Los Angeles night helicopter tour: two listings, a different city

The grid. Los Angeles was laid out on a plain, in squares, and from two thousand feet at night that plan is completely legible. Sodium and LED street lighting runs to the horizon in straight lines. People who have lived in the city for years say this is the first time they understood its size.

Downtown. The only cluster of tall buildings in the frame, lit from inside, with the Wilshire Grand spire above everything else. By day Downtown competes with the mountains; at night it is the one bright object.

The freeways. The 101, the 110 and the 405 as continuous strings — white headlights running one way, red tail lights the other. On a thirty-minute night helicopter ride Los Angeles gives you the interchanges from directly above, which is the view no photograph of a traffic jam ever manages.

The dark parts. Griffith Park, the Santa Monica Mountains and the Angeles National Forest are black holes in the middle of the light. The contrast is what makes the shape of the basin readable.

The coast. The grid stops at a hard line and there is nothing beyond it. Santa Monica Pier and the Ferris wheel are the last lit thing before the Pacific.

Book the day flight. A first helicopter ride Los Angeles is about recognising things: the Hollywood Sign, Griffith Observatory, the studio backlots, the streets of Beverly Hills. None of that reads after dark, and you will spend a night flight looking at a beautiful pattern of light without being able to name any part of it.

Book the night flight second, on a different evening, as its own outing. People who do a day helicopter ride Los Angeles and then a night one a few days later consistently describe them as two different trips. People who do only the night flight often say afterwards that they wished they had seen it in daylight first.