Los Angeles - 3 days only

John259

Regarding driving (all pretty obvious, so apologies if I'm not telling you anything new):

You've got the choice between the freeways and the normal streets, each with advantages and disadvantages. Freeways are faster and avoid the risk of going through a dangerous neighbourhood, but normal streets make for less stressful driving.

It might be worth using StreetView mode in Google Maps to do a virtual drive from where you'll pick up the car to your first destination. At LAX most if not all the car rental depots are some way from the terminals - in Google Maps search for Alamo near LAX (etc) to see where they are.

Have a plan regarding navigation, probably either a front seat passenger with a printed map, or GPS/SatNav. You can buy a Rand McNally road atlas on Amazon UK at a very reasonable price if you wish.

If you need to get up-to-speed on US driving rules (turning right on red traffic lights, how carpool lanes work, etc), you can access the relevant sections of the California Drivers Handbook (equivalent to the Highway Code) at http://apps.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/hdbk/driver_handbook_toc.htm

Again, sorry if you realised all this yourself.