California

California's swimming coast is in the south. From Santa Monica down through the Orange County towns of Huntington Beach, Newport and Laguna to San Diego's Coronado, Mission Beach and La Jolla, wide sand beaches, surf and long piers make the beach the centre of the day, and the culture of boards, volleyball and sunset walks runs deep. The catch is the Pacific itself: even in late summer the water reaches only about 20-22°C, and it is noticeably colder in early summer, when morning cloud often sits over the shore.

The best months are July to October. North of Santa Barbara the ocean turns cold and rough, and from Big Sur to the Oregon border the beaches are for walking, not swimming. For a warm-water beach vacation, base yourself in San Diego or southern Orange County.

Eating well is one of the strongest reasons to visit California. Los Angeles has some of the best Mexican food outside Mexico, with taco trucks and family places across the Eastside, alongside Koreatown's barbecue, the San Gabriel Valley's Chinese restaurants and Thai Town. The Bay Area built the farm-to-table style around year-round produce, and San Francisco adds Mission burritos, sourdough, Dungeness crab and a deep fine-dining tier.

Wine shapes the rest of the state. Napa and Sonoma are the famous valleys, and Paso Robles, Santa Barbara County and the Santa Cruz Mountains are quieter options. Farmers' markets are everywhere, from San Francisco's Ferry Building to Santa Monica, and fish tacos and avocados are on menus all along the coast.

California's heritage is young, but it has a lot of it. The museums are the main draw. In Los Angeles the Getty Center sits on its hilltop, and there are LACMA, the Broad and the Huntington's library and gardens in Pasadena. San Francisco has SFMOMA, the de Young and the Legion of Honor. The landmarks are famous: the Golden Gate Bridge, Victorian houses and cable cars, Hollywood's boulevards and studio lots, and Griffith Observatory above Los Angeles.

Older history survives in the chain of Spanish missions along the coast, the best of them at Santa Barbara, Carmel and San Juan Capistrano, and in San Diego's Old Town and Balboa Park. Hearst Castle sits above the Big Sur coast. Few streetscapes are older than the 1906 earthquake, and the sights are spread out, so this is a state for museums rather than old towns.

Going out in California is at its best in its two big cities. In Los Angeles, Hollywood has rooftop bars and big clubs with guest lists, West Hollywood is the centre of LGBTQ+ nightlife, and the Arts District and Silver Lake have cocktail bars and dive bars. San Francisco's nights are spread across the Mission, North Beach, SoMa's dance clubs and the Castro. San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter and Pacific Beach suit a younger, louder crowd.

The main limit is the clock. By state law last orders come at 2am, so even big nights end earlier than in cities that go on till dawn. In Los Angeles the scenes are far apart, and a night out often means a taxi or rideshare rather than walking from bar to bar.

California has some of the greatest landscapes anywhere. Yosemite Valley's granite walls and waterfalls, the High Sierra's backcountry trails and Lake Tahoe's alpine shore are bases for hiking, climbing and winter skiing. The Big Sur coast drops steeply into the Pacific, and in the redwood forests of the north coast and Muir Woods you walk among the tallest trees on earth. In the desert, Joshua Tree and Death Valley offer bare, silent country at its best from late autumn to spring.

The coast adds a lot. Whales migrate past Monterey Bay, there are sea otters and elephant seals, kayaking at Point Reyes and surfing from Santa Cruz south. Choose one region per base, because the great parks are many hours apart.

San Francisco is the best base for days out, and most of them are about wine and small coastal towns rather than historic sites. Napa and Sonoma are an hour or so north, with tasting rooms, valley towns and a slower country pace, and Healdsburg and the Russian River valley are a little further on. Sausalito across the Golden Gate and the Berkeley campus are short outings. About two hours south, Monterey's Cannery Row, Carmel's cottage village and the Santa Cruz boardwalk make a full coastal day, and Sacramento's Old Town and the Gold Rush towns of the Sierra foothills lie inland.

