A Hipper Side to L.A.

One of the lesser known areas to visit is Silverlake City. This is a particularly great place to check out bands from the local L.A. scene and from outside California. The area has some famous residents from the music scene including Tom Waits and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. LA weekly or UCLA's Daily Bruin magazine has good listings of all the bands coming through the city, and Spaceland in Silverlake is a great venue for catching up-and-coming artists in an intimate dive-bar setting. It's in a slightly edgy area, which by night translates as dodgy, so remember not to do too much sauntering by yourself.

Koreatown is a real working community and has got over its past of racial rioting in the nineties. It's now a cool corner of the city and boasts some of the best BBQ around and some supersized supermarkets full of Korean food. Koreatown Plaza in particular is jam-packed with a Korean grocery store, Korean stationery store, Korean bakery, cosmetics, clothing, and a Korean music store. There are also some rather fun karaoke houses to enjoy and the hip L.A. crowd descend on the nightclubs, which have become very trendy because they are away from the commercial Hollywood scene.

A final stop is Echo Park. This district sits North East of downtown L.A. and has a pretty lake that looks out to the city's skyline. The silent film industry was set in Echo Park before cinema went to Hollywood just after the First World War. It overlaps with Little Manila, an area populated by the Filipino community, and China Town is close by. There are some really cool bars to sit back and crack open a beer in. Check out the Gold Room, full of leather booths and kitsch Christmas fairy lights and popcorn machine. It's a great place to put a dollar in the jukebox and listen to some old rock n roll.

L.A. is as rough-and-tumble as any major city, and notoriously segregated economically, which means some areas are pretty neglected and run-down. Venture to downtown L.A., or to Venice Beach come nightfall and you'll get a sense of the seedy poverty. In the event that you encounter pickpockets, invest in good travel insurance to keep you reimbursed in the account of a rare theft, or even loss.

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Cristopher Mentkowski never travels without a good annual travel insurance policy. He generally gets several holiday insurance quotes from Go Travel Insurance and opts for the best value.

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