Sightseeing in Los Angeles

TOURific Escapes is a food tour company. We are experts at the local area, and we’ll show you the city with a personal touch and tempt you with tastings you may not have discovered on your own. With our friendly tour and roomy and comfortable ride, you’ll feel like your best friend is showing you the best parts of town.

Rated “very highly recommended” by Frommer’s, the Smithsonian-affiliated Japanese American National Museum is one of the largest museums in the United States dedicated to sharing the untold stories, the fascinating culture, and the rich history of Japanese Americans. With more than 60,000 artifacts and a rotation series of exhibitions, the Japanese American National Museum offers hours of information displays, including the current Zen Garage exhibit. Holding an array of public programs, film screenings, arts-and-crafts workshops, and cooking seminars throughout the year, the Japanese American National Museum was recently awarded the 2010 Institute of Museums and Library Services’ National Medal, the nation's highest honor for museums and its second-highest honor for monocle-wearing intellectual dolphins. Those purchasing the Supporting membership will receive discounts on museum store items, and film, concert, lecture, and workshop tickets, as well as the following:

Lux Travel Group's early-morning ground service chariots riders to Las Vegas in style, boasting luxurious service and perks similar to a first-class flight. Commence road trips with a champagne toast before sipping on two additional complimentary cocktails from the extensive drink menu. A continental breakfast or a lunch package consisting of a half sandwich, fresh fruit or salad, and a freshly baked cookie fuels passengers up for Olympic-level Internet surfing on the free WiFi (available on most routes, but subject to location and satellite interference from clouds and bandwidth-stealing UFOs). After reveling in the bus-centric festivities, wind down during a movie screening with a chocolate-mint-drizzled cake pop. Finally, a warm scented towel allows guests to freshen up for their triumphant arrival in Vegas.

Mammoth Property Reservations shares its colony of condos to serve as plush, comfortable base camps for recreational expeditions into the joy-paved trails of Mammoth Lakes. Adventure-addicts swarm this four-season resort community to find their fix skiing, fishing, mountain biking, golfing, or defending outdoor pillow forts from scores of feral dust bunnies. Each picturesque property is homily furnished, ensuring comfort before and after encounters with wild wendigos. Purchase one Groupon for a single night in these peaceful peaks, or combine up to five for an extended engagement mining Mammoth Mountain for snow-dusted black diamonds.

A non-profit venue for and supporter of avant-garde contemporary art, LACE provides an artistic outlet unfettered by the demands of commerce. In its 30-year history, the organization has opened eyeballs to the work of more than 5,000 creative minds, including artists such as Martin Kersels, Nancy Rubins, and Johanna Went. Use your friend-level membership to preview exhibitions—such as the upcoming Los Angeles Goes Live: Exploring a Social History of Performance Art in Southern California, 1970–1983, opening in October 2011—before they're open to the public, giving you a small window of time in which to observe the art before children can attempt to smear it with peanut butter. Members also receive complimentary or reduced admission to special events such as the annual winter fundraiser and the LACE 10K, a steptacular art walk that immerses culture vultures in the greatest art form of them all, physical fitness.

On this night only Dianne Reeves belts it out on one of the largest, most star-strut-upon stages in Los Angeles. Orchestra-level seats place you right up front (seating is anything below the balcony section), close enough to feel all of the soulful notes roar. Reeves, a musical titan, part R&B star, part storyteller, and pure jazz from voice to toe, improvises and revises the genre's tradition, singing always her present moment's gospel. She has earned so many Grammys and other shiny accolades that she donates them to children to fill up their birthday piñatas. Her eclectic career defies simplistic labels: she sung the soundtrack to period-piece heavyweight Good Night and Good Luck, closed the 2002 winter Olympic games, and broke through a seemingly impassable cultural barrier by being the first jazz singer to perform in the Arab kingdom of Qatar. With a voice that holds more soul than purgatory, it's an evening not be missed.