Friday, December 4, 2015

Best Places to Visit in Los Angeles [13/15]

Los Angeles was the third and last big city on our road trip across the USA. After spending 4 days in Las Vegas (and one on the Grand Canyon), we were ready to move on. The drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles takes almost 5 hours, and we stopped in Victorville, California to get something to eat. I heard a lot of scary stories about the traffic in LA, but luckily we had no problems getting in the city. Getting around LA is tricky though, and I think I should write about that in a separate post. We spent 4 days in the city of Angels, and here are the Best Places to Visit in Los Angeles in my opinion.




Best Places to Visit in Los Angeles


Hollywood Walk of Fame

Hollywood: it's the place where Stars make Dreams and Dreams make Stars. Our AirBnb apartment was actually located in Hollywood, only 10 minutes walking distance from the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It's a crowded place for sure but one you will have to cross off your list eventually since all roads lead to it (and by that I mean the Metro system). While the stars on the walkway are interesting and make you want to walk around and explore I will say that this part of LA is not as thought it would be. There are a lot of people here trying to sell you something or get you someplace. It's very crowded and I would recommend visiting here at sunset. There will be less people here. A big mall is located right at the entrance to the Metro. From here you can easily access public transportation to get you to other parts of the city.




Walt Disney Concert Hall

We hopped on the metro and went to Downtown Los Angeles. The first sight that greeted us was the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It's the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The hall is in a vineyard seating configuration, similar to the Berliner Philharmonie. It's a very impressive building and we spent some time here, looking at the odd but interesting architectural features of it.



Downtown Los Angeles

We eventually moved further into Downtown Los Angeles. This part of the city is very modern and walking here is a great pleasure. You will not find many tourists here at all. There are cafes here, restaurants and shops, and while Downtown LA had a stigma of being unsafe in the past, it's truly turned around. Although I will say that once you step out of the business part of it it can get a bit weird. So make sure to stay in the nice part of it. Visiting by day of course is safe. We ate in the famous Cole's Restaurant. We each had one of their signature dipped sandwiches.









Beverly Hills

Beverly Hills is beautiful, charming and very fancy. Fancy, like im-out-of-place-here fancy. But all in all, its worth a visit. You will find a great variety of houses and amazingly maintained neighborhoods here, but also shopping streets, and the Ice Cream Lab, where they make fresh Ice Cream with the flavor of your choosing. Yummy!






Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills

This a high mile shopping street, located on the south end of Beverly Hills. It's beautiful indeed, but unless you are in the market for very expensive clothes, you will most likely only walk down this street. We happened to be here at sunset, which gave us some great light to take photos. It is a bit of a tourist spot as opposed to the general streets of Beverly Hills.





Griffith Observatory and Hollywood Sign

So here is the dirty secret of the Hollywood sign, the most famous landmark of Los Angeles. It takes two hours hiking to get up close, and then two hours back! And that's just from the edge of the city. If you are further away, get out your hiking gear. Well, we didn't have that much time, so we drove up to the Griffith Observatory. It has all encompassing views of Los Angeles, and you can also see the Hollywood Sign from here. It's not that close, but still close enough. If you have a zoom lens on you, you won't have a problem getting a clear shot. The Griffith Observatory has a free entrance and serves as a Planetarium with interesting exhibits inside, all related to space and science. Make sure to visit here at night (we did that on our first night in LA). The views are out of this world!





Disneyland Park and California Adventure in Anaheim

I will write about our trip to Disneyland Park more extensively in the next post, but this one here would not be complete without the mention of one of the best adventure parks in the world. It's a one hour drive away from Los Angeles, and you will have to choose the Disneyland Park (image below) or the Disneyland California Adventure (or get a grasshopper pass and see both parks). But more on that in the actual Disneyland post.

Santa Monica Pier

The Santa Monica Pier will be the final part of our USA Travel series, and I will show you many images taken here. It was nice to get back to the Pacific after a long trip through the desert. As with Disneyland, I will write about Santa Monica in a separate post, so you can look forward to that.


Only two more posts to go until we end our journey in the USA. Next up is our visit to Disneyland Park and the ultimate survival guide for it!

End of Part Thirteen
To be continued...

