalia, Kings Canyon & Sequoia NP.

Return to Visalia for the night. It’s about a 90-minute drive. The scenic road from the entrance gates up to the main part of Sequoia is quite stunning (winding so go slow).

Wrap up an amazing Sierra Nevada road trip with sunset views looking back over it from Elderwood Restaurant, the rooftop restaurant at the Darling Hotel. Cheers to six days of adventures through three spectacular California national parks.

Practical notes: Sequoia and Kings Canyon are one connected park, managed together. Your entry fee or America the Beautiful pass covers both. Some people attempt to do the two parks in one day. I don’t recommend it. Visalia operates the Sequoia Shuttle, which takes you from most Visalia hotels to the Giant Forest Museum, Sequoia NP. From there, use the free internal shuttle It operates from Memorial Day to Labor Day. $15 round-trip. 

Day 6: One last morning, then goodbye

What you do on your last morning is dependent on your departure time. As we were driving to San Francisco, we had more flexibility and chose to have a slow morning in Visalia.

That meant a hot Pilates class at Space Yoga (so great for hiking recovery), a delicious healthy breakfast at Component Coffee, a little bit of shopping and coffee to go at Mission Coffee.

it took us just over three hours to get to San Francisco. (a post on that trip coming soon. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss it.)

The drive back to Fresno from Visalia is about 50 minutes and Fresno airport is quick to navigate.

Watch the Majestic ‘Mountain Loop road trip highlights in the video

What to sort before you leave home

America the Beautiful Pass: $80, covers entry to all national parks. It pays for itself on this trip. Buy it at your first park entrance or online before you go. I love that any other national parks in the US we now want to do for the remainder of the year are covered!

Rental car: You need one. There’s no practical alternative for this route. Public transit options exist for parts of Yosemite Valley but not for the rest of the trip. We always rent from DiscoverCars.com Check rates and availability here.

Best time to go: Late May through early October. Glacier Point Road in Yosemite and the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway can both be affected by snow before Memorial Day. August and early September are the busiest months. Late September and early October are often the sweet spot: smaller crowds, turning leaves in places, still fully accessible. There is just not as much water in the waterfalls!

Where to stay:

• Bass Lake/Oakhurst: 3 nights. Closer to the park than staying in Fresno, and a nicer base than you’d expect.
  • The Bass Lake area has plenty of lake cabins to rent, Millers Landing Resort and the Pines Resort.
  • Oakhurst has standard hotel options.
  • Tenaya Lodge if you want to be closer to the southern gates, have a more elevated resort-like stay with great amenities and onsite activities.
• Visalia: 2 nights. The right call. Better food, better prices, and a downtown that offers more for you to do outside of park hours. Consider:
  • Comfort Suites Visalia – Convention Center in Downtown for convenience and comfort at a modet price
  • The boutique Darling Hotel. Art deco style in an historic building, It oozes character. And just a few steps from your room to that rooftop restaurant with a view

A note on the driving

People ask whether the driving is too much. It isn’t. The mid-trip repositioning from Oakhurst to Kings Canyon valley floor (3 hours) is the longest day on the road. Every other day, the park entrance is under an 90 minutes from your base.

The roads are mountain roads. They move at a mountain pace. Don’t rush them. The scenery on the approach to Yosemite via Highway 41, the descent into Kings Canyon, and the ascent to Sequoia NP are part of the trip, not dead time between the good parts.

Want more? Here are some more road trips in the USA to love, some of the best scenic drives in the USA, and some road trip ideas from LA.

Have questions about the route? Drop them in the comments. Happy to help you plan it.

Here are some frequently asked questions

The church of St Nicholas stands right beside it, and its bell rings every quarter hour. There’s a pattern to the tolls, something the farmers once read to know when to come in from the fields. Vesna tried to explain it to me the next day and I still couldn’t line it up. One toll for the quarter.

But then how does three o’clock work, and how did anyone in a vineyard tell the difference? Nobody at that dinner cared. The wine kept coming, the light went soft and gold over the hills, and somewhere around the second course I put my fork down, let out a breath loud enough that the woman beside me laughed, and thought: I could sit here forever.

I want to tell you why that dinner undid me, because the view is only part of it.

Ten days of leaning into fear

By the time we reached wine country, I’d spent some of the trip out of my comfort zone, and sometime a little scared!

That was the design of it. I was in Slovenia on a women’s adventure trip, and the days were built to walk you up to the edge of your fear and ask you to lean in. Cold rivers. High rocks. Cliff edges with a guide counting you down. I spent a lot of those 10 days learning, over and over, how to manage the flutter in my chest and go anyway.

Triglav was the peak of it. I stood at the bottom of the via ferrata, the cabled, exposed stretch that takes you to the summit, and said no because I had reached my maximum capacity. As one of the trip leaders I spent that whole day, and the next, quietly carrying decisions I wasn’t sure I’d gotten right. That day earned a story of its own, and I’ve written it properly here.

By the time we got to the Soča Valley, something had shifted. The fear had turned into something I actually loved. I jumped off a canyon ledge into freezing water and came up grinning. We swam in that impossible turquoise river in our clothes because we hadn’t packed suits and couldn’t bear to miss it. The adrenaline was still there, and it had stopped feeling like a threat.

And then there was Goriška Brda, where nothing was asking anything of me. The hardest thing the region wanted was for me to sit at a table over the vineyards and stay a while. It’s where the whole trip finally let me exhale.

I didn’t plan for that. I don’t think you can. You just drive south out of the Alps, the road flattens, the light changes, and a region hands you exactly the thing you didn’t know you needed.

Where wine country actually is

Goriška Brda sits in the far west of Slovenia, pressed right up against the Italian border. Close enough that we ducked across for gelato one night, which I’ll get to.

It’s the closest thing to Tuscany I’ve found outside of Tuscany, and Slovenians will tell you that themselves. Small stone villages perched on top of little hills. Vineyards rolling away in every direction, undulating down and back up to the next village on the next hilltop. Wine at around €3 a glass that would cost you €12 back home in the States.

The local white is Rebula, and a lot of it here is made with skin contact, which gives it a soft orange color. Light, dry, easy to drink on a hot afternoon. Slovenian wine barely leaves the country. They don’t make enough of it to export, so the only way to drink it is to be here, which is reason enough to come and stay awhile.

You’ll want a car. (Check prices and availability on Discover Cars, who we always use) The region is spread out, and the good bits are the small villages and family wineries scattered through the hills. We got around a fair bit by e-bike too, which turned out to be the best decision of the day.

The e-bike ride through the vineyards

E-biking is how a lot of people get around Brda, because it’s hilly, and because you can. We joined a half-day tour through our accommodation and rode about 17 miles. We started our tour at their agency in the village of Šmartno, the village used to be fortified as an important settlement on the Venetian – Austrian border ad is probably built on Roman foundations.

The name of Šmartno comes from the St. Martin church, the biggest church in Goriška Brda with a bell tower that used to be once a fortification tower.

Our guide was Petra, who also helped cook us a delicious breakfast each morning at our hotel. Our first stop was at Mejnik, a 321-meter hill above the village of Gonjače, where there’s a lookout tower and a monument to the victims of the Second World War. That’s the photograph everyone takes of Brda, the whole patchwork of vineyards and villages laid out below you, and it earns it.

We rode out along the hill roads to get the high views, then came back down through the valley, in among the vines, which was even better. Petra stopped us at spots along the way to look and to tell us about the region. She works for Vesna, who owns both the tour company and the hotel we were staying in, which is how these things tend to work in Brda. Everyone is connected to everyone.

One thing to know before you get on a bike here. The roads through the vineyards are narrow and they wind. One of the women on our trip came off her bike when a car sat too close on her tail through a bend and rattled her. She was fine, grazed and shaken, back on the bike after a rest. Ride single file, and don’t assume every driver will give you room.

