Start from 34 curated places around Pasadena, CA, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Union
An acclaimed Old Pasadena restaurant doing Northern-Italian cooking with Californian produce and house-made pastas in a snug, focused room. The city's most serious dinner.
Bone Kettle
An Old Pasadena restaurant built around bone-broth-based Southeast Asian cooking and family-style shared plates, with bold, layered flavors. A modern, communal way to eat.
Trails & outdoors
Rose Bowl Loop
A flat, paved 3.1-mile loop around the Rose Bowl and adjacent golf course in the Arroyo Seco, the city's favorite walk, run and ride. Easy, scenic and social.
Hahamongna Watershed Park
A broad open-space park at the mouth of the Arroyo Seco below the dam, with easy flat trails, native plantings and mountain views. A mellow nature walk close to town.
Things to do
Norton Simon Museum
A jewel-box museum at the edge of Old Pasadena with an extraordinary collection of European masters — Rembrandt, Goya, Degas — and South Asian sculpture, plus a sculpture garden. Small enough to enjoy in an afternoon, deep enough to return.
USC Pacific Asia Museum
A museum of Asian and Pacific art housed in a 1920s Chinese-imperial-palace-style building with a koi courtyard. The architecture is as much the draw as the rotating collections.
Landmarks & sights
The Huntington
A railroad baron's San Marino estate turned world-class library, art collection and 120 acres of themed botanical gardens — Japanese, desert, Chinese — anchored by Gainsborough's 'Blue Boy.' One of Southern California's true treasures.
Rose Bowl Stadium
The 1922 National Historic Landmark stadium cradled in the Arroyo Seco, home to UCLA football, the Rose Bowl game and huge concerts. The arroyo setting and the famous flea market make it worth a look even on a quiet day.