California

" Welcome to the Hotel California ,
such a lovely place, such a loving face , there 's plenty of room at the Hotel California , any time of year, you can find it here ..." Hotel California, The Eagles " If you think you might come to California , I think you should ..." A Long December, Counting Crows If you want to visit California, this page is absolutely indispensable ! To see the printable pages, click here.

Introduction

I can say out of my own experience: California is an amazing state; one you cannot afford to miss. There are great differences in landscape and weather: one moment you are in the dryness and the heat of Death Valley, and the other moment you 'll have to put on extra clothes because you find yourself in the cold snow of the Sierra Nevada.

             California is the 3rd biggest state of the US with a surface of 156.256 mi² or 404.808 km². However, it is the most important one; in the past with the goldrush (California was called "the Golden State") as well as in the present, with a flourishing economy and with huge cities like L.A., San Francisco, San Diego and the capital Sacramento. California has the largest population of all American States: 30 million people.
             It has also many extremities: the lowest point, Badwater Bassin, with its 292 feet or 89 m below sealevel, lies in Death Valley and is only 87 mi or 140 km away of the highest point of the US (outside Alaska): Mount Whitney (14491 feet or 4418 m above sealevel) ! You can find also 'extreme trees of the world' in this state; the oldest: Methusalah of 4600 years old; the biggest: General Sherman Tree with its trunk of 272 feet or 83 m high and its circumference of 79 feet or 24 m; and the tallest: Tall Tree with its height of 376 feet or 112 m.
             The northern part of California is mostly known for the vineyards, forests and lakes, but the central and southern part exist mainly out of deserts, mountains and plains containing almost all the big cities.

There are 2 ways to visit this page:
   1. You just read all of it; a journey of about 15 days, starting in Los Angeles through San Diego, Las Vegas and
        ending in San Francisco.
   2. You just click one of the links below to the city, town, National Park, ... you're interested in. To go back to this
        page, use the 'back'-button of your browser.

            Los Angeles                                                                                    Death Valley
            San Diego                                                                                       Mono Lake + Bodie (Ghost Town)
            Palm Springs + Joshua Tree National Monument                           Yosemite National Park
            Las Vegas                                                                                        Monterey + Carmel
            Grand Canyon + Hoover Dam                                                        San Francisco

1) Los Angeles

If you're making a 15-days tour in California, 3 days in Los Angeles still are a minimum to be able to visit the most important sights of this huge city. When you're lucky enough to arrive in LA by plane just an hour before sunset, even your pilot, who has flown this traject probably a hundred times, will proudly report that you're flying now over LA, the weather is very nice, about 80 degrees F (26°C) and that, on you're right, you can see the skyline of downtown Los Angeles. And out of your plane window you would see all the little houses, never ending (about 9 million people live in LA), all those blue shining pools, reflecting the light of the setting sun, and a few miles away you'd see the silhouettes of the high buildings that rise above the city...
High buildings in Downtown LA

There are a few things you just can't miss out on during your visit of LA. For instance:

a) beaches

        At Venice Beach you can lie or walk along miles of beautiful "blue-sky" beaches with a lot of little shops at the edge of the beach. In a special part, called "Muscle Beach", all the future Schwarzeneggers and Van Dammes are working out and showing off to the girls.
        At Santa Monica Beach you can find many beautiful palm trees. The Santa Monica Pier may be very famous, but in fact California has other, far more beautiful piers than that one, for example in San Francisco.
        When you've got to choose between those 2 beaches, just take Venice Beach. Santa Monica's more famous, but it certainly has known better times in the past.

b) the movies

Always wanted to know how and where moviestars live? Just take a ride with your car through all the streets of Beverly Hills and admire their beaurtiful villas. On the street corners near the border of Beverly Hills or in Hollywood, you can buy a map that indicates where your favourite movie star lives. Of course you can also take one of the 'guided tours' through Beverly Hills on a tourist bus on which you'll get the same information as on the map. Also worth a visit: the Beverly Hills Hotel, built in 1912. In its Polo Lounge a lot of movie contracts have been and are still being made.
If you'd like to run into someone famous, just go walking on Rodeo Drive, where all the celebrities go shopping.

Then there's Hollywood.
Although it has become an impoverished neighbourhood, it lies very beautifully in the hills of LA. On Hollywood Boulevard you can find 'The Walk Of Fame', all the famous stars their names written in the red stars on the sidewalk. Really cool, but quite long if you want to read every single one of them! Mann's Chinese Theatre is also great; not for the fake Chinese architecture, but for the hand- and footprints in concrete of famous people like Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee and Doris Day. Not far from this theatre you can also visit the Museum of famous people in Wax and the Guinness Records Museum.

Last but certainly not least: Universal Studios! This really is worth the entrance fee. Get a terrific 3D-experience at the Terminator 2 attraction, become really wet while admiring Jurrasic Park sets and get the ultimate experience during the Back To The Future ride! When you just want to ease down, you can go sit in a little train and take a look at a lot of sets of famous movies and series like Matlock, Back To The Future, Psycho and many others! You also get to know how some special effects work. For example, you can watch a metro-tunnel collapse or see the streets suddenly turn into a river raging down on the train you're sitting in! To visit Universal Studios profoundly, you'll certainly need a whole day.

c) downtown

You can't leave Los Angeles without having driven between the buildings of downtown. Just take the freeway Downtown and make sure you enter Downtown on Willshire Bld. That way you get a beautiful view of the buildings.
Just drive around in Downtown to let the atmosphere get to you...

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