We were all so happy when it came time of our rest break. Lunch was the reason to do the whole ride.

Lunch at a winery run by artists

We stopped at Atelier Kramar, a biodynamic winery and bistro in the village of Barbana, and it was a favorite dining experience.

Katja and Matjaž built the place. They were artists first, fell into winemaking, and never really stopped being either. There’s a small gallery of work from around the region, and the plates our food came out on were made by the owners themselves. They work their four and a half hectares of vines with the phases of the moon, no herbicides, and you can taste the care in it.

We sat at a long table outside, under big umbrellas, greenery and vineyard all around us, exactly the shady, unhurried spot you want after a couple of hours on a bike. Mixed cold cuts, homemade salami and pancetta and prosciutto.

Bread so good I kept dipping it in their olive oil, and here’s the thing about Slovenia that I still can’t get over: the gluten free bread is delicious. Every single place. Why can’t America manage that. They made my pasta with rice and it was full of flavor. For dessert, cheese from the Slovenian mountains, cow and sheep, aged in their own cellar. And the wine was fantastic. That Rebula, light and dry and faintly orange.

Every other day of this trip was stacked with hard adventure. Canyoning, rafting, a 12-hour day on Triglav. This day had a bit of adventure in it too, on the bikes. Mostly it was slow. It gave us room to actually taste the food, look at the view, and talk to each other properly while we rode and while we ate. After a week of pushing, that was the medicine.

Where we stayed

We stayed at San Martin in Šmartno. It’s family owned and reads more like a bed and breakfast, rooms and apartments spread across the two floors of the family home. Our group was big enough that we had the whole place to ourselves, though anyone can book it by the room.

Vesna is one of the owners, and she was wonderful. Her name means spring in Slovenian, and it fit. Warm, full of stories and recommendations, and the one who quietly organized half of what made the region sing for us. There was a golden retriever named Brick who met the van the moment we pulled in and stayed close the whole stay, and a cat I went down to say good morning to every day.

The owners cooked breakfast every morning and it was the best breakfast of the trip. Some of the best scrambled eggs and prosciutto I’ve ever eaten. Baked goods, fruit, cheeses, fresh coffee and juice, and the view out over the gardens. They make their own Rebula too, and at €10 a bottle, you say yes.

The dinner I opened with

So. That table on the edge of the hill.

The dinner was at Gostilnica na lepem razgledu in Gornje Cerovo, next to the St Nicholas church with its quarter-hour bells. It was a set four-course menu of seasonal Brda cooking, which we weren’t expecting and which threw everyone’s budget out the window. The setting and the wine made up for it and then some.

Herbal frtalja, a coastal omelette that comes with prosciutto and cheese. Homemade pasta. Pork ribs. My gluten free needs were quietly worked around, though I got ice cream for dessert while everyone else had štruklji, which felt like the one time I drew the short straw. The wine started with something sparkling and moved into the dry Rebula the region is known for. There was a red too that Chris loved and I didn’t get to.

Here’s the part I keep coming back to. I don’t know the name of a single wine we drank that night.

For 16 years my job has been to record everything. Names, prices, how we got there, what was on the plate. On this trip I put the notebook down, and at that dinner I was so far inside the moment that I never picked it back up. The owners just brought out what matched each course, and I trusted it, and I sat back and let the wine and the food and the conversation carry me. I regret the missing names a little, as a writer. As a person at that table, I don’t regret it at all.

Partway through, an Italian friend of the family turned up, the way people do when a village sits this close to a border. He’d brought a bottle of his own dessert wine from the 1990s and poured everyone a glass. It was heavy, and it must have spent years in a bourbon barrel, because you could taste it. His English was limited and our Slovenian and Italian were worse, and the conversation worked anyway. That’s the kind of thing travel keeps handing me. A stranger, kind and generous, and a bottle with a story, and none of the words you’d think you need.

That’s when I felt the mountain leave my shoulders.

I’d carried the whole trip into this valley. The fear I’d leaned into all week, the mountain I’d said no on, the leader’s decisions I was still turning over. Somewhere between the sparkling wine and the ’90s bourbon-barrel dessert wine, with the bells going and the light gone gold, I let myself stop. I hadn’t solved any of it. The valley just made it clear there was nothing left to solve that night, and that I was allowed to be here.

I exhaled. I could sit here forever, I thought. It reminded me so much of a farm stay Craig and I once had in Tuscany, the same sinking into a slower rhythm, the same family food and family wine and view that goes on forever. Now I am sure my soul will continue to crave a return to Goriška Brda just like it does Tuscany.

The last dinner, and a €4 glass of wine

Our final dinner in Slovenia was in the small village of Medana, at Belica, a restaurant with a courtyard terrace under a big overhanging tree strung with fairy lights.

The menu confused all of us and the food came out slowly, which the women on the set four-course meal felt more than I did. The waitress was patient and walked us through it. I had a flank steak salad that arrived, surprisingly, on a single lettuce leaf, and it was delicious, with a creamy potato dish alongside. Belica cooks from recipes handed down by local grandmothers, seasonal and local, a little modern touch on top.

I had a glass of white and a glass of red, both excellent local wines, and both under €4. That number still makes me happy.

We took the long table and talked through our highlights, our surprises, the lessons each of us was carrying home. Then we went back to San Martin and Drea, Ali and I shared a bottle of the hotel’s own Rebula in our room, debriefing the whole trip, getting ready to say goodbye to everyone in the morning. €10 a bottle. How do you say no to that? When in Goriška Brda you simply don’t.

The gelato run into Italy

I promised I’d come back to this. That night after the vineyard dinner, someone pointed out that gelato in Italy was 15 minutes away. Christina and Drea gave us the it’s-doable nod, and off we went, because when you’re that close to Italy and the whole group wants gelato, you go.

We landed at Il Gelatiere in Gorizia about five minutes before closing. I’m not sure 15 women walking in while they wiped down the counters was the highlight of their evening, but they served us happily and did their best to translate the flavors. I went simple, choc hazelnut and stracciatella.

The next afternoon, short on time after our bike ride, we skipped the Italy run and got gelato in Šmartno instead, at a little place called Mjrka. I liked the Slovenian one better. Is that allowed to say? Conduct your own gelato tasting experiment while in Goriška Brdaand report back which one you liked better!

Don’t you just love Europe? Popping over to another country for a midnight snack! It blows my Australian mind!

What the wine, and the region, actually taught me

I didn’t visit many wineries. I didn’t learn much about Slovenian wine, and I half wish I had. But I loved that I was here to switch off instead of study.

What I noticed, and wasn’t surprised by, was waking up clear-headed the next morning. That rarely happens to me with American wine, even after a glass, which is why I mostly drink European wine now. I’d love to come back and taste properly, sit with those views, go deeper into it.

What struck me most was how it felt. Slow, quiet, no crowds, and made by families rather than corporations. So many wine regions get big and lose a little of their soul along the way. Here it felt like every bottle carried a story and a person who cared. I didn’t need to tour a dozen cellars to feel that. It was in the €10 Rebula at our hotel and the ’90s dessert wine from a stranger and the plates an artist had made by hand.

The mountain taught me when to stop pushing. Brda showed me what stopping is for.

If you want to do this yourself

• Where it is: just under 2 hours west of Ljubljana, right against the Italian border.
• How long: give it at least 3 days. If you love wine, longer. This is a region that wants you to slow down, and it punishes you for rushing it.
• Getting around: you’ll want a car, because it’s spread out and the good bits are small villages and family wineries. E-bikes are a wonderful way to see the vineyards up close, rentals and tours through San Martin in Šmartno.
• When to go: May through October. We were there in July, hot and beautiful, and never fighting crowds.
• The wine to try: Rebula, especially the skin-contact orange versions. And whatever the family in front of you pours you. Trust it.