From Los Angeles the list is shorter. Santa Barbara, about two hours up the coast, is the classic outing for its whitewashed Spanish-style centre and the wineries in the hills behind it, and Laguna Beach and the mid-century desert streets of Palm Springs are other options. Traffic often stretches these drives, so leave early. From San Diego, the Temecula wine country is about an hour inland. What California lacks is a string of old towns and major heritage sites within easy reach.

Southern California is built for a family trip. Disneyland and its sister park in Anaheim, Universal Studios Hollywood, Knott's Berry Farm and Legoland in Carlsbad give a run of theme-park days. In San Diego, the zoo, the Safari Park, SeaWorld and the calm water of Mission Bay are all within easy reach, and the city's mild weather is a help all year. Basing yourself in Orange County or San Diego puts most of this within an hour.

Further north, the Monterey Bay Aquarium is outstanding, and Yosemite and the redwoods make a memorable family outing for older children. Hotels, restaurants and parks are used to children. The main strain is time in the car.

California is a driving state. The highways are good and the coast road is a reason to visit in its own right, but the distances are large and the traffic around Los Angeles and the Bay Area can turn a short trip into a long afternoon. Most visitors hire a car, and for the national parks, wine country and desert there is no realistic alternative.

The exception is San Francisco, which is compact and hilly. There you can manage on foot with Muni, the cable cars and BART, and a car is more of a burden than a help. San Diego's centre and trolley are easy too. Amtrak's coast line between San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara makes a scenic link between those cities.

Los Angeles is the place to shop. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills has the luxury houses, Melrose Avenue and Silver Lake have streetwear, vintage and independent design, and Abbot Kinney in Venice has the relaxed beach-town boutiques that shaped California casual style. Large open-air malls and outlet centres fill in the rest, with the desert outlets near Palm Springs drawing day trippers.

San Francisco adds department stores and flagships around Union Square, plus independent shops in Hayes Valley and the Mission. Through the rest of the state, shopping is about local things: wine from the cellar door, surfboards and surf wear on the southern coast, and farmers' market produce. There are no old bazaars or long craft traditions.

California is expensive. Hotel rooms in San Francisco, coastal Los Angeles, Napa and the beach towns cost a lot, especially in summer and at weekends. Eating out costs more once tax and tipping are added, and wine-country tastings and theme-park tickets are serious spending. Car hire, fuel and city parking add a daily cost on top.

It can be done more cheaply. Taco stands and food trucks are excellent and inexpensive, motels and inland towns cut accommodation costs, and the national parks charge modest entry fees. Even so, a careful traveller should budget for one of the costlier trips in the Americas.

California's stage is split between two cities, each with a strong scene. In Los Angeles, the LA Philharmonic plays in Walt Disney Concert Hall, and summer nights at the Hollywood Bowl are a local ritual. The music business means live music every night, from Sunset Strip rock rooms to arenas and small clubs in Echo Park. San Francisco has an opera company and ballet of real reputation, a fine symphony, Broadway tours and a jazz centre, with Berkeley adding more.

The festival calendar is large. In spring, Coachella and Stagecoach take over the desert near Indio, and the Monterey Jazz Festival and San Francisco's free Golden Gate Park concerts fill the autumn. Theatre is solid, but most of it is touring productions.

California is a good place to slow down if you choose the right base. Calistoga, at the top of the Napa Valley, has been a mineral-water and volcanic mud bath town since the nineteenth century. The desert around Palm Springs and Desert Hot Springs is full of pool resorts and spas fed by hot springs, made for lazy days in dry winter sun. Hot springs also lie scattered through the Sierra and along the Big Sur coast.

Yoga, meditation retreats and wellness resorts are a long tradition here, from Ojai's valley to the Marin hills. Wine-country spas offer a gentler pace in calm surroundings. The cities themselves are fast and car-bound, so the restorative side of California is found outside them.