San Diego to LAX - what would you do?

[liz-paul]

On our final day of our holiday we will be starting in San Diego and finishing up at LAX for our flight home. Flight is at 20:45, we intend to return the rental car by 17:30, allowing 3 hours to get to the airport, check in, security, boarding etc. I understand LA traffic is very bad, is 17:30 a bad time to get to the airport? Should we arrive before 17:00 to beat rush hour?

And what should we do during our last day? Is the Coast road worth a drive/look? Would other people spend the morning in San Diego and then head up to LA or head up to LA early to get closer to the airport earlier in the day?

I have seen a few trip reports where people spend their last few hours around Santa Monica so that might be an option. I'm afraid of being late to the airport but also don't want to waste what could be almost an entire extra day of holiday on our final day.

Thanks

[shack69]

Personally I would drive up towards LAX and maybe spend time around Newport beach or Long beach as within 20miles of the airport and can adjust your plans depending on traffic issues. Santa monica is the other side of LAX but is closer. So look at both and see what you fancy in those areas. We did not have any real traffic issues getting to the airport, its when we got to within a mile that traffic seemed to snarl up a bit, but nothing worrying.

[Fireworks]

When we drove from San Diego to LAX we drove to Long Beach and spent a couple of hours there. It worked really well because you are reasonably close to the airport there so can sort your timings from Long Beach to the airport depending on the traffic on the day

[Bellasmummy]

We did this drive last summer. We left San Diego at 11am and stopped at the outlets in Carlsbad for lunch and a wander round at it was Labour Day weekend.

We left there about 3pm to give ourselves plenty of time in case of traffic. Luckily there wasn’t much at all and we were early arriving at the airport.

It takes a bit of time getting from the car hire garages and there were a lot of people there so the buses were very busy.

We used a lounge at LAX so used the facilities there to freshen up and change before the flight.

[Edie ray]

I would spend the afternoon at Manhattan Beach, it
is lovely and also super close to the airport

[cornishfrogboy]

When we did it at Easter, we spent the day before departure driving up from San Diego to Long Beach for prepositioning. We stopped at Scripps Oceanographic at La Jolla and then Legoland at Carlsbad as both were on our Gosandiego5 card. Apart from the stops, it was a pleasant 90 miles or so drive.

That night we prepositioned on and stayed the night on board RMS Queen Mary. It was absolutely iconic and brilliant with a stateroom cabin (old and spacious, along with drinks in the Art Deco bar below the bridge. Unforgettable.

The following day we did a Hollywood tour from Santa Monica, reasoning that we were then only 7 miles from LAX. The tour was really good and in an open sided minibus. We saw all the bits that you would expect to. The deal was sealed by the fact that the tour included free parking on Santa Monica beach as part of the ticket. Therefore we had time to see the Pier also.

We were due to fly home at 2030 and it worked out brilliantly.

You can see more detail and images on my trip report... California N to South at Easter. Pricing and detail can be sent by Personal Message if it interests you.

[sparkles18]

We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Redondo Beach before dropping the car off.

[liz-paul]

Thanks everyone, seems a definite consensus to move on up the coast then! Just to have a look at all these places and see what appeals now 🙂

[grant_w]

We went to Long Beach Aquarium for a few hours

[marypoppins38]

Is there an option of dropping the car in San Diego then flying to LAX, it literally is just a 20 minute flight.