Hotel at a Glance: Custom Hotel

Custom Hotel is so close to Los Angeles International Airport that you can see the runways from some of the guest rooms. However, the hotel’s stylish feel redefines the typical airport hotel, starting with windows that light up in teal, violet, and orange at night. You can echo this dazzling effect in your guest room, where you can set color-changing LED lights to suit your mood.

• Check your flight status when you connect to the hotel’s free WiFi.
• Get a good night’s sleep thanks to your room’s noise-canceling windows.
• Lounge in a cabana beside the hotel’s heated outdoor pool.
• Watch a movie on your room’s 37-inch flatscreen TV.
• Burgers with spicy aioli are among the American comfort foods on the menu at Deck 33, the onsite restaurant.
• The Venice Beach Boardwalk and all of its dazzling lights and charming characters are just 5 miles away.

West Los Angeles: Surfing Mecca, Mansions on the Beach, and Venice Beach Boardwalk

West Los Angeles has pristine beaches and mansions perched on ocean-side bluffs. Manhattan Beach, once a popular hangout of the Beach Boys, has “some of the best surfing around,” according to Frommer’s. Fishers frequently post themselves at the end of the beach’s 928-foot-long pier, where it’s fishing season year-round. The pier is also home to Roundhouse Aquarium. Admission is free here; there’s a living-reef exhibit, and you can get up close to sea creatures at the tide-pool touch tank.

Nearby, visitors can also visit the famous Venice Beach boardwalk, which Fodor’s describes as “a cosmos all its own.” It’s lined with street performers and eclectic shops selling art and handmade jewelry. It’s also a place where fashion knows no bounds: on a typical day, you might see a tanned bodybuilder in a speedo pass by a man wearing a metallic suit walking on stilts.

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