What struck me building this is how vertical Los Angeles really is, despite its reputation for sprawl. Both days are built around a climb to a vantage point — Griffith Observatory on the slope of Mount Hollywood, the Getty on its Brentwood ridge — and from each you can trace the whole basin out to the ocean. The city reads completely differently from above than it does stuck on a freeway.

There's also a neat thread between two of the stops: the same architect-as-showman impulse that gave 1927 Hollywood its fantasy Chinese pagoda runs straight through to Gehry's stainless-steel concert hall eight decades later. LA has always treated its buildings as part of the entertainment — worth keeping in mind as you move from the Walk of Fame to Grand Avenue.