The trip that put me here

I was in Slovenia for 10 days on a women’s group trip with Your Limitless Adventures, run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them. That wine country day, the exhale at the end of a hard, beautiful, cracked-open 10 days, is a big part of why I said yes.

If you want to know what a trip like that actually does to a person, here’s the honest, whole-trip account, mishaps and all. And if you’ve read this far, the day on the mountain that I finally set down over that dinner is its own story here.

I’m leading three trips, and I would love to be at the dinner table with you at the end of one of them:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

Have you been to Goriška Brda, or is it going on the list. Tell me in the comments. And if you go, drink the Rebula, sit at a table over the vineyards until the bells ring, and don’t you dare take notes.

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• 2 days in Ljubljana -and the bike ride that will bring it to life.
• Adventure activities in Slovenia: how to choose your speed, from canyon jumps to a gentle city ride
• Mount Triglav, Slovenia: the summit I skipped and the three hours that taught me more

I was scared in a way I don’t usually get scared. Angry too, which surprised me more. We’d been scrambling for what felt like a very long time across rock that fell away on both sides, and my body had quietly decided it was finished. One wrong foot and I’d slide, and the slide had somewhere bad to go.

So I held on and gave myself a talking-to. Out loud, probably. Get out of the fear. Get out of the anger. Get back in your body, because if you don’t, you’ll come off this face through nothing but lost focus, and you are not doing that to your girls.

It worked. I got present, I found my feet, I climbed the last bit up to the hut. I have never been so happy to see a small ugly building in my life.

That stretch wasn’t the part of the mountain I’d trained for, or chosen, or even knew was coming. It’s the part I think about most.

On the way to the Triglav Summit

Triglav is the highest peak in Slovenia, 2,864 meters up in the Julian Alps. It’s on the national flag. There’s a saying over there that you’re not a true Slovenian until you’ve stood on top of it. 50,000 to 70,000 mountaineers climbing it each year, it is one of the most popular mountains in Slovenia. So, when I tell you I climbed Triglav and didn’t summit, I know exactly which mountain I turned my back on.

I’m still not sorry. Let me tell you how that happened, because it’s more interesting than the summit would have been.

We were on a 10-day women’s group trip through Slovenia, 15 of us, run by Your Limitless Adventures. I’ve written the long, honest breakdown of the whole trip elsewhere, what it costs and where it broke. Today it’s one day on one mountain.

We left Lake Bled before dawn. The hotel had packed us breakfast the night before, which was lovely of them, except it was too early for anyone to make coffee. So, several of us hiked up a mountain for 12 hours on no coffee at all. Not one cup. I’m quietly proud that I didn’t even get the headache. Small wins.

An hour’s drive, a parking lot, a huddle with our guides Clemens and Urie, hands in the middle, up on three. Off we went. It started as a pretty walk through forest. Then it started going up, and it didn’t really stop.

I’d made a rookie mistake before I ever left home. I’d been frugal and bought my pack at the last minute, and I somehow convinced myself it had a padded, supportive waistband. It had the clip. It did not have the padding. I carried a 3-liter water bladder up that mountain because I was terrified of running out, and nobody had told us there were two natural springs on the trail where we could have filled up. So, I hauled a heavy, badly balanced pack for hours, and it wore me down more than the climb did.

About an hour in, we stopped. Clemens and Urie pulled Christina aside and told her the truth: we hadn’t hit the hard part yet, and after this it got much steeper, with about five hours still to go. A couple of the women took an honest look at it and decided it wasn’t their day. Urie walked them back down and put them in a taxi. They found a hotel with a beautiful pool and had the kind of afternoon that made the rest of us deeply jealous by nightfall. They were disappointed in the moment. By dinner they were the smartest people on the mountain.

The rest of us kept going up. Through alpine forest with the peaks watching us the whole way. Past a herd of cows. Through a meadow where I fully expected a bear to wander out. And because we walked mostly single file at different paces, I kept ending up next to a different woman every hour, which turned a brutal climb into the best conversations of the trip.

Kim ran a lot of that. She’d lob a question down the line and make us all answer it. Three people, alive or dead, you’d have dinner with. Who and why. Even Clemens, who I think first decided we were a strange bunch of women, eventually joined in.

Mine, if you’re curious: my grandfather on my mother’s side, who died before I was born, who my mum speaks of so tenderly that I’ve missed a man I never met. Wayne Dyer, whose books have shaped 30 years of how I think, and who I cried over when he passed. And David Ghiyam, my Kabbalah teacher these last two years, whose teaching lines up with everything I already believed but couldn’t say out loud yet.

That’s what the hard trail gives you. Hours with nothing to do but talk properly.

We took the Krma Triglav route through the Krma Valley to Triglavski dom (Kredarica Hut / lunch hut). It’s approx. 7.3 kilometers \ 5 miles and ascends 1550m. Usually, it takes us around 5 hours to reach the hut. There is water spring halfway up the mountain, so you can start the hike with 1 or 1.5 liter of water and some snacks for the way. We did not know this and carried too much water!

Saying No to the Triglav Summit

Then it got steep in a way that stops the talking. The trees dropped away, and it was pure alpine and rock and 360-degree views that I kept stopping for, partly to breathe, partly because I wanted to remember it. Above us I could see the via ferrata summit route, and a line of people on it like ants, scaling what didn’t look like a path at all.

My focus narrowed down to one thing: get to the lunch hut, get the pack off, sit down.

And then my heart started doing something it doesn’t do. Palpitations. I get them very rarely, and this was the first real signal from my body that I needed to pay attention. I don’t know why. Maybe dehydrated, maybe I hadn’t eaten enough. It doesn’t matter. What mattered was that I felt them, and I knew in the same breath that I wasn’t going up the via ferrata.

It was the calmest decision I made all trip. I got to Kredarica Hut, what we called the lunch hut with Ali, we found a little bench with a love heart cut into it, took some happy photos, and I turned to her and said it plainly. Heart palpitations. I’m maxed out. I’ve got nothing left in the tank physically or mentally, I’d be slow, I’d hold the group back, and I’m not going to be the reason anyone else’s day gets smaller. She was supportive, maybe a bit shocked. I felt light as air.

I wasn’t sad watching the others gear up and go. I was thrilled for them. They clipped onto their guides in threes, climbed to the top of the highest mountain in the country, took their photos, came back lit up like Christmas. I got to sit in a warm hut and eat a bowl of cabbage soup that filled the tank and helped me feel a return to normal.

(The hut had a deck out front full of enormous men drinking beer. Turned out to be army veterans at their annual gathering, helicopters coming and going all day, live music, the works. How they’d hiked up there to drink beer, I will never understand. I love a beer. That was another level.)

If the trip had gone to plan, I’d have slept at the hut and done the via ferrata the next morning, rested. I probably would have said yes. Storms were forecast, so the guides moved the summit to the same day as the hike, which was absolutely the right call. Nobody wants to be clipped to a bare rock face when lightning’s about. So, the mountain, in its own way, made my decision easier. It maxed me out first, then asked the question.

Kredarica Hut is located at about 2,515 m in Triglav National Park and is the starting point for the Mali Triglav via ferrata to the summit. The season runs late June through September. July–August is busiest while September often brings the finest, quietest weather. Late June and October are shoulder windows where snow and iced cables can make the via ferrata more serious.

The unplanned detour

Here’s the part that never made the photo gallery because we needed all our focus (just a couple of photos were captured)

While the summit group climbed, Clemens took the rest of us toward the sleeping hut and promised it would be easier than what we’d just done. Forty-five minutes, gentle, he said.

