Mulholland Drive and the Sunset Strip, Open-Air All the Way
Hollywood City Tours runs an open-air bus east from Santa Monica through Beverly Hills, Hollywood and West Hollywood. Fifteen landmarks go by from your seat. Two of them get thirty minutes on foot.
Hollywood City Tours boards this one at a kiosk on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, checks you in there, and puts you on an open-air bus. For the next three and a half hours Los Angeles goes past at street level.
The itinerary lists seventeen entries. Fifteen of them are marked pass-by. You leave the bus twice, thirty minutes each time. That ratio is the character of this tour. Two and a half hours are spent in a seat watching the city change. One hour is spent on your feet.
For a city most visitors meet through a rental car, that is a fair trade. Century City's towers, the Wilshire corridor, the houses stacked along Mulholland, the billboards over Sunset: these are things you look at while moving. The bus drives. The guide points. You keep your hands free for the camera.
Adults pay USD 59. Children aged two to eleven pay USD 49, and under-twos ride free. The price covers the whole route, with no entrance fees or extras to settle on board. Guiding is in English only.
Santa Monica Hollywood and Beverly Hills Open Bus TourHollywood City Tours · 3.5 hours · Departs daily from 1541 Ocean Ave, Santa Monicawww.viator.comThirty Minutes Where Beverly Hills Keeps Its Sign
The first stop puts you down in Beverly Hills, at the point where the city keeps its name spelled out in iron letters on an arch above a pond. It is the photograph almost everyone takes, and the itinerary gives you the surrounding park to wander as well.
The same thirty minutes is meant to cover Rodeo Drive, whose retail blocks run between Wilshire Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard. Thirty minutes is enough to photograph the sign and walk a stretch of storefronts. It is not enough to do both slowly. Decide which one you came for before you step down.
The bus also rolls past the Beverly Hills Hotel on this leg, the property the itinerary calls the Pink Palace, its entrance sign set back behind a screen of broad green leaves. That one stays a drive-by.
Thirty Minutes on the Busiest Sidewalk in Hollywood
The second stop is Hollywood Boulevard, and it is a different kind of half hour. The terrazzo stars run along the sidewalk in both directions, the forecourt of the TCL Chinese Theatre holds the handprints pressed into cement, and the Dolby Theatre is close enough to reach on foot.
What the photographs rarely show is the traffic on that pavement. Costumed characters work the block. Vendors set up tables against the storefronts. Crowds move slowly and stop without warning. Look up the block number in advance if there is one particular name you want to stand on, because thirty minutes goes quickly at that pace.
The stars, the theatre forecourt and the Dolby frontage are all outdoors on the public sidewalk, so the half hour is yours to spend without a ticket.
The Long Way Home, Over the Hill and Down Sunset
After the second stop the route does the part a walking tour cannot. It climbs into the Hollywood Hills and runs along Mulholland Drive, where the road holds the ridge and the itinerary promises the city on one side and the San Fernando Valley on the other.
Then it drops onto the Sunset Strip through West Hollywood. The Whisky a Go Go still occupies its red corner building at Clark Street, marquee over the door. The Comedy Store comes up further along the same road, its black wall facing the traffic. Neither is a stop. On an open-air bus that costs you less than it sounds, since both are buildings you read off the street.
The last stretch comes down San Vicente Boulevard and through Montana Avenue, which is how the route puts you back in Santa Monica instead of stranding you in Hollywood.
What to Settle Before You Pick a Departure
Departures run every day of the week, from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. The booking calendar currently carries six: 9:30, 10:00, 11:30, 1:30, 2:00 and 3:30. The operator's own site publishes four of those, namely 9:30, 11:30, 1:30 and 3:30, so those four are the times both sources agree on. Three and a half hours from the last departure puts you back on Ocean Avenue around seven in the evening.
A few things worth knowing before you choose:
- Booking confirms instantly, and the cutoff sits at the departure time itself, so a same-morning seat is possible when one is left.
- Cancelling twenty-four hours or more ahead returns the full fare. Inside twenty-four hours, nothing comes back.
- One booking takes up to fifteen travellers. That is the ceiling on your reservation, not the size of the bus, so expect other parties on board.
- The operator lists all-day parking at the Ocean Avenue meeting point for USD 15, and the listing notes public transport nearby.
The bus is open to the weather, which is the point and also the catch. Sun sits on you for most of two and a half hours on a clear afternoon, and the same seat is cold on a grey morning near the water. Hats, sunscreen and a layer all earn their space.
The listing rates this one easy on the body and suitable for all physical fitness levels, and the two stops are short walks on flat ground. Strollers are welcome, specialised infant seats are available, and service animals ride. The listing does advise against the tour for travellers who are pregnant or who have poor cardiovascular health.
Across 243 reviews the tour holds 4.96, with 236 of those at five stars and none below three. Take a morning departure and you are back on Ocean Avenue with the afternoon still ahead of you, close enough to the sand to use it.