Los Angeles hides its cheapest side in plain sight: museums that charge nothing, hillside trails with billion-dollar views, and taquerias where dinner costs less than a coffee. Three days, a $5 TAP day pass, and almost no admission fees.
Richard Meier's travertine campus opens 10:00 Tue–Sun (Sat to 20:00), admission free — only the $25 parking costs money, and it drops to $15 after 15:00. Skip it entirely by taking Metro Bus 761 to the free tram at the base.
Seven acres and 20,000 rose bushes behind the Natural History Museum, free and open 09:00–sunset (closed January–mid March for pruning). The 1928 sunken garden sits between three museums, so it doubles as a free picnic lawn.
Eli Broad's honeycomb-veiled contemporary museum on Grand Avenue gives free general admission — Koons, Basquiat, Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room. Standby line opens 10:00; advance timed tickets release online on the first of each month and vanish in hours.
A 282-step climb up a former oil field to 155 metres, free and open 08:00 to sunset. The summit gives an unobstructed line from downtown's towers to the Santa Monica Bay, and on clear winter evenings the sun sets straight into the water.
A 1917 market hall at 317 S Broadway, open 08:00–21:00 daily. Sarita's pupusas run about $5, Villa's Tacos and Ana Maria's plates $10–14, and Tacos Tumbras a Tomas serves a carnitas taco the size of a fist for around $4.
Across Broadway, the 1893 Bradbury's cast-iron atrium is free to enter to the first landing (09:00–18:00). Two blocks north, Angels Flight funicular climbs Bunker Hill for $1 a ride, or $0.50 with a TAP card.
At Berth 78 in San Pedro, trays of shrimp, snapper and garlic bread are sold by the pound off an ice counter and eaten on the harbour deck. A tray for two runs $30–35; the Metro J Line plus a bus gets you there for $1.75.
Four blocks of ramen, katsu and taiyaki west of the 405. Tsujita Annex bowls run $16, Nong La's pho $14, and Furaibo's teba-saki wings feed two for $12 — most places take walk-ins if you arrive before 18:30.
Free hillside loop rising 250 metres above Hollywood, open sunrise to sunset. The 4.8 km east ridge trail delivers the whole basin — downtown, the Getty, Catalina on clear days — in under an hour of climbing, and dogs run off-leash.
Abbot Kinney's 1905 canals survive as six blocks of footbridges and cottage gardens off Dell Avenue. Free, open all day, and a genuinely quiet contrast to the boardwalk three streets west — ducks, rowboats and no admission booth.
A cliff-top park in San Pedro with a free 1874 lighthouse, whale-watching benches over the Pacific, and the adjacent Sunken City — a 1929 landslide that dropped a street into the ocean, now visible from the legal side of the fence.
Route 66's western terminus, free to walk day and night. The 1922 Looff carousel costs $2 a ride, the original Muscle Beach rings and bars are free to use, and the pier lights come on as the sun drops behind Malibu.