I have a doctors appt in LA in about a month, I've never been before and am a little intimidated by the thought of driving there given all I've heard. So here are the details and a few questions.

1. We have been offered accommodation through friends with a family that live in La Mirada, near Biola University. My appointment is on a weekday morning 9:45 at Cedars Sinai which is about 30 miles away. My question is will it take forever to drive there and how horrendous is the journey likely to be?

2. Is there any kind of public transport that's worthwhile there, or will renting a car be the only realistic option?

3. If we have any tourist time (we might have a day or two) what would you go and see?

If there's anything else I should consider please let me know, thanks!

1) I'd give myself an hour and half minimum to make that journey for that appointment time, traffic is as slow and as high in volume as you imagine. However, driving there is fairly easy and laid back as you rarely get up to a decent speed.

2) Don't know, sorry.

3) I'd go to The Getty and Santa Monica

Yes, minimum. My husband used to work at Cedars-Sinai and it took him about that long from Calabasas. The trouble is, it can be very unpredictable. You will need to drive.

Hope everything goes OK.

As a horticulturalist, I would go see Huntington Gardens if you are up to it:

http://www.huntington.org/huntington...=id&itemid=210

Garden tour at the Getty. It's free, as is (most of?) the rest of the Getty.

http://www.getty.edu/museum/programs/talks/center.html

This is what we did when my Mum came to visit...a little of the art, a lot of the garden.

Thank you! I would love to see the gardens,I'll need to look into that.

And thank you Sally, I figured we wouldn't get by without a car.

I'll need to do that next time I am in SoCal. Any gardens to visit in SD and environs?

Driving in Los Angeles really isn't that "bad" if by "bad" you mean difficult or dangerous - it is "bad" because there is a lot of traffic which often moves very slowly and it can take you a long time to get places. It is (in my opinion) nothing like as stressful as driving in places like New York, London, Paris or Hong Kong.

So I wouldn't worry about it too much - just get a rental car at the airport and since it is only for a few days you could always take the CDW insurance so that you don't have to worry in the very unlikely event that anything does happen.

That having been said you still might want to consider not subjecting yourself to a morning rush hour drive to get to your appointment and stay somewhere closer the night before.

Balboa Park would be a nice day out.

+1.

Rene