It was three hours. One of the women christened it the rock tumbler. I called it the Upside Down world, all Stranger Things, because we went down to go up and lost sight of the hut every time we thought we were close. We spider-crawled across rock. We came to an exposed section with iron rungs and cables bolted into the wall, and unlike the via ferrata, we weren’t clipped to anything. There was a snow patch so slick I was sliding until Clemens climbed up and handed me a pole.

And this is the part I’d point you to if you’re trying to understand why these trips work, and why I said yes to leading them. Fifteen strangers held each other together across that rock. Andy, an experienced climber who lives near the North Cascades back home, carried Erynn’s bag up the final section because Erynn was spent and needed one less thing to think about. Clemens carried Syna’s. My own heavy pack somehow stopped mattering, because fear had crowded out everything except getting off that face alive.

Erynn and I got through it on humor. We laughed at the sheer absurdity of it, cracked jokes every time Clemens called down “50 more meters,” which he said at least ten times. Come on, Erynn. 50 more. We can do this. Focus.

And right at the end came my little rock-face moment. The swearing, the anger, the talking-to.

I want to be clear about what pulled me back, because it’s the whole reason I’m writing this down. Fifteen years of near-daily meditation built one muscle in me that I use more than any other. It notices the second I’ve bolted out of the present moment into fear or fury, and it hauls me back into my body. In and out, in and out, every quiet morning, until the muscle is strong enough to work when it counts. On a rock face with a bad drop under you, foot wrong, heart up, three seconds to choose focus over panic, that muscle is the only reason I got calm.

Every one of those quiet mornings was training for that exact moment. The cushion in the living room was only ever practice for the cliff.

The weight of leading

Somewhere in the tumbler, I learned something about myself as a leader that I’m still sitting with.

Syna had gotten sick on the way up, before the lunch hut, dizzy and nauseous, pushing through it slowly and bravely. When she reached the hut, all of us ran out and made a canopy with our arms, a tunnel for her to walk through while we cheered her in. She wrote about that later on her Instagram, what it meant to have the women there for her.

She’d wanted the helicopter out at that point. We got food and water into her, and I promised I’d stay at the back with her the whole way to the sleeping hut. And partway through the tumbler she turned to me, color back in her face, and said, “Oh, I’m having fun, this is just like rock climbing.” I got to watch the joy come back into someone who’d been ready to quit an hour earlier. That’s a gift.

Then she stepped down off a ledge, her pole slid out from under her, and she fell. She hit her arm on a rock, gashed it below the elbow, and it bled a lot. Clemens and I worked together on the first aid. He decided she needed the helicopter, this time to guard against infection in an open wound up a mountain. I questioned it. I asked whether we could handle it ourselves, right there. He held firm, and he was the professional, so the helicopter came once we reached the sleeping hut and flew her to hospital.

The women down at the hotel drove to meet her so she wouldn’t be alone, and Urie, one of our guides, went and collected them all afterward without being asked. She was fine. A few stitches, a spectacular bruise, back with us soon after.

But I’ve turned that day over more than once since. I encouraged her to keep walking with us instead of pushing harder for the helicopter earlier. Was that the right call? I think so. She found something on that trail she wouldn’t have found in a hospital waiting room. But I felt the weight of it, the responsibility of being partly answerable for another woman’s body on a mountain, and I haven’t fully put it down. It’s made me want to be better at this. First aid training, for a start. That instinct to second-guess myself is just how I’m built, and on that day it was the right instinct to have.

Gratitude Sunsets & Sunrises

Cabbage soup, when you’ve earned it, is transcendent. We ate it at picnic tables looking out at the peaks, debriefing, half-terrified about how we’d get off the mountain the next day. The summit group walked in later from a different direction and told us the section they’d been dreading coming down was scarier than the via ferrata itself, so we hadn’t missed the easy option, we’d done the frightening one without knowing it.

That evening we sat together as the sun went down over the Julian Alps and Triglav and shared what we were grateful for and what the day had cracked open in us. Then a fox trotted around the hut while we got ready for bed. The dormitory started cold, so we wore beanies, then turned into a sauna once 15 bodies warmed it up. I barely slept. Too much adrenaline still moving through me.

I was awake at 5. I heard Drea get up and slip outside, and thought, why lie here sweating. So I went out, and Drea was sitting on the step wrapped in a blanket watching the most beautiful sunrise I’ve seen in years.

Pink and red and orange over the ranges. I sat down next to her and we watched it, just the two of us, and said almost nothing. The clouds rolled in not long after and took the whole view. But we’d had it. That quiet half hour is one of my favorite moments of the entire trip, and I nearly slept through it.

The walk down was gentle and green and easy, cows in the pasture, wildflowers brightening the path, storm clouds building behind us, so we picked up the pace. At the bottom, Erynn and I looked at each other, realized we’d actually made it, threw our arms around each other and laughed. Ali watched us do it and told me later she couldn’t stop laughing at the two of us, the way we fell into that hug like we’d survived a war. Urie had written a message in the dust on the back window of the van. “You did it girls.”

Our sleeping hut was Dom Valentina Staniča pod Triglavom (2332 m). From the hut there is great view towards Triglav, the highest peak in Slovenia and to Triglav north side, including triglav glacier (the last piece of the real glacier).

What the mountain actually showed me

I keep coming back to why I said no on the via ferrata and felt so certain about it.

Part of it is this. I don’t need to chase the extreme anymore. I did that younger, bungee jumping into the Nile and all the rest of it. But 15 years of meditation has settled my baseline into something calm and connected most days, maybe 85% of the time, and I get awe and joy from ordinary things now without having to manufacture the high. I still love an adventure. I jumped off a 6-meter ledge canyoning two days later and would do it again anywhere. I just don’t need to prove anything to a mountain.

And part of it is that I’ve spent my whole adult life outside my comfort zone already. Thirty years of travel. Living in five countries. Running a business that changes under my feet every quarter and has never once given me stability or security. I’m stretched and tested every single day by the life I actually live. Some people take on the extreme because they’ve never had the chance to find their edge. I’ve been living at mine for decades.

I’ll be honest, because the honesty is the only reason to write any of this down. Maybe I’m partly justifying a decision I’d made for simpler reasons. Maybe it’s my age and I just prefer the quiet pleasures now. Maybe on a different route, or the next morning, rested, I’d have gone up. All of that might be true at once. What I know for certain is that when I look at the summit photos the other women share, I don’t feel a flicker of regret. And that, for me, is the only reliable test of whether a decision was yours or someone else’s fear talking. Look back later. Check for the regret. If it isn’t there, you chose well.

There’s one more thing I came home turning over. It’s my job, for 16 years, to record every detail of every trip. On this one I did the opposite. I took fewer notes, fewer photos, and let myself just be there. It’s made writing this harder. I’m chasing down restaurant names I should have jotted down. But it was the right trade, and learning to trust that I can still make something worth reading without gripping every detail is its own quiet lesson.

I love hiking. I love being in the wild. And I love what happens to strangers who go through something hard together at altitude, how fast that turns into a friendship you’ll carry for life even if you never see each other again. What stitches people together is what they survive together. A few hours of real fear at altitude does more than years of comfortable dinners ever could. The women on that mountain are part of me now. That’s the real souvenir.

If you’re thinking of climbing Mt Triglav, and especially if you are not experienced, you will want to go with a guide, Have a look at the following options: 2-Day Guided Climb – Small Group, IFMGA Guide (Get Your Guide), Climb Mount Triglav in 2 Days | IFMGA Guide | From Bled (Viator) and Via Ferratas In Triglav National Park And Julian Alps (Viator)

Come stand at the bottom of a mountain with me

I’m leading three trips with Your Limitless Adventures next, and none of them will ask you to do anything like Triglav, which I promise is by design.

