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small and peaceful Grand Hope Park (Map; 9th St, btwn Grand Ave & Hope Sts). Designed by Lawrence Halprin, one of the country’s foremost landscape architects, it was the first of South Park’s beautification projects which began in the late ’80s. It’s often filled with students from the adjacent Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM; Map; 213-624-1200; 919 S Grand Ave; 10am-4pm Tue-Sat), a private college with an international student body. The gallery has some interesting rotating exhibits, including costumes worn in Academy Award–nominated movies. Bargain hunters should check out the FIDM Scholarship Store, where you can get new but slightly damaged contemporary clothing donated by department stores and chains like Forever 21 and Frederick’s of Hollywood for just a few dollars.

FIDM graduates often go on to start their own companies in the nearby Fashion District (Map; 213-488-1153; www.fashiondistrict.org). Bounded by Main and Wall Sts and 7th St and Pico Blvd, this 90-block area is nirvana for shopaholics but is rather chaotic. Prices are lowest in bazaarlike Santee Alley. For a primer on how to get around, see the boxed text LA’s Fashion District Demystified on Click here.

Cut flowers at cut-rate prices are the lure at the nearby Flower Market (Map; 213-627-3696; www.laflowerdistrict.com; Wall St, btwn 7th & 8th Sts; admission Mon-Fri $2, Sat $1; 8am-noon Mon, Wed & Fri, 6am-noon Tue, Thu & Sat), where a few dollars gets you armloads of Hawaiian ginger or sweet roses, a potted plant or elegant orchid. The market is busiest in the wee hours when florists stock up on posies by the truckload. Not to worry, though: there’ll be plenty left when you get to go in. Bring cash.

Streamline Moderne doesn’t get any sleeker than Robert Derrah’s 1937 Coca-Cola Bottling Plant (Map; 1334 S Central Ave), the design of which was inspired by classic ocean liners. See those portholes, catwalk, cargo doors and bridge? It’s in the industrial no-man’s-land southeast of the Fashion District but worth a quick detour if only to snap a picture of yourself and a giant Coke bottle.

Westlake & Koreatown

Until recently, historic Westlake, just west of Downtown, was the go-to zone for scoring rock cocaine or a fake drivers’ license. Slowly but surely, though, the area is cleaning up its act and even toying with gentrification. Crime is down by 50% and families have returned to MacArthur Park (Map; cnr Wilshire Blvd & Alvarado St) for picnics and paddling around a spring-fed lake. In 2007, world beats heated up the restored band shell during the inaugural summer concert series. (And yes, this is the park that ‘melts in the dark’ in the eponymous Jimmy Webb song made famous by Donna Summer.) Though still largely a working-class Latino neighborhood, artists, hipsters and young professionals are trickling into the neighborhood with bars, eateries and cultural spaces following in their tracks. Just get off at the Wilshire/MacArthur Park stop of the Red Line subway and see for yourself, though for now you should stick to the daylight hours.

Fans of Victoriana will get their fill at the Grier Musser Museum (Map; 213-413-1814; www.griermussermuseum.com; 403 S Bonnie Brae St; adult/student & senior/child $10/7/5; noon-4pm Wed-Sat, reservations required) inside a beautiful Queen Anne home with intricate woodwork and luscious stained glass. It’s stuffed with antiques and yesteryear’s knickknacks, including a neat 1909 windup Victrola phonograph that still works. To keep things dynamic, the dedicated staff puts together monthly exhibits usually revolving around a holiday theme. The Christmas one is famous.

Westlake spills seamlessly into Koreatown, a vast, amorphous area that feels more like Seoul than LA. Korean immigrants began settling here in the 1960s and still form a very tight-knit community that is poorly assimilated into mainstream American life. Signs are mostly in Korean and many shopkeepers and servers speak only a few words of English. All this makes for an interesting experience, especially when it comes to food (Click here for