For the first time visitor, downtown Los Angeles and the Sunset Strip can be a bit of a disappointment: you're expecting something that looks and feels like the Academy Awards all day, every day. But instead of one city-sized red carpet, you find yourself in a place with all the glamour and buzz of Kilburn High Road - pubs with blacked-out windows, endless second-hand car lots and corporate hotels. On a hot day, when the streets are deserted, there can be a real sense that life is going on elsewhere.
But Santa Monica is much more like the real thing - miles of sandy beach, palm trees, tanned, trim, beautiful people, and an ocean breeze (Santa Monicans always refer to the Pacific as the ocean, nothing so scruffy and tame as the sea). Los Angeles is famously a city of drivers, but Santa Monica is the place people come to get out of their 4x4s; to surf, skate, cycle or run. And, surprisingly, to eat: for a city supposedly obsessed with weight, Santa Monica has some truly brilliant restaurants, not all of them majoring on salad.
If you can, stay by the sea. The Fairmont Miramar is one of Santa Monica's grandest hotels, and although it isn't much to look at from the outside, the rooms are vast and luxurious with beds and en suite bathrooms to match; most have balconies and an ocean view. On my first day in California, I woke up to the loveliest sunrise, the sky turning pink to green to blue. The sea was perfectly flat and below, a lone swimmer turned lengths in the hotel pool. You really do feel as if you are on the edge of the continent.
Santa Monicans are proud of what history they have, and among all the new bars and clubs there are some well-preserved - in many cases, recently restored - former glories from 1920s and 30s Hollywood. (The Miramar is a little older, built on the site of a 19th-century mansion; a 100-year-old Moreton Bay fig tree sprawls across the hotel forecourt - officially the second largest of its kind in the state of California.)
The Georgian Hotel, a few blocks along the Pacific Highway from the Fairmont, faces squarely out to sea like an ever-so-slightly faded beauty, its Art Deco facade not quite blending in with either of its neighbours. The broad veranda is a good spot for a quiet breakfast (blueberry pancakes, fruit salad, limitless coffee); if for some reason the weather's not up to it, meals are also served in the hotel's subterranean "speakeasy", where Bugsy Siegel and friends came to drink during prohibition.
A little further south along the highway, the Casa del Mar hotel sits right on the beach, with only a cycle path and 100m of sand to separate it from the sea. The hotel was built in the 1920s and conceived on a much bigger and bolder scale than the Georgian; the huge "lobby lounge" is high-ceilinged with potted palms, long comfy sofas, open fires, and a jazz pianist - which might sound cheesy but is quietly glamorous at night - with the lights from the funfair on Santa Monica pier lighting up the beach through the windows.
Both the Georgian and the Casa del Mar are the kind of places the truly famous go when they don't want to be spotted (Meg Ryan and Russell Crowe holed up at the Casa for a few days at the height of their affair). These hotels are not really part of a scene, and it definitely wouldn't be cool to ask for an autograph or pitch an idea for a movie at either of them. But if you really want to see Los Angeles come out to play, the hippest place on the ocean front right now is the Viceroy, a stylish, biggish hotel-restaurant-bar which combines 1970s California with the English stately home (retro green carpets, ceramic greyhounds, a book-lined library), but is none the worse for it. The evening we went, Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, the original Swingers, had been in for lunch. Out by a couple of up-lit, emerald swimming pools a young crowd drank apple and key lime martinis under white tents, or cabanas. The rooms are also in keeping with the English theme - and while I didn't stay the night - they looked as funky and relaxed as the rest of the place.
Santa Monicans spend far too much time working out; on any day of the week the stretch of sand between Santa Monica Pier and Venice Beach teems with joggers, cyclists, skaters and power walkers. You can, if you wish, join them - you can hire bikes or skates at the pier - but if you're only in town for a few days, as I was, your time is much better spent checking out some of Santa Monica's restaurants.
The city has an incredibly high concentration of good chefs, from Europe, Asia and Australia, as well as the US, and you can eat well (although not inexpensively) at 10 or more places. The Lobster, near the pier, is a sunny dining room, walled with glass on three sides, which juts out over the beach and specialises in the obvious, as well as crab, oysters and fish. It's best and buzziest at lunchtime, and if you can't get a table at short notice you can always eat at the bar.
A few blocks back from the beach on Wilshire Blvd, Drago is one of LA's more established restaurants and serves wonderful Italian food - the pumpkin and sage ravioli was the most delicious I've had outside Italy (the chef, Celestino Drago, is from north-western Sicily). Drago also supplies room service to the nearby Ambrose, a small, comfortable, Feng Shui'd boutique hotel complete with Japanese Zen garden and Tibetan prayer flags flapping over the car park. Over on the other side of town, Rockenwagner serves German-Californian food, which is a much better than you'd imagine (beef carpaccio with pickled white asparagus, gnocchi with fava beans); the restaurant and brasserie are housed in a Frank Gehry-designed building.
If you really have to go and do something healthy, then take the lazy option: visit a day spa and get someone else to do healthy things to you. Many of the hotels have spas of their own, or you can book yourself in for a treatment at the ESP salon, not far from Santa Monica's main shopping drag; the ultra-smart Shiseido Studio also hosts free classes in how to give yourself a facial. For my money, though, the perfect day is spent in the great outdoors, somewhere near the ocean, and would end with cocktails and dinner by the pool at the Viceroy. This is where Hollywood comes to play, and there's nothing to stop you from making like the rest of them.
Way to go
The Fairmont Miramar, 101 Wilshire Blvd, 310 576 7777
The Georgian, 1915 Ocean Avenue, 310 395 9945
Casa del Mar, 1910 Ocean Way, 310 581 5533
The Viceroy, 1819 Ocean Avenue, 310 260 7500
The Lobster, 1602 Ocean Avenue, 310-458-9294
Drago, 2628 Wilshire Boulevard, 310-828-1585
Rockenwagner, 2435 Main Street, 310-399-6504
ESP, 517 Santa Monica Boulevard, 310-576-2080
Shiseido Studio, 425 Broadway Avenue, 310-899 1800