Morocco in October, the Sahara and Fes and a night in a desert camp. Thailand next February, where I once lived, elephants and the Monk’s Trail and the islands. Vietnam in March, a cruise through Bai Tu Long Bay and the hills of Pu Luong. Small groups of women, capped at 14, a photographer the whole way, and the kind of days that leave you with stories instead of stuff.

Here’s what I can promise you. If you decide, halfway up something hard, that you’ve gone far enough for today, there’ll be a group of women at the bottom who cheer that decision as loudly as they’d cheer the climb. That turned out to be the whole point.

Same same but different, every trip. I’d love to be there at the bottom, yelling your name. (P.S. My trips will not have Mt Triglav style hikes!)

You can read my full review of what a Your Limitless Adventures group trip is like and why I loved it!

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• 2 days in Ljubljana -and the bike ride that will bring it to life.
• Adventure activities in Slovenia: how to choose your speed, from canyon jumps to a gentle city ride
• Goriška Brda: the day the Slovenia trip finally let me exhale

That was the afternoon after a morning of jumping off canyon walls and rappelling down a 50-meter waterfall on a rope. By lunch I was floating in water the color of a tropical beach, cold to the bone, in the shadow of the Julian Alps, happier than I’d been in a long time.

That’s the thing about Slovenia. You can throw yourself down a waterfall before breakfast and be lying in a hammock by dinner. It’s a small country, and it packs serious adrenaline and slow, scenic days into the same week. Often the same valley.

I came home from 10 days here wanting more of this kind of travel. The kind where you feel a place in your body instead of just photographing it.

So here’s the adventure menu, sorted by what each one actually asks of you. Some of it put me right at the edge of my comfort zone. Some I’d hand to my most nervous friend without a second thought. I’ll tell you which is which and where to read the full story on each.

One thing to sort out before you plan. If adventure is your reason for coming, base yourself in the Soča Valley around Bovec. It’s the adventure capital of the country and most of the wild stuff on this list happens there. You’ll want a car.

Canyoning

This was the one that scared me.

You spend the morning working down a gorge by whatever means the rock gives you. You slide down natural chutes and jump off ledges into the pools below. Near the end you rappel down a waterfall with the water washing over your face. We did the Fratarica route with Soča Adventure, our guide Sam moving us through fast so the fear didn’t have time to sit. On one jump I had to clear a rocky ledge below, and I hesitated at the top the way you do when the drop looks twice as high as it is. Sam just said, firmly, “Be confident.” He could say it because he’d already decided I could do it. Three, two, one, and I was in the water.

What stayed with me wasn’t my own jump. It was watching two of the women who’d started the day sliding down the rocks instead of leaping, breathe deep, lean on Sam, and take the jump anyway. Then the whole group turning around to cheer the next one off the ledge. I’ve thought about that a lot since. → This is what a Your Limitless Adventures women’s trip actually looks like

There are two routes, and the choice matters. Sušec is the family-friendly one, jumps of 1 to 3 meters and a 12-meter rappel to finish. Fratarica is the adrenaline version, 6-meter jumps and a 50-meter waterfall descent at the end. Some of our group did the gentler route and had every bit as much fun, especially the surprise drop the guide dropped them into at the bottom.

You wear a thick wetsuit because the water sits around 10°C, and they give you boots. Guides film the whole thing on GoPros, so leave your own camera behind and use your hands for the rock. Click here for rates and availability.

The full story, the spider-crawl I got stuck on and the 30-minute hike in, is in the Soča post. → The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip

White-water rafting and kayaking

If canyoning is the deep end, this is the one I’d send almost anyone on.

We ran the kayaks and the rafts back-to-back one morning, 15 of us on the emerald water with Mount Triglav standing behind us, the mountain we’d hiked two days before. The rafting rapids on the Soča sit around Grade 2 to 3, enough to tip you out if you hit a rock wrong, gentle enough that tipping out is mostly just funny. On the kayaking section (smaller rapids), I did great right up until the last and biggest rapid, clipped a rock, and went in. Plenty of us did. Nobody got hurt, and falling out of a raft when you can’t get hurt is half the fun.

Our guides were Camilla and Guillermo, both from Chile. Guillermo had the calm voice you want when you’re about to hit fast water. Camilla was loud and fierce and, I think, the only woman guiding on the river that day. There’s an optional 7-meter jump off a rock called Manhattan partway down. I skipped it. I’d hiked Triglav two days earlier and was saving my nerve for the canyoning. You may also want to book through Get Your Guide (they sometimes have discounts and free cancellation) Soca River kayaking and Soca River whitewater rafting.

I’ve rafted the Nile, which throws you out for sport. The Soča won’t do that to you. It’s the most beautiful river I’ve ever paddled, which slots it as my second favorite rafting experience in the world. → Read the full Soča Valley guide

Ziplining

This one’s on my list for next time, so I’ll be straight that I watched rather than flew.

Two of the women looked at it on our free day and came back sold, and the research made me wish I’d gone. There are two setups near Bovec. The Krnica Valley zipline is a 3-kilometer descent across five steel cables strung 200 meters above the ground, with the Bovec basin and the two-thousand-meter peaks laid out under you. The Učja Canyon park is the largest zipline in Europe, 4.5 kilometers across ten cables over a protected gorge.

If you’ve got a free afternoon in the valley and a head for heights, do the thing I didn’t. Then come back and tell me what it was like.

Wild swimming and cold plunging

I detest winter. I’ll complain about a cold morning for hours. And I’ve become completely addicted to sitting in freezing water.

The Soča runs about 10°C all summer, and near our accommodation there’s a stretch by the Great Soča Gorge where local families and kids line the rocks and jump in. One afternoon four of us swam there after a morning hike, without swimsuits, because we’d come straight from the trail and didn’t have them. One of the women hesitated. Getting changed meant driving back to the hotel and losing the moment, and underneath that was the older, quieter worry about what people would think. Christina just said, “Jump in with your clothes on. We’re doing it.” And she did and had a wonderful time. I jumped in after her, mostly because she’d made it look easy, and the four of us swam around fully dressed in water the color of the Andaman Sea.

The lakes give you the same reward at different temperatures. Bohinj is cool and bracing, the one I actually dove into. Lake Bled is warmer than a glacial lake has any right to be, because thermal springs feed it on one side and it holds 23 to 26°C through July and August. Nobody in our group swam it, but we trailed our hands over the side of the boat crossing to the island and the whole boat was surprised by how warm it was. → Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled

New to newsletter readers: if you like the sound of this kind of travel, my newsletter, is where I send the stories and updates that don’t make it onto the blog.

Stand-up paddleboarding

The softest water activity on the list, and the site of the most peaceful hour of my whole trip.

On Lake Bohinj I led the women through a short meditation out on the boards, in a quiet bay away from the little wooden boats. The water was dead still. I guided them into it for five or ten minutes and expected everyone to sit up when they were ready. They lay out there so long I eventually had to call time, because I’m fairly sure a few of them had fallen asleep on the water.

We paddled with Super Duper SUP, who deliver boards to three points around the lake, minimum two hours. Bohinj is the place I’d choose for it, calm and uncrowded. If you’re in the capital and want a gentler version, people paddleboard right through the middle of Ljubljana on the river. I watched them go past from a bar chair with an Aperol spritz in my hand and put it straight on my list.

→ The full Lake Bohinj guide, including the hike to Savica Waterfall!

Biking, three ways

You can bike Slovenia at any speed you like, and I did three very different versions of it.

