Espresso & Estate Sales: A 2-Day Los Angeles Itinerary for Third-Wave Coffee and Vintage Hunters

The morning opens in Echo Park with the low murmur of conversations and the smell of freshly ground beans hanging in the air at Andante Coffee Roasters. Light spills across neutral walls and pale wood, catching the steam off your cup as the city outside starts to hum. From there, the day keeps you close to Sunset Boulevard—wandering into the absurdist shelves of the Echo Park Time Travel Mart, then slipping into a run of vintage spots where hangers slide on metal racks with a soft clink and every tag feels like a tiny time capsule. Lunch is less about a table and more about timing your hunger between shops, grabbing something nearby so you can linger longer among silk blouses and worn-in denim at Sunday’s Best. By afternoon, you’re deep in the tactile world of Lemon Frog’s dresses and Casa Victoria’s midcentury wood grain, the air smelling faintly of old paper and furniture polish. Evening softens at Reunion & Company, where candles, low music, and the texture of a heavy rocks glass reset the day. Tomorrow, you’ll trade racks and resale for hilltop art and Koreatown espresso, but tonight you fall asleep with the faint scent of incense and cotton still on your fingers.

Morning comes with a different kind of quiet up at the Getty: the soft whir of the tram, the crunch of gravel underfoot, and the white stone of the museum glowing against a pale sky. You wander galleries and manicured gardens while the air still feels cool, the smell of cut grass and distant ocean salt riding the breeze. By midday, you’re back in the grid, trading hilltop calm for Koreatown’s density and a meticulously built espresso at Onescape, all clean lines and polished surfaces. Lunch at Girl & the Goat in the Arts District turns into an extended pause—industrial brick, high ceilings, plates that arrive like small compositions you dismantle with your fork. Afternoon is for one more round of vintage and design—Sunset Shop’s racks and Casa Victoria’s spiritual cousin in your memory echoing as you dig through new territory at Gift of Garb. As light fades, Downtown’s old bones start to glow: Redbird’s historic walls cradle dinner in a courtyard that feels like a secret, the air warm from heat lamps and the kitchen’s output. Night ends 71 floors up at 71Above, where the city grid becomes an abstract pattern of light and the glass under your hand feels cool and solid. Tomorrow there’s no itinerary, just the pleasant ache of feet that have actually met LA’s sidewalks and the knowledge of which neighborhoods you’ll come back to first.