California, honestly, and only California

Here's the warning nobody gives you clearly enough before a first trip to the US: it is not one destination, it is a continent wearing one flag, and New York to Los Angeles is a further flight than London to Istanbul. Trying to see "America" in a week is how people end up exhausted in airports having barely left them, chasing a coast-to-coast itinerary that no local would ever attempt in the same span of days. This guide covers one coast, California, from San Francisco down to Los Angeles by road, and treats that as a full and honest trip on its own terms, with nothing apologised for and nothing squeezed in.

Days 1-3 · San Francisco, uphill both ways

San Francisco's hills are not a figure of speech; pack shoes that can handle a genuine incline and accept that every walk here doubles as a workout. Start in the Mission, where the city's Latin American food culture and its taquerias predate the tech money by decades, and a burrito from a place like La Taqueria costs a fraction of what a mediocre lunch downtown will. Dolores Park in the afternoon is where the city actually gathers, less a tourist stop than a genuine neighbourhood living room with a skyline view.

Walk the Filbert Street Steps down from Coit Tower for a hidden stretch of gardens and wooden cottages that most itineraries skip entirely in favour of the tower's viewing platform alone. The Ferry Building's farmers market, running several mornings a week, is worth timing a visit around, less for the building itself than for the produce and the crowd of people who actually shop there rather than photograph it. Skip the queue for a cable car ride and instead take one as actual transport between neighbourhoods; it's cheaper per trip and the view is identical.

Give a morning to the Mission's murals, particularly the alleys off 24th Street, painted and repainted over decades by the neighbourhood's own artists rather than commissioned for tourists. It's a free, self-guided hour that tells you more about the city's actual character than most paid museums manage, and it pairs well with a stop at one of the Mission's excellent taquerias for lunch immediately after.

Alcatraz sells out its ferry slots days ahead in summer, so book before you land rather than hoping for a same-day ticket at the pier. In the evening, head to the Presidio or Land's End for a sunset view of the Golden Gate Bridge that skips the crowd at the bridge's own overlook entirely, and pack a jumper regardless of the season; San Francisco's summer fog is genuinely cold enough to catch first-time visitors off guard every year.

Days 4-6 · Highway 1, down to Los Angeles

Renting a car here is close to essential; California's public transport between cities is thin, and the whole point of this stretch of the trip is the road itself. Highway 1 south from San Francisco hugs cliffs above the Pacific for most of the drive, and the honest advice is to budget an entire day for what looks on a map like a few hours, because you will stop constantly: Bixby Bridge for the photograph everyone takes, Pfeiffer Beach for its unusual purple-tinted sand, McWay Falls for a waterfall that drops straight onto a beach few people can reach.

Big Sur itself has no real town centre, just a scattering of lodges and one grocery store, and that's the appeal rather than a shortcoming; phone signal drops out for long stretches through here, which is either a feature or a problem depending on how attached you are to being reachable. Stop in Santa Barbara for a night to break the drive properly rather than pushing through to Los Angeles in one exhausting stretch; its Spanish colonial architecture and State Street give the trip one more genuinely walkable town before the size of Los Angeles takes over.

Fill the tank whenever it drops below half, not when the light comes on; petrol stations thin out considerably along the Big Sur stretch and the ones that do exist charge accordingly for the privilege of being the only option for fifty miles. It's the one piece of practical admin on this drive that actually matters, and ignoring it is how a beautiful day turns into a stressful one somewhere past Ragged Point.

Day 7 · Your own chapter

Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier, if the boardwalk cliché is exactly what you're after after a week of quieter coastline, roller skaters and all. Griffith Observatory at sunset for the whole Los Angeles basin laid out below you, smog and all, with the Hollywood sign visible from a hiking trail rather than a car park. Or just pick one neighbourhood, Silver Lake or Los Feliz rather than Hollywood itself, and spend the last day discovering that Los Angeles rewards people who treat it as a collection of small towns rather than one enormous one, each with its own coffee shop worth finding on foot.