The best of La-La Land resumes, full steam ahead, with some of the best attractions in sunny California.
A lot of us have love-hate relationships with theme parks. Some of the rides are awesome but the other amusement park experiences, from obnoxious crowds, long lines, ridiculous prices for admission, food and drink, are utter killjoys. But hey, if you have a family, Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, Six Flags or Knott’s Berry Farm could be the remedy to shut the kids up and have some mindless fun.
In the same vein as Universal Studios, a studio tour that became a theme park, old school, traditional studio tours still exist in Hollywood. One of the best is the two hour tour on tap at Paramount. One of the original grand studios, Paramount offers no flash, corny rides or pyrotechnics. Instead, visitors get realistic insight into the functions of a real-live Hollywood factory, with access to backlots and soundstages. The only downside is that the tour only scratches the surface. The Warner Bros VIP Tour is another superb studio pass that remains one of the best-kept tourist secrets in Los Angeles.
The University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California are two of the best institutions in the United States in terms of academics, athletics and research. Together, UCLA and USC have a student body of almost 80,000. Not only are their campus grounds beautiful and spread out all over the city, they make for great escapes. Both schools offer terrific tours of the grounds, with student guides that provide cool history lessons on their alma maters.
The California Science Center is a great interactive museum not far from downtown Los Angeles. With IMAX theater and a slew of educational, fun and tactile exhibits, the center offers all sorts of family fun to while away a good part of the day. Like many museums, this one is also thankfully free.
Early California settlement and Los Angeles in particular has a special connection to Mexico. You can learn all about it at the Pueblo de Los Angeles Historic Monument on Olvera Street. The area is full of historic structures that harken back to traditional adobe design and boasts a fantastic marketplace that features wares from Mexico. You can either stroll and shop on your own or take a tour of the entire site and discover the history behind the district and the people who built it. Olvera is the oldest part of downtown Los Angeles and as such, offers a peerless glimpse into the city. Vibrant and full of life, the area is electric at festive celebrations, like Cinco de Mayo for example. Although the image Olvera presents of old Mexico is quaint and waxes nostalgic, the homage is nonetheless noble and worth a special visit.
Well, fossils to be exact. California is one of the most fossil-rich areas in the world, at least in terms of archaeological discovery. The La Brea tar pits that comprise the Page Museum in Los Angeles are perhaps the best collection in North America of excavated prehistoric treasures. The park that contains the tar pits is free to anyone who wants to wander about and explore. However, if you want to see authentic fossils post-excavation and preservation, check out the Page Museum. Adjacent to the park, the museum has the best and most diverse collection of Ice Age plant and animal specimens in the world, all of which hail from La Brea. Museum admission allows visitors to get up close to scientists as they work on actual fossils from the tar pits.
The Museum of Tolerance is a unique experience located at the headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. Although the predominant emphasis is on the Holocaust, the museum strives to teach about tolerance and the roots of prejudice with a variety of historical tools and references. The exhibit that draws the most attention with visitors is the Holocaust Section, where some of the horrors of Nazi crimes come to life in stark fashion and testimonials from survivors, sometimes in person, appear. While there has been some criticism about the reliance on multimedia rather than static exhibits, works of art and historical artifacts, the Museum of Tolerance provides a powerful message no matter your take.
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How about Route 66 as a place in LA to visit? It’s well worth the time, effort, and gas. Along the Route 66 corridor in Los Angeles County alone you get standard road fare: gas (Shamrock Station in Monrovia), food (The Raymond in Pasadena, Mom’s Tamales in Lincoln Heights, Irv’s Burgers in West Hollywood), and lodging (Aztec Hotel in Monrovia).
You also get your standard road items including the first freeway west of the Mississippi River, the only vehicular tunnels on Route 66, the Colorado Street “Suicide” Bridge, and the oldest still-in-use bridge along Route 66.
Top all of that off with 35 National Register of Historic Places Landmarks that include the oldest museum in Los Angeles (The Southwest Museum of the American Indian), the Rose Bowl, Old Pasadena Historic District, the state theater in the Pasadena Playhouse District, and one of the first drive-through markets in Southern California (El Centro Market in South Pasadena), and you have a few days’ worth of adventure in one trip.