los angeles

[imported_Silvia]

hi,
we booked a flight to l.a. for a couple of days in mid july. so if anybody could give us some ideas what we should see or do, please let us know.
we're also not sure, which hostel we gonna take, for we do not know which area is practical.

greetings
silvia

[Mark Sedenquist]

Let's see instead of national park travel now you are looking for a serious urban trip? What kinds of experiences interest you? Just about anything imagineable can be found in LA. Urban wilderness to beaches to gay parades to the movie business to fine food and happening bars -- What are you interested in?

[Jody]

Find a hostel near Venice or Marina Del Rey. Better line it up now.

Get a rent car. Must have.

Drive through Beverly Hills, north of Sunset. Big houses. Park and walk down Rodeo Drive. 90 minutes.

Drive to Hollywood. See the Walk of Stars and footprints in the concrete at the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Blvd. near Highland. Takes an hour to do this.

At the beach, walk the boardwalk through funky Venice and Santa Monica. The Santa Monica pier is fun and scenic. The 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica is 5 blocks of walk streets and tons of shops, food, local color.

The Universal Studios Tour is a full day and a lot of fun. You can drive around Burbank after and see the exteriors of Warner Brothers Studios (The Burbank Studios), NBC (where Jay Leno does his show), Disney Studios,and you'll have just seen Universal.

4th of July fireworks all over L.A. and several places up and down the beach communities. Some nights it's foggy,and all nights are chilly. Be prepared. The beaches here are not hot and the water is cold. Sorry.

Have fun.

[imported_Silvia]

What do we wanna see? very good question!
wilderness and movie business (is answered already)sounds good.....
and is it really that bad if you don't have a car? for we decided (money matter) to use the bus.

Silvi

LA's not big on wilderness, but they do have a few places to go. Griffith park is one of the largest (maybe the largest) urban park in the country, a lot of trails. Then there's the griffith observatory which is pretty cool (but I think it's closed for rennovation). And theres always the San Gabriel mountains and the beaches.

http://tchester.org/sgm/places/index.html

http://www.nearfield.com/~dan/sports/index.htm

LA is definitely a driving city, but you should be able to take buses to most of the popular spots. Getty museum, La Brea Tar pits, all other museums, etc.


If you like movies, then definitely go to hollywood and the surrounding area. Mann's chinese theater, hollywood bowl, the new Kodak theater, the stars on the sidewalk, all that stuff is in hollywood. You probably won't see any famous people walking along there anymore, it's more of a tourist spot. you can find some of the filming locations here

http://www.fast-rewind.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?target=SCA&searchtype=LocState

http://www.seeing-stars.com/Locations/TVlocations1.shtml

If you really want to see famous people, go to a movie premiere out in westwood at the century theater. Fourth of July is always time for the opening of the big summer movies. If you were here at the right time, there's always the awards shows somewhere in LA. And for fourth of july, there are fireworks shows all over LA, you can go to the Hollywood bowl, rose bowl, Queen Mary, disneyland, or any other theme park.

Since you're only here for a few days, definitely go check out one of the theme parks, disneyland if you have a family, universal studios if you want to watch how movies are filmed. There's also Knotts berry farm, and Magic Mountain if you like roller coasters, but that's a litte far from LA. That'll take the whole day, at night you can stop by Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to have dinner and go to santa monica pier. then the next day you can visit Venice beach and watch the muscleheads work out on the beach, walk down all the shops, have dinner in Hollywood, maybe catch a movie. Then if you still have time, go to the getty.

[Mark Sedenquist]

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