Irvine is not a destination you visit for its old city centre or its bohemian street life — neither exists. What you get instead is a showcase of late-twentieth-century American urban planning: a city designed from scratch on former ranch land, with every road, park, and commercial zone placed with deliberate intent. That makes it oddly fascinating to explore if you're in the right frame of mind. The University of California campus is genuinely beautiful and intellectually alive, and the surrounding wetlands deliver real nature surprisingly close to the freeway.
For the nature-minded visitor, the San Joaquin Marsh and William Mason Regional Park offer genuine escapes into green space. Birders in particular will find the marsh rewarding year-round. The UCI Arboretum and the Irvine Company Arboretum give a more cultivated take on California flora, including South African proteas that look completely out of place and are all the better for it. Irvine Spectrum Center is worth an evening visit — it's a large outdoor entertainment complex that, whatever you think of malls, does the format well, especially when the lights are on.