Jeremy Turner
August 2025
Fact about our recent family vacation to Los Angeles: My two-year-old wasn’t even involved with the murder investigation in front of our Airbnb. Everything else is just what I remember.
My son likes the music from the film La La Land, a welcome departure from his usual demands for robot cartoon theme songs. I couldn’t stop thinking about the La La Land song ‘Another Day of Sun’ earlier this year as my wife and I planned our family summer vacation to L.A. ‘Another Day of Sun’ is the high energy number about leaving home to make it in Hollywood rendered by an ensemble dancing through a traffic jam on an L.A. overpass. Could we make it in L.A. through a few weeks of visiting family and sightseeing with a two-year-old in tow? Would L.A.’s iconic freeway system connect us to our dreams of family bonding and making lasting memories? Or would edging a rented minivan into L.A. traffic with a two-year-old strapped in a car seat become an epic tale of familial misadventure?
Parents of young children regularly ask each other whether they’ve traveled with their kids. Not lowercase t travel. As in travel to the store or on a day trip to the grandparents’ house. Parents of young children want to know how their peers faired on flights, in hotels, and across oceans. Capital T travel. Parents hope to find in these conversations the path to the highest probability of bliss during capital T with a young child. Since for me having a child was never the output of a utilitarian theory about the best way to do anything, I’m of a different, more negligent, mindset. Terrible twos be damned, L.A. here we come.
Then the police found a body.
But that’s not where this vacation started.
The Flight
Since this was capital T travel, our L.A. vacation started with a 12-hour flight. My wife and I live as expats in South Korea, where our son was born. We used three weeks off from work this year to visit L.A., where my brother and his son live in the Hollywood adjacent neighborhood of Los Feliz. Managing double digit hours in a plane with a two-year-old, through alternating stints of boredom and tantrums, never killed anyone and won’t kill you, even if you occasionally wish for death between in-seat diaper changes and trying to get your kid to stop kicking the seat in front of them. Board with more wet wipes, changes of clothes, and baggies in which to dump wet and smelly articles than you could ever hope to use and you stand a chance of keeping your kid clean and dry. Order ahead of time if you want a kid’s meal but we’ve found our son eats regular bland airline rice, pasta, fruit, and steamed vegetables better than hot dogs and chicken fingers.
We endured the flight like one might endure a dental procedure: painful, at times bloody, and interspersed with sounds ranging from whelps to full throated screams. You know there’s an end to it out there, somewhere. Then you arrive.
The Rental Car
Instructive text from the discount rental car company I booked through a cut-rate middleman: Upon arrival to LAX, please proceed to the Lower/Arrivals level inner curb under the PINK sign that reads “LAX SHUTTLES”. Look for the bus that says “METRO-CONNECTOR/GREEN LINE” and inform the driver that you would like to go to the FIRST STOP AFTER EXITING THE AIRPORT CALLED “Remote Rental Car Depot”. Upon your arrival to the “Remote Rental Car Depot”, you will be met by the PRICELESS AND NEXTCAR representative and you will be shuttled to the office.
Under no circumstances should you put yourself in this situation; book directly with a reputable company, preferably one that operates out of the conveniently located LAX Consolidated Rent-A-Car Facility. The scam operation I encountered resulted in me saying no to a bunch of hidden fees and my family on the curb waiting for an Uber to take us to our Airbnb. I returned the next day to rent from Enterprise at its LAX location. Only the choicest of vehicles for me and mine: the Chrysler Pacifica. That’s the minivan with the steering wheel and seats.
Driving in L.A. is the stuff of legend. From LAX to our Airbnb we took the 105 to the 110 to the 101. All famous highways and all eminently navigable even by a self-admitted average driver like myself. For less stressful traffic but possibly longer drive times use avoid highways in favor of other famous automotive arteries such as Beverly, Melrose, and Santa Monica.
The Lodging
Capital T travel goes hand in hand with the effects of time zone changes that have the power to zombify entire families. No matter what anyone tells you about strategic naps or forcing yourself to stay awake, these are myths like Big Foot, Santa, and foods with the power to elevate the man member. Jet lag happens and will leave you and your child wide awake at midnight and drowsy around noon. Welcome to capital T travel, daddy. Time to put on your big boy pants and play through.
Where you stay can ameliorate some of your jet lag whoas by providing a modicum of refuge. Prepare to spend an exorbitant portion of your budget on lodging, as most Angelenos do on housing. L.A. offers the usual spectrum of hotels. My wife and I have stayed in a handful of L.A. Airbnbs over the years and felt comfortable doing so again during this trip. We started out in a small cottage in the Silver Lake neighborhood just north of downtown. It was close to Echo Park with its playgrounds and kid friendly swan pedal boats. We caffeinated daily at Maury’s, one of L.A.’s best bagel shops, and enjoyed exploring West Sunset Blvd’s clothing boutiques like Brain Dead Fabrications and eateries like Night Market Song.
