Go to LA, and you know that one of the top ten things to do is get as close as you can to the Hollywood sign.

It’s not that easy to walk right up to it, and anyway the closer you get to a forty-five foot tall sign, the less you will really see of it.

The most famous and most accessible viewing point is probably the Griffith Observatory, but the sign is still a good distance from there and it’s easy to get closer if you have a car.

From Hollywood itself, a good moving vantage point (if you are not the driver) is to drive up North Beachwood Drive, a north-south residential street lined with tall palm trees, because the sign is pretty much right in front of you the whole way. It’s still tricky to get a good photo of it from a moving car, but it’s fun driving through the Hollywood homes with palm trees swaying and the sign always in view. Especially if you’ve hired a convertible.

One excellent vantage point is at the end of an anonymous cul de sac, outside somebody’s house on another quiet residential street. Punch 5825 Green Oak Drive into your car’s GPS and it will take you up a steep winding street that gets narrower and narrower until you reach the last home and a gated entrance. Stop and take a look north-west – there she is. If you’re lucky there won’t be anybody else there and you will be able to take lots of shots unencumbered by photobombers.

Another (likely busier) spot is at 3204 Canyon Lake Drive, which is a bit closer again. If you can get parking nearby you can also walk towards the sign, which is probably less than half a mile away at this point. That, of course, is illegal but I’m told it’s unlikely that you will get stopped. The 24/7 security guard is stationed elsewhere at the gated roadway to the sign, and not looking your way.

But the most fun place to view the sign is from – wait for it – the original Batman’s Cave.

Type 3000 Canyon Drive into your car’s GPS, which weirdly will take you into a park where you can park your car and walk the ten minutes or so up to a set of caves. Follow the walkers – it looks steep but it’s not far. At the end of the walk you will find a couple of shallow caves and a small clearing, where somebody has set out lots of concentric rings made of small stones and rocks.

These are the Bronson Caves, most famous (to people of a certain vintage) as the exit of the Bat Cave from the original TV series. Standing by the concentric stone circles you will have a pretty great view of the Hollywood sign, and lots of opportunities to take photos with nobody but you in them.

The best thing about this vantage point is that it’s a really accessible remote-looking setting, so it’s been used in lots of TV shows and movies, from low budget to blockbuster. As well as Batman this natural setting has been used to film everybody from Zorro to the Lone Ranger, Wonder Woman to the Might Morphin Power Rangers. As a Star Trek fan I was delighted to find out that almost every Star Trek TV show (and at least one Star Trek movie) has a scene filmed at the Bat Cave. Where better to view the iconic Hollywood sign?