Self guided Driving Tour between LA and San Diego
Description
Connect your smartphone to your vehicle and listen to a tour guide while you drive the iconic PCH! Follow the route along the Pacific Coast Highway and discover one of the most scenic drives in the world! Start anywhere along the route between Los Angeles & San Diego. The tour is the same in either direction. Learn about cities and towns nestled along the coast including Oceanside, Carlsbad, Long Beach, Dana Point & more! We’ll point out must-see sights like the Sunset Beach and Torrey Pines. Hear about Louis Zamperini and the RMS Queen Mary. With no time constraints, enjoy the freedom to stop anywhere and take your time exploring. Tour guide commentary will play automatically as you drive, using an easy to navigate GPS map. No data is used during the tour. This audio guide will keep your group entertained & engaged along the way. Each point of interest also has a fun multiple-choice trivia question about the sights. Trust the platform with over 75 tours & 25,000+ happy customers.
Tour Options
Itinerary
As you are passing by the Los Angeles International Airport, we'll tell you a bit about it and why it's called LAX. Feel free to stop at as many attractions, as long as you like, along the tour as there are no time constraints.
We'll tell you how El Segundo got it's name and the main industries located here.
We'll tell you an interesting story behind the name Manhattan Beach.
Redondo Beach has a rather notorious past! We'll tell you why.
Hear how Torrance was, and still is, the perfect location for a Japanese automobile maker's North American Headquarters!
Louis Zamperini. We'll tell you a quick version of his incredible perseverance and resilience.
Here we'll tell you a bit about the area history and what the area is now famous for.
Legend has it that the Native Americans blessed the land of Palos Verdes, making it the most beautiful place on Earth.
RMS QUEEN MARY, a retired British oceanliner that sailed on the North Atlantic. We'll tell you how she came to be here.
We'll you a bit about the history of Long Beach and it's original inhabitants.
Hear about some of the famous alumni who called this university their own.
We'll tell you how Seal Beach was once a gambling destination!
There are four different habitats within the refuge, supporting a variety of species. We'll tell you a little about them.
A "quintessential Southern California beach town"! Need we say more?
The path to the protection of this reserve is long and varied! We'll give a shortened version.
We'll tell you why Huntington Beach is called "Surf City".
Hear why Santa Catalina Island was so popular with pirates!
Huntington Beach and oil, and tourists, and politics. We'll give you a bit of the lowdown.
Welcome to the seaside city of Newport Beach! Although it's now known mostly for it's sandy beaches and ocean fun, it once supported a large number of
One of Newport Beach's most popular tourist attractions is the Balboa Peninsula. Originally, Balboa Island was little more than a mudflat surrounded by swampland...
As you drive along the incredible coastline, you'll see some signs for Crystal Cove State Park. It all started back in 1874 when land owner and founder...
Welcome to the beautiful seaside resort city of Laguna Beach.As you can imagine, the scenic beauty of the isolated coastline and hills was very attractive to, well, pretty much everyone. It was...
It's an important regional wildlife preserve, and is home to a number of hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding trails. It also features some interesting geological...
We're about to drive through the coastal neighbourhood of Monarch Beach.Luxury and affluence are found in abundance here, with the average price of a home...
Welcome to Dana Point, the dolphin-and-whale capital of the world! There are more dolphins per square mile in these glistening waters than...
Welcome to San Clemente! “The Spanish Village by the Sea”.As you pass by, you may see...
If you take a look to the ocean, you'll catch a glimpse of San Onofre State Beach. Well, if you're travelling north, you'll see some factories first and a nuclear power plant (more on that later)...
If you're heading south towards San Diego, in a minute-or-so you'll see signs for Vista Point. This is a nice lookout and a great spot to stop for some rest..
Funny enough, folklore tells us that Oceanside really just named itself! Originally, when the area was made up of ranches, people would say...
Carlsbad has a huge area called "The Flower Fields", a gorgeous tourist attraction that blooms in...
Welcome to Encinitas, another beautiful beach city, although it’s actually named for it's trees! When Gaspar de Portola led a Spanish expedition-through here...
Now, if you look to the ocean, you may be able to see Cardiff State Beach, which is great for swimming, beachcombing and exploring..
San Diego County, as you may have noticed, is huge! It spans 4,526 square miles and is filled with...
You're currently passing through one of San Diego's treasures, Torrey Pines. 1,750 acres devoted to the conservation of wildlife, waterfowl and...