The self-satisfaction associated with a good Airbnb pick didn’t last past day three. That’s when the mysterious beep started. Or chirp. Or however you describe the sound a smoke detector makes when it needs new batteries. Every 60 seconds the sound would emanate from somewhere near the hall bathroom. Or was it coming from the second bedroom? It was definitely not coming from one of the three visible smoke detectors in the house. The host’s handyman confirmed a smoke detector must have been left behind a wall during a remodel. We vacated immediately and that’s where our luck with L.A. Airbnbs ran out.
The two-bedroom Airbnb apartment in the heart of Hollywood where we spent the rest of our stay didn’t have great reviews but it was available. If you’re interested in Madame Tussauds wax museum and night clubs that blast music late into the night, then by all means stay in Hollywood. I am not and I would not again. Hollywood also will give you a clear vantage point from which to witness L.A.’s homelessness crisis. Weaved throughout the neighborhood’s blocks of luxury apartment buildings are small camps of unhoused people seeking meager spots of shelter. Once I picked up my son and narrowly avoided a small group of brawling unhoused men, none of whom seemed to have a firm grip on reality. This aspect of Hollywood also was the likely source of the body found in a car parked in front of the entrance to our building, which the police closed off during an investigation that took the better part of a day. We used all of the apartment’s features: two bedrooms, gym, pool, outdoor gas grills, secure parking; while a very different reality played out on the streets below.
The Activities
L.A. isn’t the city that never sleeps. Thank God, says every parent of a young child. However, there’s no end of opportunities to wear out a kid while making those memories that brought you to town in the first place. Experiencing a Dodgers game is a home run. No tickets, no problem; jump on StubHub to buy seats on the secondary market.
The beach is where you will fight with your young child about whether to wear a jacket. If you’ve never been to L.A., it’s always cooler than you’d expect, especially at the beach. We hit the sand first in the shadow of the Santa Monica Pier at a playground where you can take in the sun, sand, surf, and society. Walking the pier itself is free and pure Americana: arcades, shooting games, cotton candy, and that ride that looks like a boat swinging back and forth. We also took in the waves at Playa del Rey, which feels like a small beach town lost behind the city’s hills. Float between the ocean, the Lagoon Playground, and Provisions’ ice cream counter for a satisfyingly lazy afternoon.
Get kid-friendly culture at two free hilltop landmarks, the Griffith Park Observatory and the Getty Center. The Observatory’s giant pendulum clock and astronomical exhibits fully engaged our son’s curiosity and the park’s views stun with their city and mountain vistas. You’ll find the Getty’s brilliance in all its angles and shadows. So much so that you’ll spend most of your time outside the art exhibit halls. Our son gleefully climbed the angular granite benches and roamed in between the fine edges of the buildings. When you start to bake in the sun, seek out refreshment in the shade of the Getty’s Garden Terrace Cafe or Central Garden.
As does occur during capital T travel, sometimes we just needed a place to go regardless of whether it was an only-in-L.A. experience. And we went. First to Legoland: not as polished as Disney to the adult eye but everything is built for a little kid. Then to The Grove, an outdoor shopping mall and farmers market with food stalls, and Kidspace, a sneakily educational children’s play center outside the Rose Bowl stadium.
The Food
Forget Woody Allen’s depiction of L.A. dining as alfalfa sprouts and mashed yeast. In fact, forget anything about some other city in the United States having better restaurants than L.A. I won’t be the one to give you the authoritative culinary map of L.A. and our trip certainly wasn’t a foodie tour de force. That said, we ate well and your family can, too. No reason to doubt the axiom when in Rome, so in Thai Town hit Sapp Coffee Shop and in Little Armenia check out Carousel. Both joints have enough variation on the menu that you’ll always find something for the young ones. For the adventurous eater, check out Sapp’s jade noodles with roast duck and Carousel’s chi-kofa steak tartar with cracked wheat.
Never pass up a chance for In-and-Out Burger. Waiting in the line of cars to order off a menu full of jargon can intimidate the uninitiated. Now that you’ve read this guide, you know that the chain’s employees greet first timers with high levels of care, so you don’t need to worry as you order your double-double. No shame in ordering delivery from anywhere, either. Dining in is such an L.A. way of life that just about every foodie favorite offers takeout. We loaded up the Caviar delivery app to order Taiwanese from Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant Pine & Crane. I can testify that a two-year-old will eat their beef roll, minced pork, and white rice.
The End
On the way out of L.A. a cascade of palm trees washed over us as I set the Chrysler Pacifica on course through Beverly Hills. Capital T travel with a two-year-old turned out far from perfect; we left a failed Airbnb choice and the body of a departed soul in our wake. Yet we tackled Tinsel Town together and will remember our trip as a Hollywood heart warmer. And I know you, too, can enjoy in L.A. just what the title of that La La Land song promised: Another Day of Sun.
Jeremy Turner is a civil servant, writer, explorer, and parent in training. Find him on social media at X: @bythesepeople; Medium: @jturnerdc, and Instagram: jturnerdc.
