LA Hotel question

[tvlgirl]

Ok I really need some advice. Flying into LA a day early and cant decide what area to book my hotel. I will be alone as I am not meeting up with my travel partner until cruise day. I am flying in at noon so I will have lots of time to do something like shop!!!!!! I want a hotel in which I can drop my bags off and take off to a mall or a market area. I dont want to pay a hundred dollars on cabs either. Anyone have any advice?? If I get a hotel near the airport does the shuttle service pick you up and bring you to the port? Does anyone know if their is any shopping in San Pedro area?

[LMCAT123]

You have some tough criteria here ... there are very few places you can get to in LA area without a car or an expensive cab ride.

 

Assuming you mean LAX there are no shuttles from hotels to take you to pier. You would have to re-enter the airport and take a SuperShuttle (or a cab from hotel to pier for about $60). There is no shopping around LAX hotels, if you stay in one of those hotels you pretty much just stay there. There is no shopping around pier area either, San Pedro pier is pretty much industrial.

 

You could, I suppose, stay at a hotel in Long Beach, but you still need to get to that hotel from airport (expensive cab ride). There are quite a few hotels along Ocean Blvd. that might work - but you would need to find out if they have shuttles to the San Pedro pier (not LB pier, two different places) otherwise it is a cab ride.

 

The Holiday Inn and also the Crowne Plaza in San Pedro have packages that pick you up at LAX, include hotel room, breakfast and ride to the pier the next day. You need to contact the individual hotel to book them and you must have your flight numbers. There is no shopping around that area tho ... so we are back to square one here :-) There is a small area called Ports of Call Village, but I would not recommend it, it used to be nice but it's all run down and rather empty these days. Not sure you could walk to it anyway.

 

Santa Monica would be ideal, there is a Mall as well as the Promanade area (street markets, pedestrian streets, stores), but you need a cab to get there and then another to go to the pier. You are talking quite a bit of $$ for cabs.

 

I hope someone can come up with a good idea for you -- the biggest problem with LA area is the vast size of the place, it is simply not that easy to get from one place to another without a car.