A windshield is a poor introduction to Los Angeles.

It gives you brake lights, billboards and other people trying to get somewhere. Step outside, and the city offers a different introduction: oranges hanging over a garden wall, the scent of coffee drifting through a café doorway, a neighborhood conversation you were never going to have at 40 miles an hour.

This is the Westside I love.

The claim that Los Angeles is unlivable without a car is conflated with getting across the city in one. Nobody needs to pretend the intersections are gentle or the sidewalks smooth. But there is a difference between needing a car sometimes and surrendering every outing to one.

Not to mention, staying fit and healthy matters to me, and I would rather get my steps in exploring a neighborhood than spend an hour in traffic exercising nothing but my patience.

I spent years in Brentwood, and my love of the neighborhood has never subsided. On Sunday mornings, its farmers market on Gretna Green Way supplies the warmth I associate with Hanukkah and Christmas: flowers, families, something delicious cooking, the sense that people have decided to linger. Except, you don’t even have to wait until December. (Talk about being spoiled.)

Driving to a grocery store is an errand; walking to a neighborhood market is a ritual. You arrive intending to buy tomatoes and leave with eucalyptus, lavender and considerably less urgency. Santa Monica’s Wednesday market on Arizona Avenue offers another version of that pleasure: a morning organized around what is ripe rather than what is running late.

The coffee matters, too. Iced or extra hot, it gives you an excuse to occupy a little piece of the neighborhood. As a mother, I appreciate the room that walking leaves for discovery. Lemon and orange trees, a passing dog, an unexpected playground — what an adult walks past can become a child’s entire adventure. Not every outing needs an admission ticket or a destination programmed into a phone.

Los Angeles rewards curiosity. Walking gives it a chance.

On Westwood Boulevard, the aromas of koobideh kebabs, saffron rice and ghormeh sabzi announce Tehrangeles. Persian markets and bakeries preserve something generations of émigrés refused to surrender.

For me, an American of Iranian heritage who hopes to visit Iran someday, this is more than culinary tourism. It is a connection to a country I know through inheritance rather than experience. Here is the Iran I want the world to see: its hospitality, beauty and brilliance — not the Islamic Republic. There is rosewater and pistachio ice cream, saffron lattes and Iranian pizza almost as good as what I get when I’m back in Dubai. Almost.

Farther west, Sawtelle Japantown changes the conversation: ramen shops, Japanese markets and matcha soft serve create a little escape into Tokyo. The pleasure is in lingering over storefronts, not treating another neighborhood as something to get through.

Art belongs in this picture, too. At UCLA’s Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, more than 70 sculptures occupy five landscaped acres. Auguste Rodin, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore become company for an afternoon stroll. Westwood’s Hammer and UCLA’s Fowler museums both offer free admission. Coffee, culture and a walk need not require a grand production.

Toward Santa Monica, taco trucks send the scent of al pastor and griddled tortillas onto the boulevard. Montana Avenue, with its cafes, shopping and residential elegance, remains a favorite. Main Street loosens the mood; Venice supplies quiet canals and the boardwalk’s magnificent human theater.

For a stranger diversion on another day, the Museum of Jurassic Technology near downtown Culver City offers curiosities that leave you wondering precisely what you have just learned –– and whether you believe it. There is an upstairs tearoom, too, should you need somewhere to sit with your questions.

Culver City also has a spookier script: ghost stories at the Culver Hotel and legends surrounding studio founder Thomas Ince. Hollywood lore attaches itself to actual buildings.

West Hollywood deserves an exception to the geography. Recently recognized as California’s most walkable city by Walk Score, it’s a culinary playground all week, with a particular magic on Halloween when the Oct. 31 Halloween Carnaval turns the streets into the entertainment.

These are different walks for different days, not one marathon disguised as a stroll. Together, they reveal a city that is less lonely, less remote and far more generous than its reputation. I want my daughter to know that Los Angeles. The one with familiar faces, unexpected flowers and time to stop for whatever catches her eye.

LA has plenty of places to go. What I love is having reasons not to hurry.

Adelle Nazarian is a journalist, entrepreneur and commentator covering politics, culture, technology and the ideas shaping America.

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