33 comments:

  1. Ich bin damals fast verrückt geworden bei dem Verkehr, aber wahrscheinlich ist es auch heute mit dem Straßensystem kein Vergleich mehr. Mit dem Hollywood-Sign habe ich auch so gemacht, da hoch..nee, das muss nicht. Bin allerdings froh das es immer noch steht. War ja schon einmal im Gespräch es abzureißen. Mit der Unterkunft finde ich ja klasse, mittendrin habt ihr echt toll vorbereitet und gebucht. Danke dir dafür dass du wieder so tolle Fotos eingestellt hast. Habe somit heute schon einen kleinen Urlaub gehabt.

    Wünsche dir einen tollen Tag und sende viele Grüsse

    N☼va

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    1. Danke Dir. Die Reise hatte ich über eine Monat lang geplant und zum Glück ist alles nach Plan verlaufen. LA bietet viele tolle Plätze die man Besuchen kann.

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  2. Great sights of a place that I only fly into and out of.

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    1. A shame you only fly in and out. Maybe you get to stay in the city soon. I'm sure you would like it.

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  3. Great post. You found the best of the best!

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  4. What a trip Mersad! I've never been that keen to visit the US but I do enjoy visiting through the lens of others :)

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    1. You simply have to visit one day. It was an amazing trip!

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  5. What a trip Mersad! I've never been that keen to visit the US but I do enjoy visiting through the lens of others :)

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  6. Another very interesting post in this series, Mersad. I'm not fond of big cities and avoid them when possible, much preferring nature. But that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate all the sights you've shared with us here. Among your many other talents, you'd make a good tour director. :)

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    1. Thanks Linda. I loved the smaller towns and nature on our road trip more, but changing it up was very important, and of course we couldn't miss out on LA when in California :)

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  7. You've captured LA and the area beautifully, as always, Mersad!! It's not a favorite place of mine in any way, although there are lots of lovely and interesting places around town! This series has been truly a delight and the next best thing to making the trip myself!! Thank you so much for sharing!! I hope you have a wonderful weekend!!

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  8. that is one awesome concert hall. i have never even seen a photo of it or heard of it. you did a beautiful job of capturing what you saw.

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  9. Hollywood has always been a bit seedy--- But, hey, it's Hollywood! I can't see the Observatory without thinking of James Dean and "Rebel Without A Cause".

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    1. There is definitely an oddity about Hollywood, something that pulls you back from it, but also draws you close.

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  10. Such a wonderful travelogue of LA!! Makes me want to visit!

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  11. Mersad, you covered a huge amount of ground in a very short time. Wow, I'm impressed you were able to see all these sights, and get beautiful photos. Bet you slept well at night. Many of the places you visited have been featured in Hollywood movies. Might be interesting to pair some of your photos with the movies shot there.

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    1. It took a lot of planing to be able to see so much in a short time, and we were lucky that our road trip plan went through without a hitch.

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  12. This is such fun. Have never been out west in the US. Love seeing it through your eyes. :)

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  13. It's funny but even though I've been to LA a number of times, the only ones of these that I've been to are the walk of fame and the Santa Monica pier. I found the walk of fame to be too crowded for my comfort level.

    You commented about my Photoshop actions. You can search out "create action in photoshop for signature" and then Windows or Mac and find tutorials. I like to batch process on 5 or 6 open files at a time, so I open my copyright+name graphic on the far right, select and copy it, and run my action. The first time I had to create it -- you may want to wait until 2016 since it's so near in the future if you plan to put in the year. Anyway, after copying the graphic into the clipboard, I basically recorded these steps: going to the previous image, sizing it down to 12 inches tall (since I printed at 18" tall), select an oblong area in the lower right corner, paste, and change layer mode to Screen. Then stop recording.

    Probably other people do it differently and explain it more clearly. Often I move the graphic if it doesn't show up on the background.

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    1. Thanks Linda. I will look into it online. Hopefully I can come up with something since I have so many images I this applies to.

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  14. A well done travel guide to LA supplemented by great photos!

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  15. Amazing how much you managed to see during your visit. I'm a local and I think you've seen more than I have!! Nice post.

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  16. The picture I love the most is the one of the pier ! The colors are great as well as the composition !

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  17. Great fun to see in photos, Mersad, but I still have no wish to visit LA. Too glitzy for my taste. :)

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  18. What a gorgeous trip! it looks like y'all had an amazing time! Thank you for sharing it with us at Photo Friday!

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  23. There is no doubt all of these are the best places to explore there and will try to visit by taking the west coast tour from san francisco.

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