The gentle one, Ljubljana on two wheels. I found a bike tour on Airbnb Experiences led by a local guide called Klemen before I even left home. Three hours, about $41, bikes provided, only two other people on mine. He fed us the country’s history in pieces as we rode, from the pink church on Prešeren Square to the beehives in the botanical gardens to a rooftop bar in a 1933 skyscraper. It’s the softest thing on this list, sightseeing with a breeze on your face, and the best way I know to get the shape of a city in an afternoon. → My full 2 days in Ljubljana, built around this bike tour

The scenic one, lake to lake. There’s a 28-kilometer cycling route between Bled and Bohinj, mostly separated from traffic, running alongside the Sava Bohinjka river. You can ride it one way and catch the bus back. They carry the bikes. It’s flat, it’s beautiful, and it links the two lakes without a car.

The one with the vineyards, Goriška Brda. Our half-day e-bike tour through the wine country was one of my favorite days of the whole trip. We rode about 17 miles with the San Martín agency, guide Petra stopping us for the views, including the lookout tower at Mejnik above the village of Gonjače. E-bikes because the region is properly hilly, and lunch at a biodynamic winery in the middle of it. One of our group came off her bike on a narrow stretch when a car tailgated us too close. She was fine, shaken and grazed, back on for the ride to lunch. The roads here are narrow and shared with cars, so take them slowly.

→ Best places to visit in Slovenia, and my review of Goriška Brda and how it finally let me exhale

Gorge walking at Vintgar

This one’s a walk suspended over water, and one of the most photographed spots in the country for good reason.

The Vintgar Gorge is a 1.6-kilometer boardwalk pinned to the rock wall, the green Radovna river rushing underneath you the whole way, ending at the Šum waterfall. It takes about 45 minutes. Here’s the catch that trips people up: it’s one-way. You can’t walk back through, so the walk out is longer than most people plan for.

One more thing worth knowing before you go. Since 2026 there are timed-entry tickets with daily caps, and in July and August the slots sell out days ahead, so book about 48 hours out. There’s a shuttle bus from Bled if you don’t want to drive.

→ Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know before you book

Hiking, from a gentle waterfall walk to the mountain that broke me

Hiking in Slovenia runs the full range, and you can pick your level down to the meter.

At the easy end, the walk to the Kozjak waterfall in the Soča Valley is flat, short, and strung with suspension bridges over that emerald water of the Soca River. The path to the Savica waterfall above Lake Bohinj is a set of roughly 550 steps, about a mile, 20 minutes up, to a 78-meter fall that splits into an A shape against the rock. And you can skip the climbing altogether at Vogel, where a cable car lifts you to 1,535 meters in under five minutes and hands you the view without the work. The flat loops around both lakes, 6 kilometers at Bled and 11 at Bohinj, are the gentlest way to spend a morning on foot.

At the other end there’s Mount Triglav, the highest peak in the country, and the reason I came home turning something over about myself. I’m giving Triglav its own piece. What happened up there was the afternoon I stood at the bottom of a via ferrata and said no. And ended up on a far greater adventure!

→ TRIGLAV: the day I said no on Mount Triglav.

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So, which one’s for you?

If you’re nervous and want to feel active without the fear, take Klemen’s Ljubljana bike tour, walk the Vintgar boardwalk, and do the family-friendly canyoning route. You’ll come home with stories and no bruises.

If you came for the adrenaline, the Fratarica canyon, the rafting, and a zipline over the Učja gorge will give you your money’s worth.

And if you’re somewhere in the middle, which is where most of us live, the beauty of Slovenia is that you don’t have to choose just one. I did the whole spread in 10 days and the gentlest afternoon, six women asleep on paddleboards, sits right alongside the scariest.

How I did this trip to Slovenia

I went to Slovenia with Your Limitless Adventures, a women’s adventure travel company run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them (along with Drea above), and I’m leading three:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

→ Here’s the honest story of what one of these trips is actually like

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• 2 days in Ljubljana
• TRIGLAV: the day I said no on Mount Triglav. Coming soon.

Which of these would you actually do, and which would you talk yourself out of? Tell me in the comments. I want to know if I’m the only one who’ll happily jump off a canyon wall but needs a nudge to get into cold water with my clothes on.

Cancelled flight out of Raleigh, then a delayed one, then an overnight reroute through London that ate the extra day I’d deliberately built into the front of the trip. My airport shuttle broke down on the way in, and we sat waiting for a replacement. I finally reached the hotel mid-afternoon with two days of travel on me and one thought in my head, which was coffee.

So, I walked. Two blocks down to the river. And I stood there thinking, oh no. I’m going to love Ljubljana and I’ve got no time.

I ended up with one evening at the start of my Slovenia trip and one full day and evening at the end. That’s what this post is built on, plus the things I ran out of time for and would put straight into a second day. If you’re planning one or two days in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia in Central Europe, this is the shape I’d give it.

What Ljubljana is actually like

The Ljubljana River runs right through the middle and it’s narrower than you expect. Still, quiet, green, with trees leaning over it and boats going up and down and cobblestone walls on either side. Restaurants have seating on little platforms down at water level. I watched paddleboarders go past while I was drinking an Aperol Spritz.

Both banks are pedestrian and the streets on either side of it form part of the historic district. Cobblestones, market stalls, rainbow-colored buildings, church steeples, and above all of it the castle sitting on its hill. It’s small enough to walk end to end and big enough to keep turning up something.

I’d call it laid-back and social. Everybody’s outside, everybody’s eating, and the whole place gets better after dark rather than winding down.

One thing worth knowing before you plan: Ljubljana is not particularly touristy. I never once felt like I was queuing behind a tour group. In July.

Day 1: The Bike Tour

I love seeing a city on foot or on a bike, and I’d found a bike tour on Airbnb Experiences led by a local before I even left home. I’d never used Airbnb Experiences. I was impressed. The listings are small, local and specific in a way the big tour platforms usually aren’t.

I was supposed to do this on my first day. I had to cancel because of the flights, and Klemen refunded me without me having to ask. When the last day of the trip came free, I booked it again.

The details: 3 hours, about $41, bikes provided. Small group, and there were only 2 other people on mine. We met at the pink church on Prešeren Square, which is the landmark everyone in Ljubljana gives directions from. It’s the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation, and yes, it really is pink.

Klemen started us at a scale model of the city and pointed out how the whole thing fits together, where the castle sits, which bit came first. Then the history: Austro-Hungarian Empire, then Yugoslavia, then independence in 1991. He kept feeding it to us in pieces as we rode, which is a much better way to take in a country’s history than standing in one spot listening to it.

What we stopped at

The bronze door of the Cathedral of St Nicholas. It was made in 1996 for Pope John Paul II’s visit and it tells Slovenia’s story down its whole length. At the bottom there’s a face of the artist (his signature move), and it’s rubbed gold and shiny because everybody who walks past rubs its nose for luck. Rub it with your left hand.

A water fountain hidden in Locksmith Alley. Down a side street in the middle of the downtown, so tucked away I’d have walked past the entrance a hundred times. Klemen challenged us to figure out how to get the water to come out of the hand. In case you can’t, turn it.

The Monument to Edvard Kocbek in Park Tivoli. Kocbek was a Slovenian writer and he’s sitting on a park bench, life-size. On the armrest opposite him is a tiny second version of himself. Klemen said it’s his conscience, sitting across from him. I stood looking at that for a while. Slovenians put a lot of thought into their public art.

Dragon Bridge. I found it a bit boring, if I’m being straight with you. Four copper dragons on a bridge, everyone stops for the photo. What I liked was the story underneath it. The legend goes that Jason, of Jason and the Argonauts, sailed up the Ljubljanica with the Golden Fleece, found a dragon living in the marshes, and killed it. The dragon became the city’s emblem and it’s now on the flag, the coat of arms and about half the souvenirs in town. The bridge itself went up in 1901 as part of rebuilding the city after the 1895 earthquake, and the original plans had winged lions on it. They swapped them for dragons.

