This is the prototypical California beach moment: you’re in your shorts and flip-flops, standing on a street with palm trees and clear blue sky overhead. Scantily clad nubile young things zip past on Rollerblades. Nearby, gently breaking Pacific Ocean waves lap on to the glistening sandy shore. Across the street, a café overflows with tanned patrons, shaded by a canopy of bougainvillea. And you think: “It’s January!”

Venice California

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After showbiz pioneers Cecil B. DeMille and Jesse Lasky were drawn to the climate-blessed West Coast in 1911, Hollywood ceased being a real place and became a concept, a glittering Tinseltown synonymous with glamour and ambition. However, it has long been true that the only stars you are now likely to see on Hollywood Boulevard (premieres aside) are those embedded in the pavement. Known as the Walk of Fame, the pathway honours 2,200 or so legends of film, television, radio, theatee and recording art, and runs along Hollywood Boulevard from La Brea Avenue to Vine Street, where it turns left and heads down to Sunset Boulevard.

Hollywood Sign California

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World-class theater and dance performances can be found at venues all across the country. Here are our faves.

1. No theater district in America is better known than New York City’s Broadway. The avenue is home to some 40 large professional theaters, with countless smaller stages nearby.

2.Some of the biggest names in American comedy in the past half century have performed at The Second City in Chicago. The theater is famous for sketch revues based on improvisational comedy techniques.

Broadway Shows New York City

The A-list actress – fresh from a break-up – is lunching with a new beau at the next table. Within hours, photos (snapped from a bush over my left shoulder!) break the story on the Web. Just a day in the life of Chateau Marmont. Jean Harlow and Clark Gable carried on a torrid affair here (during Harlow’s honeymoon).

Howard Hughes holed up in a penthouse, binoculars trained on starlets at the pool. Led Zeppelin tore up the halls on Harleys. Scarlett Johansson may or may not have hooked up with Benicio Del Toro in the creaky elevator. The Chateau is Hollywood’s scrapbook, chronicling decades of flamboyance with lots of naughty detail.

Chateau Marmont

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More than a city, Los Angeles is a one-of-a-kind vacation destination encompassing a dazzling array of unique and exciting regions – each one distinct, yet decidedly “LA.” As the entertainment capital of the world offering 75 miles of sunny coastline, a flourishing Downtown, lifestyle playgrounds for the rich and famous, trendsetting arts scenes and internationally flavored neighborhoods, Los Angeles travel is unlike any other.

Downtown Los Angeles’ recent renaissance has attracted a fair bit of attention. With numerous attractions and cultural sights — and plenty of new hotels — the area has transformed into a bona fide LA destination.

Grauman's Chinese Theater

The U.S. is home to some fabulous big-city art museums, but – surprise – there’s also great art viewing in several smaller cities. Here’s where to go for the ultimate art tour:

1. New York City’s renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the world’s largest art museums, houses an astonishing 2 million pieces. Save energy for the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum.

2. Treat yourself to a peek at the new “Art of the Americas” wing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Across the street, lush artworks adorn the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, an Italianate palazzo.

3. Art lovers converge on the Santa Fe Indian Market. The city’s 200 galleries are a major attraction, as are the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture and Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

Metropolitan museum of art New York City

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