LOS ANGELES, CA

Los Angeles is worth two or three visits; you won’t be able to see all there is to see and do all that Los Angeles offers you to do in just one, even you’re lucky to stay for two or three weeks.

The 2nd-largest city in the United States offers visitors:

• Beaches
• Movie and television studios, especially the giant amusement park/movie studio that is Universal Studios
• The spare beauty that is the desert in and around Palm Springs (less than a two-hour drive east)
• Magnificent mountain ranges (less than hour’s drive east)
• Skiing (in winter) or hiking (in summer) on those mountain ranges
• Disneyland (just an hour south)
• The J. Paul Getty Museum
• Walt Disney Concert Hall
• Extravagant shopping on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills
• NAME of the old town, birthplace of Los Angeles
• Venice Beach, with its colorful characters rollerblading on the beachfront
• Santa Monica Pier
• Catalina Island (just 26 miles west of Santa Monica and a 90-minute ferry ride
• The Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor, an hour’s drive from downtown.

And those are just the main attractions.

The first thing you’ll notice is how vast Los Angeles is. With more than 3.8 million people in the City of Los Angeles itself to the 17 million people who live in what is known as the Los Angeles Basin, you’ll be forgiven if you figure that towns you’ll hear of such as Whittier, West Covina, Pomona, Northridge, and others are in Los Angeles (they’re not).

So you’ll need to slow down and look closely to the real Los Angeles

Many Angelenos also don’t know that the oldest house in Los Angeles still stands on Olvera Street. Built around 1818 by the first mayor of Los Angeles, Don Francisco Avila, the Avila Adobe is a great example of a hacienda from the days of Spanish rule in California.

In fact, Olvera Street is a great place to start your exploration of the “real” Los Angeles. While Olvera Street does cater to tourists, you also will be able to find authentic Mexican handicrafts in the small stalls that run down the middle of the cobblestone and tiled street. You’ll also be able to eat real Mexican cuisine in one of the many restaurants there.

Visit Los Angeles in late October/early November and be sure to come to Olvera Street for the fantastical Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Festival October 31 and November 1. A celebration in Mexico’s culture of family members and loved ones who have died, Dia de Los Muertos will see the living celebrate the dead with parades, colorful altars, dances and a huge street fair on Olvera Street itself.

Take a short walk southwest to see the Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry, and don’t forget to stop by the lovely Union Station, a train station built in the 1930’s with a mix of Mission Revival, Streamline Moderne and Dutch Colonial Revival Style architecture.

Hop in your car and head down Wilshire Boulevard, taking a detour to see the famous Paramount Pictures movie studio gates on Melrose Place, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre – and the foot- and handprints of Hollywood celebrities. Keep going until you reach Beverly Hills, park the car and get ready for some great sights – watching the rich and beautiful (and the not-so-rich and the not-so-beautiful) shop at Rodeo Drive. Keep heading west until you reach Westwood and the breathtakingly beautiful campus of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and then head north briefly on Interstate 405 to spend an afternoon at the Getty Center.