The botanical gardens, and the beehives. This is where I fell for the country properly. Klemen stopped us at a couple of hives and started talking about beekeeping, which in Slovenia is not a hobby so much as a national characteristic. About 1 in every 200 Slovenians keeps bees. Ljubljana alone has around 300 beekeepers and more than 4,500 hives inside the city limits. The city was named European Green Capital in 2016, roughly 75% of it is green space, and close to 60% of the whole country is forest, which puts Slovenia third in Europe behind Sweden and Finland.

I biked away from that stop liking Slovenia about 30% more than I had 10 minutes earlier.

Križanke. A cultural center with an outdoor amphitheater that was being set up for a concert, so we could only look through the glass doors. It looked like a wonderful place to see something. The Ljubljana Festival was running while we were there.

You get a very quick sense of how much this city is built around its culture. One of the other 2 people on my tour was a pianist, a professor at a university in Kansas City, in Ljubljana on his way home from teaching in Italy. He’d come specifically to hear one of the world’s best pianists play the following night. That’s who else is on a Tuesday afternoon bike tour here.

The rooftop

Klemen took us up Nebotičnik, which means “skyscraper” and which was, when it opened in 1933, the tallest building in the Balkans and the 9th tallest in Europe. It’s 70 meters. The rooftop cafe bar at the top gives you a full 360, the colored buildings, the castle, and the Julian Alps stacked up behind everything.

He’d arranged Slovenian cake for the group. I’m gluten free so I couldn’t have it, and without me saying much about it he went and got me a flat white instead. Small thing. It’s the kind of small thing that tells you what a guide is like.

We sat up there for 20 minutes and talked. Before leaving Klemen took us to check out the cool spiral staircase in the building. Don’t miss it!

Metelkova, and the moment

Then we rode to AKC Metelkova mesto, and this was my favorite part of the day.

It’s a block of run-down buildings covered wall to ceiling in murals, sculptures made of scrap, and work by local artists who come in and keep adding to it. There are small studios inside that you can wander through when they’re open. One rule Klemen gave us: don’t photograph the artists. It isn’t appreciated. Photograph the walls all you like.

The buildings were an Austro-Hungarian army barracks, finished in 1911, used by the Yugoslav army until 1991. The city decided to demolish them in 1993, and a network of artists and activists squatted the site instead. It’s been a self-governing autonomous zone ever since, seven buildings and 12,500 square meters of it. There’s a skate park. There were kids hanging about on it while we were there.

From roughly midnight until 8am it turns into the nightlife district, bands playing in the street and in the buildings. Way past my bedtime. If dancing until 8am is your thing, this is where it happens.

We finished at Center Rog, an old bicycle factory now converted into a makerspace with 9 workshops, project studios, a library branch, a cafe and a park out the front. Then back to the riverfront to drop the bikes, with Klemen giving us his dinner recommendations on the way.

He was quirky and funny and completely in love with his city. That’s the whole thing you’re paying for. Book your bike your here.

Worth knowing: Klemen also runs a walking tour that includes a river cruise, 2 hours, about $34. He came straight off it onto our bike tour. Do both. They cover different ground and between them you’d have the city and the water in a single day for under $80.

Day 1 evening: the riverfront

Go down to the river at night and just walk.

Every table is full. Nobody has a phone out. People are eating and talking and laughing and it builds as the evening goes rather than thinning out.

Cross the river and go down one of the smaller cobblestone side streets. I did that on my last night looking for a gelato place I’d found on a map, and what opened up was row after row of alfresco dining, hidden squares with restaurants and bars in them, no cars. It reminded me of Rome. That’s where I’d eat if I had my time again. I picked a restaurant on the main riverfront instead, went for Indian because I wanted to see how Slovenia handled a different cuisine, and it was a miss.

A few of us went for gelato and ended up standing in the square talking to strangers for the best part of an hour. It started because we asked a group of men where they’d gotten theirs. Some were locals, one was from Turkey. They gave us advice about our Mount Triglav hike, told us stories about Slovenia, and we stood there in the warm dark with our gelato like we’d all known each other for years.

That happens more easily when you’re traveling. I’ve noticed it happens far less often at home in the States, though Raleigh is getting better at it.

→ This is what a Your Limitless Adventures women’s trip looks like from the inside

Day 2: the castle, the cruise and the market

This is the day I had planned and then lost to a cancelled flight out of Raleigh. I’d researched it before I left, I heard about most of it from the women on my trip who did get to it, and Klemen filled in the rest. So, I’m giving it to you the way I’d have run it, with the sources named as I go.

Start at the market (produce and artisan)

The fruit and vegetable market runs along the river under Plečnik’s colonnade and it’s a morning thing. I only ever saw it shut, because I arrived too late on my first afternoon and the coffee trailer I’d come for was the last thing still trading. Go early, eat there, then walk.

We walked along on last morning in Slovenia, and the market was bustling. There was also a row of local artisan stores lining the riverfront. It’s the place you want to be if you like gift / souvenir shopping or just want to peer into the local arts culture.

The part I loved most was the beehive panels. Slovenians paint the front board of the hive, and it’s a folk art that exists nowhere else in the world.

The oldest surviving one is dated 1758 and the tradition ran hardest through the 1800s. Around 3,000 panels are still around, carrying more than 600 different motifs between them. Some are biblical. Plenty are scenes out of folk tales, and a good number are straight village satire, which is where they get funny.

They’re historical records as much as decoration. Somebody’s beliefs and somebody’s joke about the neighbors, painted onto the front of a beehive and still readable 200 years later. If you want to see a proper collection of them, the Museum of Apiculture is in Radovljica, about 10 minutes from Lake Bled.

Ljubljana Castle, mid-morning

Walk up through the old town or take the funicular from the base, right by where our group ate on the first night. The funicular is around €6 return and takes about a minute. The castle opens daily from 9am, until 8pm in summer, and the funicular runs later than that. There’s a restaurant at the top that people kept telling me about.

Here’s my one piece of first-hand advice on the castle. It’s a warning. My bike tour finished at 6 and I had dinner at 7:30. I looked up at the hill, decided 90 minutes wasn’t enough, and went and had a mediocre meal instead. It was enough. Take the funicular, give it an hour, come down for dinner. I’m still annoyed with myself. Especially after seeing that image above (Sourced Yay Images) Sunset is the time to be up there!

Book your Castle Entry Ticket with Optional Funicular Ride

Ljubljana Walking Tour & River Cruse

Klemen’s walking tour with the river cruise, afternoon. 2 hours, about $34. It goes into the sites and the history at a pace the bike tour rides past, and the cruise is the answer to the thing I sat wishing for every time I looked at that river. Book it alongside the bike tour and you’ve covered the city properly for under $80.

Here are a few other Ljubljana River cruise options: An electric boat tour, a Boat & Craft Beer Tasting Tour, and a Wine Tasting Boat Cruise

Explore the river district slowly

Then the river, slowly. Cross to the far bank, get lost in the side streets, and have dinner in one of the hidden squares rather than on the main riverfront. More on that below, including the mistake I made.

One to write down for next time

People paddleboard on the Ljubljana. I watched them go past from a bar chair with an Aperol spritz in my hand and put it straight on the list. If I get back here, I’m on that river. You may even want to squeeze it into your two-day Ljubljana itinerary. Just be sure to report back to me what it was like. Here is a stand-up paddleboarding tour of Ljubljana River.

Swap an hour for a Thai massage, if your legs are ruined

After 8 days of hiking, canyoning, paddleboarding and e-biking, our bodies were wrecked. I found a Thai massage place, Bee Thai Massage, and booked myself, Sena and Mel in. €45 for the hour, and one of the best massages I’ve had in years.

