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| LA
is the quintessential American 21st century city, embracing
and absorbing everything in its path – from culture to food to people.
LA is America’s Dream Factory with the fantasy that here you can reinvent
yourself and anything is possible. It’s cosmopolitan, quaint, crazy, quiet
sophisticated, down-home and everything in between. Kola Nut Travel knows
LA and we can assist you in finding a hotel convenient to where you want
to go and what you want to see and do. |
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Kola
Nut also offers a special programme for those who are interested
in demographics and the economic base of the African American Community
– called the Black Angelenos Tour. Click here for details. |
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| Geographically,
LA County encompasses hundreds of suburbs and cities. Los Angeles itself
is just the ‘downtown’ area and maybe 10 miles west. For example, Beverly
Hills is really its own city, but outside of city politics, no one really
makes that distinction. So when it comes down to the whole area, just call
it all LA. |
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| Area-by-area,
here is the essence of LA. Glendale is home to DreamWorks and Nickelodeon,
while nearby Burbank features NBC Studios, Warner Brothers, CBS and Universal.
A few miles south is Hollywood and the landmark Capitol Records building.
At Hollywood & Vine you find Graumann’s Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood
Walk of Fame. Nearby is the Kodak Theatre and Paramount Studios. East of
Burbank is Pasadena and the famous Rose Bowl flea market. |
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| Downtown
is fairly deserted on the weekends. The Museum of Contemporary Art is here
as is the new Frank Gehry Disney Symphony Hall. Other architectural showpieces
include the Italian Renaissance-style Biltmore Hotel, the Beaux Arts-style
Central Library, and the Mission-style Union Station that captures the
heyday of train travel. |
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| Beverly
Hills is a timeworn cliché but it’s also all true. The
streets are filled with Bentley’s and Ferrari’s. There are gorgeous women
walking French poodles wearing diamond collars and other excesses. Rodeo
Drive is only a few blocks long – not as ritzy and unique as before but
still the embodiment of the leisure life. Above Santa Monica Blvd is where
the mansions start. Buy a star map to catch some older star homes. |
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| West
of the 405 Freeway is Santa Monica, a center of immense economic
diversity with its own neighborhoods. For teens and tourists, the mall,
the Santa Monica Pier and the boardwalk are big draws. South of Santa Monica
is Venice Beach (Muscle Beach). On the weekdays Venice is frequented by
one-man shows of all types with musicians and street-magicians all along
the boardwalk. North of Santa Monica is the coastal residential area of
Pacific Palisades. The Getty Villa Museum is north of Pacific Palisades
on the Pacific Coast Highway. |
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| And
there is still a lot more to discover and explore: more beaches,
more towns … Malibu, Long Beach with the Queen Mary cruise ship and Howard
Hughes’ “Spruce Goose” airplane, Orange County with Disneyland, and gateways
to mountain and desert areas such as Joshua National Forest and Death Valley.
You could spend weeks in LA and never exhaust all the possibilities. |
