Daily Travel Guide to Long Beach, California

While the annual Long Beach Grand Prix brings a lot of attention to this seaside city just south of Los Angeles, it's a great destination for solo travelers, filled with a lot of things to see and do. The city makes for a great day trip during a vacation to Los Angeles or can even be a destination itself for a weekend getaway or base for your Southern California adventure. It's a fun place to visit whether you like culture or to meet people and party, and is less expensive for food and lodging than Los Angeles.

Long Beach can be easily reached by car in about 40 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. It's also close to Disneyland and other Southern California attractions. The city is well served by the Blue Line, a train line which runs from downtown Los Angeles directly to Long Beach, leaving you just steps from the Aquarium and beach area. (Travelers should note this line runs through some rough neighborhoods of Los Angeles and is not recommended for night travel). Long Beach also has an airport, LGB, served by Alaska / Horizon, Allegiant Air, Delta, US Airways and jetBlue.

If you are traveling alone, here is a great daily travel itinerary when visiting Long Beach:

While it's still cool in the morning, head down to harbor near Shoreline Village and rent yourself a kayak from Boat Rentals of America. I love to rent kayaks and paddle around Long Beach harbor. It's beautiful to see the skyline from the ocean and also to check out the Queen Mary from the water, you can really see how big the ship is.

Boat Rentals of America
adjacent to Shoreline Village Dr, by The Yard House restaurant
Long Beach, CA 90802
(562) 491-7400
boats4rent.com

After your kayak adventure, you will be right at Shoreline Village, the tourist area of shopping and restaurants right on the harbor. Spend some time relaxing and walking around the Shoreline Village area. There are many gift shops, carnival type games and all kinds of food, from street vendors to fancy restaurants.

After shoreline village, you can walk about five minutes down the harborfront to arrive at the Queen Mary. The Queen Mary is a luxury ocean liner, permanently docked in Long Beach, now functioning as a museum, restaurant and hotel. There are many group tours offered, themed by subject, I recommend the paranormal tours which discuss the ship's haunted history and walk you through the sections of the ship believed to be haunted. The ship is also a full-service hotel and you can book a room and stay overnight. As this is a cruise ship, the room are cabins and quite small. An inside stateroom with no view is $125 a night, a room with an ocean view is $150 and a suite is $400 per night. Tours start at $39.99.

Queen Mary
1126 Queens Highway
Long Beach, CA 90802
(877) 342-0738
queenmary.com

After spending some time exploring the ship, I would head over to the Long Beach Museum of Art to eat lunch at their restaurant Claire's and then view the collections for the rest of the afternoon. Located on a cliff, overlooking the ocean and a ten minute walk from the Queen Mary, the Long Beach Museum of Art is another great destination for solo travelers. The museum has a nice range of objects and exhibitions, with an emphasis on California Modernism and contemporary art of California. For an extra special experience, visit Thursday - Sunday to dine at the museum's oceanfront restaurant, Claire's at The Museum, which is quite wonderful. Museum admission is $7 for adults.

Long Beach Museum of Art
300 East Ocean Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90803
lbma.org

Now if you don't like art museums, you can skip the museum and check out the Long Beach Aquarium of The Pacific, about a ten minute walk from the Queen Mary. For solo travelers, I recommend the "Behind The Scenes" tour, it costs an extra $35.95 on top of your admission ticket, but gives you a tour of the "wet side" of the aquarium as they call it. You get to see how the animals are cared for and how the whole system works. Adult admission is $24.95, but you can pay the $12.95 kid's price if you go after 5 pm on designated evenings.

Aquarium of The Pacific
100 Aquarium Way
Long Beach, CA 90802
aquariumofpacific.org

Now it's probably time for some dinner, so I would head over to Pine Avenue, the center of Long Beach's downtown entertainment district. If you are looking for a bar, restaurant and club scene to have some fun and meet other solo travelers, the stretch of Pine Avenue, from Shoreline Drive to 6th Street has it for you. The scene becomes one big party on the weekends, especially on hot summer nights. The area is heavily patrolled by law enforcement and you can feel safe walking back to your hotel at night. After dinner you can hit one of the many nightclubs and music clubs on Pine Avenue.

At the end of the night, I recommend staying at the Long Beach Hyatt, located across the street from the Aquarium. You can easily stay in Los Angeles and visit Long Beach, but the city has a nice selection of ocean front luxury hotels. Room rates here are comparatively reasonable, you can stay here with an ocean view room for under $200, including taxes and fees. Rooms in Santa Monica oceanfront hotels start at $400 a night and go up from there. We like the Long Beach Hyatt, it's right across from the water, within walking distance to shopping and restaurants and offers travelers a good value.

Hyatt Long Beach
200 South Pine Avenue
Long Beach , CA 90802
Tel: (562) 491-1234
longbeach.hyatt.com