Santa Monica / Venice Beach flat or house for a week
 

We're planning a trip to California with our 3 kids (late teens/early 20s) in June 2016.
We want to stay in LA, preferably near a beach, for a week. We are looking at houses (Airbnb, Onefinestay), but also possibly a suite with 2 or more bedrooms and kitchen in a hotel.

We would like to be within walking distance to beach and restaurants.
3 bedrooms would be ideal - 2 + sofabed would work
Budget of up to 1000 dollars/night including tax.

We have not been to LA before, and will be driving from San Francisco.

Can the Fodors California experts help us out with some suggestions?

Short term (less than 30 days) rentals are illegal in Santa Monica and also Manhattan Beach and the authorities are cracking down in SaMo (they read the ads on AirBnB and VRBO also).

With a hefty budget like that I would book two suites at the Shangri La. They are 600sq ft, and you can get one of them with a kitchen.

There's a Marriott Residence Inn in Manhattan Beach. A 2-bedroom suite sleeping five runs $350/night. Kitchen, pool, wifi, free parking, fitness center, free breakfast. About 1 mile from the MB Pier.

http://www.marriott.com/hotels/trave...nhattan-beach/

If you want to be within a couple of blocks of the ocean, the Sea View Inn in Manhattan Beach has apartments, some with ocean views. There is a small pool and free parking, bicycles, boogie boards, etc. It's located 3 blocks from the ocean.

http://www.theseaviewinn.com/

$1000 is enough to get you out of the rat race of Santa Monica/Venice and into a house or condo rental in Malibu and other points north (Point Dume/Topanga SB etc), or southward (Pacific Palisades etc). It depends where you're planning to go in LA and what kind of environment you're looking for.

Malibu isn't convenient if you plan to do much sightseeing around L.A. Anything west of Malibu would be very isolated. Pacific Palisades is better, but I'm not sure what you'd find that's within walking distance of both beach and restaurants. Summer traffic in/out of Malibu and PP can be awful, esp. on weekends.

> Malibu isn't convenient if you plan to do much sightseeing around L.A.

Hogwash. Like most of the rest of your post.

The fact that you don't know that Pt. Dume is west of Malibu and PP is east of Malibu says a lot.

Malibu is lovely -- convenient -- not at all.

And fdecarlo - >>Hogwash. Like most of the rest of your post.<< personal attacks are not allowed on Fodors. Nothing Jean said attacked you. Keep this up and you may get nuked.

Thanks for the tips. The Shangri-la suites look great, Clarkgriswold; do you happen do know if they connect? I'll check with them.
Jean; how is Manhattan Beach? Not too close to LAX?

As to the area; not being familiar with LA at all, the kids think it would be fun to be in Venice Beach, maybe Santa Monica. We will do some sightseeing from there, but also just relax and hang out. Being able to walk to restaurants in the evening would be a great plus.

How are these locations?
http://www.onefinestay.com/los-angel...-avenue/rooms/
http://www.onefinestay.com/los-angel...alusia-avenue/
or Marina del Rey;
http://www.onefinestay.com/los-angeles/topsail-street/

I admit to a bias for Manhattan Beach. It's my home town.

MB and neighboring Hermosa Beach are beach-oriented small towns (about 5.5 square miles total). Each has a pier, and there is a small aquarium at the end of the MB Pier. There is a bike path that runs between Redondo Beach to the south all the way to Pacific Palisades to the north. In MB and HB, the path is between the ocean-facing homes and the sand. Beach volleyball is very popular with tournaments, both pro and amateur, held most summer weekends. (The MB Open is the longest running beach v-ball tournament and often called the "Wimbledon" of beach volleyball.) There is a v-ball walk of fame on the MB pier. Surfing is also big, and there is a surfing walk of fame on the HB pier. Also popular are stand-up paddle boarding, roller blading, boogie boarding, and you can rent equipment and take lessons for just about anything. Both towns have small shops and many restaurants in the areas near the piers. The beaches are deep so they're rarely super crowded. MB is somewhat more upscale, and HB skews younger.

Santa Monica is 3x the size of MB+HB and not as closely connected to the beach in the area north of its pier. Again, I admit my bias, but I don't consider Santa Monica a true beach town. Others will have to promote Venice; I'm just not a fan.

When you're on the beach or pier in MB, you can see the planes taking off from LAX, but you can't hear them.

> Malibu is lovely -- convenient -- not at all.

And again, the above claim is ridiculous, at least in regards to the OP who mentioned Santa Monica or Venice for a destination. If you're saying an extra 10-15 minutes of travel time qualifies Malibu as inconvenient for sightseeing in LA, we'll need to agree to disagree.

Tulips, as you're about to discover, the outsides of places in Venice are very, very different than the insides. The novelty of that environment wears off much faster for some people than others. If you're looking to stay in it, the first two of your choices are preferable to the third, which imo is easily the best location of the three. :)

If I were going to rent for a week with a family on the beach in the LA area, I'd choose Manhattan Beach/Hermosa Beach over Santa Monica/Venice. I like Santa Monica, but as someone mentioned, short-term rentals are illegal and the law is enforced. Venice is an interesting visit, but not where I'd want to be for an entire week. (I've also heard Huntington Beach is great, although I've never been, and Laguna Beach is wonderful. Still, I think I'd choose Manhattan/Hermosa).

Oh, and I personally agree that being 10-15 minutes farther north is, yes, more inconvenient to sightseeing in the area, if you're going to be sightseeing regularly -- harder to return to home base, longer if there's traffic, longer even without traffic. Not undoable, just more inconvenient.

Manhattan Beach rentals are illegal starting 2016 so that's out, unless you want that Residence Inn that's not @ the beach but on busy route 1. Or, SeaView Inn has a decent location, and older but clean apartments...their rates will probably go up after rentals become illegal and they'll be constantly sold out, so you'd need to book soon. It's cancellable.
Hermosa rentals I think will still be legal, but neither Hermosa or MB are convenient if you plan to do much sightseeing in and around Los Angeles. Fine if you want to take maybe 2 full-day trips into the city out of your 7 days,, but more than that would become very annoying traffic-wise. And you'd have to plan your sightseeing around traffic, as in driving into the city after 10am and returning to Manhattan Beach after 8pm. Pretty much the same if you're in Santa Monica/venice and want to see Hollywood/Griffith observatory etc....but not nearly as bad because in Santa Monica you have more things nearby such as Getty Center, Getty Villa, Malibu Pier, Will Geer park, Beverly Hills etc that are easy to get to.

Yes, the Residence Inn in MB is on Sepulveda, but most of the units are set away from the road and the property backs up to a residential area. The only inconvenience IMO is that you need to approach from the south and leave going north, but there are U-turn opportunities. Within a block is a Target with food shopping and a small produce market (plus cheeses, some prepared foods), or you can drive a mile or so to two different Trader Joe's, Ralph's, Von's, Bristol Farms, Whole Foods.

I did think of one thing that might make SM appealing. By June 2016, the entire length of the Expo metro line should be up and running between downtown LA (7th/Figueroa) and Santa Monica (4th/Colorado). It will take 45 minutes end to end and pass by the museums at Exposition Park, USC and the Colisseum. From the DTLA station, you can ride the DASH buses to all the museums and sights downtown or take other metro lines to Hollywood or Pasadena.

I also like Manhattan Beach and lived there for 19 years, it is about 20 minute drive from LAX airport and close to the freeway. Residence Inn has been recently remodeled from what I have read and a good choice.
Venice can be sketchy, might want to read up on it a bit, it has a very strong medical marijuana culture.