Highlights
What's included
Traveller Ratings
Important Information
- Service animals allowed
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- All areas and surfaces are wheelchair accessible
- Transportation options are wheelchair accessible
- Wheelchair accessible
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
Reviews(8)
The app is inferior. I have a pole iPhone 17plus max, had precise locations setting on and the audio didn’t play when at a location. I was driving and trying to engage with the app. Had to pull over way too many times. This app needs work. Waste of money.
Thanks for giving the LA–San Diego tour a try. We’re sorry the audio didn’t trigger automatically for you. The tour relies on GPS detecting nearby stops, and occasional signal gaps can cause points to be missed. We appreciate you sharing what happened, and we’re continually improving the experience for solo travelers. Glad you were able to explore the route, and thanks for the feedback.
App did not play driving directions from one point to the next. Had to stop and manually enter next destination point into navigation app.
Thank you for sharing your feedback - we appreciate you taking the time to let us know about your experience. The tour is designed to play automatically as you drive, so needing to manually prompt the commentary isn’t typical. A number of factors can affect GPS triggering on a given day - things like signal strength, weather, phone settings, or whether the download fully completed - but we understand how inconvenient it feels when the audio doesn’t advance on its own. If you’d like, feel free to email us at info@tripvia.tours with your device details and we can escalate it to our app provider to see what might have happened on your setup. We hope you still enjoyed the beautiful views and information, even through you needed to manually prompt the next stop.
Very glitchy. They sent a link to download an app. The link was not clickable. I found the app on the app store and downloaded it. Then you have to enter a code and find the tour on the app. Then I downloaded the tour. The tour audio would not play. Then randomly, halfway to the destination, the tour audio started and then half an hour later it stopped and never came on again. I wish I could get my money back.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We’re sorry to hear you ran into technical issues during your tour. We’re glad to hear that you were able to find an alternate way to find the app in the app store - when you were unable to follow the download link, in the setup message we sent you. We haven’t received similar reports from other guests on this tour recently, concerning the audio playback, so it sounds like something specific may have happened during the setup on your device. We wish we’d had the chance to assist you in real time - most issues can be resolved quickly with a setting adjustment so guests can continue enjoying the tour. If you’re interested, please reach out to us at info@tripvia.tours with more specific details you remember. We’d be happy to look into this to get everything functioning properly for you. As this tour doesn’t expire, you can listen at a future date - perhaps on your return trip. Thank you again for your feedback. Safe travels 🚗
Enjoyed the experience, very informative. Made the long drive more pleasant. It was neat learning new things about places I've already been to and about places I haven't.
Thank you for the great review! We’re really glad to hear the tour made your drive more enjoyable and helped you discover new things along the way. Our goal is to offer a fun, informative way to explore the region from a fresh perspective, so it’s wonderful to know it added to your trip. Thanks again for letting our tour be part of your trip!
The facts and quizzes are entertaining and quite interesting, the problem is getting the gps to follow the route…there should be a way to have the route mapped out in any of the major Navigation apps… whenever you put a destination, the apps direct you through different routes (ie: highways or freeways) so it became somewhat frustrating as we missed a few of the points because we were off route… I guess for the price we paid we at least got some functionality out of it… but certainly room for improvement.
Thank you for your review. We are sorry that navigating the route was challenging and frustrating. We are very pleased you found the "facts and quizzes... entertaining and quite interesting!" We understand you wanted to use external navigation apps, but our tours must rely on the live map located directly within the app. External apps prioritize fast routes (like highways), which unfortunately bypass the historic points of interest for the tour. To ensure you hit every location, we highly recommend relying only on the in-app map and its built-in directions.
Good experience and fun. The information was good and interesting. Nice it can be done from either direction. Would do again
Thanks for the great 5-star review! We're so glad you had a fun and interesting experience on the tour and enjoyed the flexibility of being able to do it from either direction. We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback and hope you'll tour with us again!
Make sure your phone is charged, and down load the app before you go. It is a great experience and fun. We stopped for lunch at a excellent fish place near the ocean. We took the dogs and enjoyed walking them at some of the locations. We wanted a vacation day where we could take the dogs and this was it!
Thanks so much for the fantastic 5-star review! We're so happy to hear you had a great staycation and that the tour gave you a fun, dog-friendly day out by the ocean. Great tip about downloading the app and charging up beforehand! Sounds like the perfect mix of sightseeing, good food, and wagging tails.
Take a bit more time next time I would do this over a couple of days. The narration was very informative and fun.
Thank you for your review! We're so glad you found the narration fun and informative. Taking the tour over a couple of days sounds like a fantastic way to soak in all the details at a relaxed pace! We appreciate your feedback and hope you’ll join us again for another adventure soon. Happy exploring!
