Date Night Across Los Angeles
Romantic Getaways in Los Angeles
A $1 bench seat at the Hollywood Bowl with a bottle of wine you brought yourself beats most $300 dinners in this city, and that’s before you’ve even hiked down to a sea cave at sunset. LA does romance quietly and specifically rather than with a single obvious “date spot,” so it rewards a little planning.
Hollywood Bowl summer concerts
Under Gustavo Dudamel, the LA Philharmonic plays this 17,500-seat hillside amphitheater every summer, June through September. Upper bench seats for classical and jazz shows start at $1 to $15, while pool and garden boxes run $150 to $350 or more if you want to splurge. For official LA Phil concerts, you can bring your own picnic dinner, wine included, straight to your seats. Skip the on-site parking, which can take over an hour to exit after a show, and take the Park & Ride shuttle instead for $7 to $12 round trip; the full summer schedule posts at hollywoodbowl.com . Book Hollywood Bowl tickets once the summer schedule is posted, since the cheap bench sections go first.
El Matador State Beach, Malibu
A steep staircase down a crumbling bluff leads to one of the most dramatic stretches of coastline in Southern California, with sea stacks, natural arches, and kelp beds just offshore. It’s free to walk onto the sand; the small blufftop lot charges $8 to $10 a day and fills before 10am on weekends. Low tide and sunset are the sweet spot, since high tide swallows the walkable sand entirely.
The Gondola Getaway, Naples Island
For an actual gondola ride, head 25 miles south to Long Beach, not the Venice Canals, where commercial gondolas aren’t permitted at all. The Gondola Getaway has run authentic imported Venetian rowing gondolas through Naples Island’s canals since 1982, with 50-minute private cruises for two running roughly $120 to $150, ice, glasses, and corkage included if you bring your own bottle. Reserve a Long Beach gondola cruise ahead, especially for a weekend evening slot.
A quieter evening: Venice Canals
Back in Venice proper, the 1905 canals light up after dark with lantern-lit footbridges and none of the boardwalk’s daytime noise, and it costs nothing to walk them, any hour, any night.
Huntington Library and Gardens, San Marino
Near Pasadena, 130 acres of themed gardens, a Japanese moon bridge, a Zen rock garden, and a desert garden with 2,000-plus succulent species, pair with an art collection that includes Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy. Admission runs $25 on weekdays and $29 on weekends, with weekend visits needing a reservation through huntington.org .
Popular coastal spots get real weekend traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, so a Sunday evening return from Malibu can easily double your expected drive time. Plan the return leg with that in mind, or turn it into part of the date. For a full evening built around Downtown instead of the coast, the Los Angeles sightseeing guide covers The Broad and Walt Disney Concert Hall, both free to enter after dark.