Los Angeles, CA, USA
Once a sleepy Western outpost, it is now the world’s entertainment center, a sprawling, star-struck city, where every waiter is a really an actor. The city looks like it could be the set of several different movies at once—travel from one side to another and you’ll find desert, mountains, woods, beaches, gated residences and housing projects. The City of Angels is many things all at once, a multi-ethnic melting pot where cultures and ideas meet, but the city’s main raison d’être is spelled out on that big sign in the hills behind you. That’s right. This is Hollywood.
Start at the Hollywood History Museum, in a pretty Art Deco building, where posters, costumes, autographs and props tell the Hollywood saga from the invention of moving pictures to The End. No star-visibility today? Gaze at your favorite stars at the Hollywood Wax Museum, or spot them in the pavement at the Walk of Fame, along Hollywood Boulevard. Stop in front of the Kodak Theater, where the Oscars are handed out, and practice your acceptance speech with a souvenir statuette in hand. Take a guided tour of Paramount Studios, the only major studio still in Hollywood, or head out to Burbank, for a tour of Tinseltown’s other studios, including Warner Brothers and Universal Studios. Or head a little further, to Paramount Ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains, the location of many of the studio’s old westerns. Want to see how the stars live? Go for a drive past the gated homes of Brentwood and Beverly Hills, or do some window shopping along Rodeo Drive. Prefer the sun to the stars? Head down to Venice Beach, where the dolphins play out at sea, or to Santa Monica Pier, where a Ferris wheel lights up the night. The possibilities in this glittering city are endless. So go on, have some fun until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard.
