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| USA :: USA Travel Guide |
USA Travel Guide |
| USA - Places of Interest |
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| CANADA - Places of Interest |
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| LOS ANGELES |
Los Angeles has littered the world with its paraphernalia. Disneyland, movie stars, TV, fast-food and hype – it’s all here in overdrive. LA may be a figment of its own imagination, but if you long to stand in the footsteps of stars and breathe their hallowed air, you’ve come to the right place.
 Starlit and moonstruck, LA beguiles scores of curious tourists, hopeful starlets and wanna-be rock musicians each day. But LA is more than the sun total of its mass-produced fantasies. It’s thriving hybrid, a conglomeration of 88 independent cities sprawling over a vast urban maelstrom.
No other city studies itself with such narcissistic intensity. If you’are not prepared to embrace the dream, you’ll doubtless find it filthy, irritating, frightening or just plain dumb. In this town, game show hosts are household names and nobodies erect billboard shrines to themselves.
ATTRACTIONS
Beverly Hills
Not star-studded tour is complete without a visit to Beverly Hills, home of the rich and famous. Just west of Hollywood, this city-within-a- city flaunts its wealth with opulent manors on manicured grounded and streets overflowing with designer labels. For the latest on who lives where, grab a ‘Star Home Map’ from a street-corner vendor.
The Hills’ Golden Triangle is bisected by that locus of conspicuous consumption, Rodeo Drive, where retailers such as Tiffany, Armani and Vuitton flog their wares.
North Beverly Hills is the epicenter of luxury living, home to the likes of Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Harrison Ford.
If your desire to look over strangers’ fences isn’t satiated by Beverly Hills, extend your trip to that other famous neighborhood, Bel Air, in western LA, or the slightly less lively (but nonetheless star-studded) Hollywood Forever Cemetery, final resting place of Rudolph Valentino, Jayne Mansfield and Cecil B.De Mille.
Disneyland
 Allegedly the happiest place on earth (it must be the hordes of screaming children and parents on the brink of insanity), crowd balance is the key to happiness; too busy (like in summer) and it’s a psychosis-including hell, too quiet and it’s a harrowing post-apocalyptic scenario. Try a mid-week evening visit when the kids’ sugar fixes subside.
Does anyone go to Los Angeles and not visit Disneyland? Apparently the happiest place on earth (though the hordes of screaming children and parents at their wits’ end may make you doubt it.) Disneyland is a masterpiece of picture-perfect choreography – even the litterbins are themed. The park is divided into four different lands: Adventure land has a jungle theme and features Indiana Jones and the Forbidden Eye; Frontier land celebrates the myth of the Wild West; Fantasyland devotes itself to Disney’s favorite characters; and Tomorrow land is (you guessed it) all about the future. In summer, you’ll spend the better part of your visit to Disneyland queuing – one of the best ways to avoid this is to come in the evening when the kiddies are in bed. Uncle Walt’s wonderland is a Anaheim, half an hour’s drive south of downtown LA; you can get there by bus, hotel shuttle or by car on I-5.
One 55 acres (22 ha) next door, Disney’s California Adventure, which opened in February 2001, is an idealized adventure ride of the Golden State.
 Hollywood
Los Angeles has built its reputation on the glamour of the movies, and most visitors want at least a little of its glitz to rub off on them. Hollywood, itself (in northwestern LA) is no longer the movie cecca it once was, but it certainly holds plenty of historic interest. Take a walk down Hollywood Blvd and you’ll pass by famous sights such as Mann’s (nee Grauman’s) Chinese Theatre, where more than 150 of the glitterati have left their prints on the sidewalk out the front. Head east along the Boulevard, stepping on those famous brone stars, and you’ll find yourself at the Roosevelt Hotel. Soak up a bit of 1930s ambience: this is where the first Academy Awards were held in 1928 and where Errol Flynn, Salvador Dali and F Scott Fitzgerald often propped up the bar.
The corner of Hollywood and Vine was one the heart off-screen action for the Industry, but you wouldn’t know it now. If you want a memento of those golden days, the Collectors Book Store on the corner is a treasure is a treasurer travel of memorabilia. If you don’t manage to spot a real star while you’re in Hollywood, drop by the Hollywood wax Museum or (for real stars’ knickers) Frederick’s of Hollywood Lingerie Museum. |
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