Thai massage is my favorite kind. Firm, deep, lots of stretching and rolling. Lying there getting my legs pulled around, I worked out why I’ve never liked a Swedish massage. Thai was my first ever massage, decades ago, so that’s the baseline I set. A Swedish massage feels to me like somebody politely declining to touch me.

I’ve come home wondering why I haven’t been chasing this down in Raleigh. And I cannot wait to get to Thailand next year, where I plan to have one every single day.

If you’ve only got two days and you’re choosing, go up the castle. If you’ve come to Ljubljana off the back of a week of hiking, book the massage.

Day trips, if you’d rather get out of the city

Slovenia is small, so Ljubljana works well as a base. Postojna Cave and Predjama Castle are the classic pairing and 2 of the women on my trip did them as an afternoon while I was on the bike tour. They came back full of it.

Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj are also doable in a day. One of the men on my bike tour was heading out to do exactly that the next morning because he had 24 hours to spare, though I’d give those lakes far longer if you can. This tour also includes Savica Waterfall, which I recommend. You may also want to combine Lake Bled with Vintgar Gorge, which I loved!

Where to eat and drink in Ljubljana

Coffee in Ljubljana

Tri Marije is a coffee trailer down by the fruit and vegetable market and it was the first thing I did in Slovenia. I could tell from the care the barista was taking that the flat white was going to be good, and it was. He also tried to teach me to say thank you in Slovenian. Took me a few goes before he said “much better,” and I used hvala for the rest of the trip because of him.

Afrika v Ledini is a couple of streets back from the river. Chris and I sat there for an hour while the others were having their massages, and the flat white was very good. Time it with a massage if you’re doing both.

Stow Specialty Coffee Roasters was another I had noted down but did not get a chance to experience. They are known for high-quality beans and sustainable practices! They have several locations but one is right near the pink church!

Gluten free in Ljubljana

Zrno do zrna is a small organic supermarket with a case of gluten free pastries, savory and sweet. I had an apple strudel on my first afternoon and went back on my last day for a pesto pastry that was a twisted knot. Slovenia in general was excellent for gluten free. Menus flag allergens with a numbering system that’s consistent across restaurants, so I mostly didn’t have to ask, and every piece of gluten free bread I ate in 10 days was good. That does not happen to me in America.

Gelato in Ljublijana

Gelateria Romantika is down a back street, a tiny shopfront between the alfresco restaurants, decorated in pink. Artisan flavors like sour cherry, banana sorbet, bourbon and vanilla pumpkin. I had pistachio and hazelnut chocolate, and it might have been the best gelato of the trip. Under €4 for a big cup, and they do gluten free cones.

Cacao is the one on the riverfront everyone knows, with a big terrace and a queue out the door. Huge servings, very good, priced like the popular place it is.

Dinner Restaurants in Ljubljana

There are so many restaurants in the river district and the many streets that meander through the historic area near it. Research beforehand or just wander and choose one that looks good! Here are a couple of suggestions:

Restavracija Vodnikov Hram is where our group of 15 ate on the first night. It sits at the base of the funicular under a clock that works like the astronomical clock in Prague, little characters coming out to dance on the hour. In Prague there are 300 people watching that. Here there was nobody, and we sat and ate and watched it on our own. Lots of Slovenian dishes with local ingredients, most of which I couldn’t eat, so I had the salmon on the waiter’s recommendation, and it was excellent.

Klemen’s 2 picks, which I’d take next time. Baščaršija on Trubarjeva for Slovenian barbecue, which he said is where locals go and is well priced. And Restavracija Breg on the riverfront, more elevated, Michelin recommended, and when I looked at the prices afterwards they were very reasonable. I wish I’d gone.

Where to stay in Ljubljana

I stayed in two places, one at each end of the trip. Both of these hotels in Ljubljana are good. Heritage is the one I’d book again.

City Hotel

City Hotel was our group hotel on the first night. Modern and comfortable. The rooms are small, which matters very little in a city where you’re barely inside them. Great location, easy walk to the old town, 2 blocks back from the river.

There’s an outdoor terrace where we all met each other for the first time, which you can drink on while watching the street below. The breakfast buffet was outstanding, hot and cold, pastries, oats, yogurt, and more gluten free options than I’m used to getting anywhere. Check prices and reviews on Expedia

Hotel Heritage

Hotel Heritage is where I booked myself for the last night, on Sena’s recommendation after she’d done the research. Boutique, more character, more design, steps from the river in the pedestrian zone. Stylish room, very comfortable, excellent shower.

We had a 4:30am airport run so we missed the breakfast that other women on the trip had raved about, and the hotel packed us breakfast to go instead. They made me a gluten free sandwich, and the bread was so good I’m still wondering if they bake it themselves. Check rates and reviews on Expedia. That’s where I booked from!

Here are some Airbnb options, plus you can check out the list below for more hotels in Ljubljana.

Practical things worth knowing

• From the airport. About 30 minutes by taxi or shuttle, and roughly €15 per person if you share. There’s also a bus. Christina organized our shuttle through the hotel, which was easy.
• How long to visit Ljubljana for. 2 days is workable and 3 is better. The city is small and you’ll see it quickly, and then you’ll want the other kind of time, the sitting in a coffee shop watching people kind, which is how you actually work out what a place is like.
• Walkability. Very. You can walk to the parks and gardens I biked to. Bike rentals are everywhere if you’d rather ride.
• Base yourself here. Slovenia is small enough that you can stay put in Ljubljana and day-trip out rather than changing hotels every two nights. See the day trips above.
• Best time of day. Night. It comes alive after dark and that’s when you should be wandering.
• Getting around Slovenia. Check rental rates and availability through Discover Cars (who we personally use for best rates)

The bit I keep coming back to

Cycling through that art district is the moment that stuck.

Up to then I’d had a beautiful riverfront, good coffee, an alfresco dinner. Lovely, and I could have got a version of that in a dozen European cities. Metelkova gave me the other side. Urban and rough at the edges, with an underground music and theater scene that takes over the streets at midnight. Then the view from the top of a 1933 skyscraper, then a park full of beehives.

That’s a lot of personality for a capital city of fewer than 300,000 people. And all of it moving at a pace that never once felt hurried. I got the shape of Ljubljana in a day. I want the depth of it. I’ll be back for that.

Would I add days on either side of a group trip again?

Always. Especially somewhere I’ve never been.

I’m already doing it. I’m arriving earlier to Fez for my Morocco trip, and I’m adding days in Bangkok before Thailand even though I’ve lived there and know it well, purely to wander and eat and get a Thai massage every day.

Ljubljana taught me that lesson the expensive way, by taking the day back off me before I arrived.

How I did this trip to Slovenia

I went to Slovenia with Your Limitless Adventures, a women’s adventure travel company run by my friend Christina McEvoy. I’ve since become a trip leader with them, and I’m leading 3:

• Morocco, October 2026
• Thailand, February 2027
• Vietnam, March 2027

→ What a Your Limitless Adventures trip is actually like

More Slovenia

• Best places to visit in Slovenia
• The Soča Valley, my favorite part of the whole trip
• Lake Bohinj, and why I’d send you there before Bled
• Lake Bled: the island, the castle, the cake and the 5am hike
• Vintgar Gorge: everything you need to know
• What are the best adventures to have in Slovenia?
• Mount Triglav, Slovenia: the summit I skipped and the three hours that taught me more.
• Visiting Goriška Brda, Slovenia’s wine country (just like Tuscany)

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Did you go up to the castle? Tell me what I missed. I’m still annoyed about it. Boo Hoo to cancelled flights. BTW, Airhelp is a service I only just learned about that can help you get reimbursed for cancelled flights. And make sure you have travel insurance – it covered the costs I incurred because of my delays!