Arcadia sits about 20 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley, backed by the San Gabriel Mountains. It's a quiet, well-kept suburb that most visitors pass through on the way to somewhere else — but it has two attractions that make a deliberate stop worthwhile.
The most famous is Santa Anita Park, one of the great horse-racing venues in the United States, with a backdrop of mountains that has made it a favorite for photographers and film crews since the 1930s. The other is the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden, a 127-acre property on the site of a historic ranch, with peacocks roaming freely among the trees and a Queen Anne Cottage that has doubled as a movie location countless times. Behind both, the Santa Anita Canyon climbs into the San Gabriel mountains for a half-day hike.
Beyond those two draws, Arcadia offers good eating — particularly along Baldwin Avenue, where the city's large Chinese-American population has produced a dense stretch of restaurants serving Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Sichuan food. It's an easy half-day trip from Pasadena or central LA.