Help. Plan to go for holiday next end Nov for 2 weeks with wife and daugthers of 16 and 11 and son of 8. This will be our first trip to Ca. Want to visit LA, LV, Grand Canyon, Yosemite and SF. Can we enjoying the trip without rent and drive a car, depend only on public transport? I never drive left hand drived car. From what city should we start; LA, LV or SV? I'll book open-jaw flight flight. Thanks for your advise.

This is a traditional California family drive vacation. I wouldn't advise doing it without a car, because it will be so much easier for you.

Having said that, you could use public transportation, but it will take so much longer, and will be mostly by bus. You might start in L.A., then take a plane to San Francisco, or if you have the time (12 hours), you can take the train. From there, you will have to take a bus to Yosemite, then another bus to Las Vegas. After that, to Grand Canyon, then flight home.

Bhakti I am not from California. You can organize package tours. I would check out the double decker tours that leave from each city. Find them on the web. I know San Francisco has them, my sister used them for the Muir Woods in August. They also service Yosemite and

Why not just aquaint yourself with left handed driving. Not so hard I only ever heard of youths having an issue with changing sides and (American kids)only late at night and after drinking.

Just a thought I am not a driver but I have plenty of friends who switch when they go to Europe and have to rent a car. A lot more freedom if you have your own car and I am thinking not so costly as managing a number of bus tours.

http://www2.etix.com/travel/servlet/onlineSale?action=viewTours&franchise_id=23

Grayline is one company and they are in a few places in California. Link above if it is too long for you just do a search on Grayline Worldwide.

If you don't want to drive you will have some problems doing all this using only public transportation. What I would suggest is taking a tour that covers all these spots. Look into Trafalgar, Globus or Collette. That way you wouldn't have to drive or rely on public transportation.

Your other choice would be to fly into San Francisco. Take Gray Line Tours of the city and Yosemite. Take Amtrak down to Los Angeles. Take a tour in LA. Gray Line no longer operates in LA, but there are other companies. Then take Amtrak to San Diego and Gray Line Tours around San Diego. I'm not sure if Amtrak operates between San Diego and Las Vegas so your choices would either be to take Greyhound (a bus company) or fly. Since flights are pretty cheap between San Diego and Vegas, I would fly. You can take a Gray Line Tour from Vegas to the Canyon. Then fly home from Vegas.

Have fun.

Bhakti,

Trying to see all of these places in 2 weeks without a car is next to impossible. Even with a car it will be difficult to be able to appreciate each area. Being that you will be in California in November, it will be better to focus your trip on Southern California (Los Angeles), Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, as well as Yosemite. There may be snow in Yosemite so that is something that you will have to consider when driving there. San Francisco is at least 8 hours from Los Angeles. Therefore Northern California (San Francisco, San Jose, Monterey, Carmel, Napa, and Sonoma) should be done on another trip since the weather in Northern California tends to be colder and rainier than in Southern California.

They rent lots of specialty cars in L.A., so I called Avis. They don't rent right hand drive cars in the U.S.

I lived L.A. for a couple of years and found that the driving there was apparently challenging for some of the locals.

Left hand drive, left side of the road. Nervous jet-lagged driver not familiar with the U.S. driving "courtesies"? A family of 5?

I understand that the L.A. to S.F. rail trip is a very scenic one. Flying a family of 5 would be expensive. Organized bus tour sounds right.

Thanks for all suggestion. I'll think it over again. How are public bus and underground services for transportation in LA, can we depend on it to move point to point? I read some poster suggest in other thread for not driving in LA, caused by it's complicated and parking will costly? In which parts of the trip itinerary we must rent car and drive? Appreciate for your further advise.

A good bet would be to sing up for an organized tour. Globus, Collette, Mayflower,Tauck....these are bus tour companies. They have web pages. I think they would have a tour that you like.