Downtown Santa Monica covers the blocks around Third Street Promenade, Wilshire Boulevard, and the Metro E Line terminus at 4th and Colorado. It is the most walkable part of the city and the easiest to navigate without a car — the pier, Palisades Park, and most of the main restaurants and shops are within a 15-minute walk of the Metro station.
The character of downtown is decidedly mixed: tourist infrastructure along the Promenade, serious restaurants a block or two away, and the kind of street life that comes from a transit-connected urban neighbourhood rather than a resort strip. Civic Auditorium, the Clock Tower Building, and the weekend farmers market at Arizona Avenue all sit within a few blocks of each other. This is where Santa Monica functions as a city rather than a beach destination.