Qustion about LA
 

My daughter wants to visit LA over her break. But I have heard this area is bad. Is this true? Are there any area's to avoid? Any must see's? She loves the whole movie experience.

Why do all of the LA related questions continue to refer to the bad areas? If the place was so bad, why do you think that we have one of the highest tourism rates in the world? Trust me, LA in December can't be beat! It's 80 degrees today with bright blue skies. <BR> <BR>Yes, there are bad neighborhoods, but that is true of all large cities. Obviously it all depends on which area your daughter intends on staying in. How old is she? Is she traveling alone? What's her budget? What does she want to see while she's here? Keep in mind that LA is a large urban sprawl and most tourists cover many areas of Southern California on their visits. <BR> <BR>If she enjoys the movie experience, she might want to look into getting tickets to a studio tour as well as a trip to Universal Studios.

Just make sure that she rents a car. It's basically impossible to get around in LA without one. Well, it is possible, but difficult and expensive. When I was in college my friends and I stayed in LA and didn't rent a car until the last day we were there (we're from Chicago, and just assumed all big cities have great public transportation. It was our first trip out West). Were we ever wrong. Well, we decided to go to Long Beach on the train. We got there had a great time, we left after sunset, and on the way home, the train goes through Compton. We got trash-talked by a group of what look liked female gang members, but they were harmless....luckily that was the extent of it. When we got off the train at night in downtown LA, there was absolutely no one around. Downtown L.A. is dead at night--it's just a business area. We had to catch the bus, but it wasn't coming and we basically found ourselves in an awful area downtown surrounded by drug dealers/buyers. Not a fun experience. So yeah, we were very, very stupid thinking we could just get around via public transportation in LA at night, but we've learned our lesson. Luckily, there was four of us--safety in numbers! But the day we rented the car was great. We stayed on Sunset Boulevard, very touristy and populated, and also stayed around Beverly Hills which was fun. <BR> While we were there, we went to Mann's Chinese theater and got tickets to see a taping of a sitcom (there are guys who give out tickets to fill out seats of different sitcoms). That was really cool. Tell her to send for tickets to see Jay Leno, we wanted to do that when we were there, but it was already too late. If she researches a little about LA before she goes, unlike we did (we pretty much went blindly), she will have a great time. Tell her to go to Long Beach (a little more upper class neighborhood, but the beach isn't that great) and Venice Beach (very Hippie-ish, but great beach. She will see surfers, lots of little shops), both places are very cool though, just don't take the train there. <BR>Hope this helps a bit. Don't stop her from going though, my friends and I had the best time when we went. We went during Spring Break too. We found a really cheap flight on Southwest, although they made like 4 stops before getting to LA, but with our budgets, it was worth it.

Long Beach - upper class? Not quite. Some areas are actually quite seedy. It's ok for the day, but there are far nicer beach communities in Southern California.

thanks for the response

Even most of the beach areas of Long Beach are SEEDY and unattractive!! Avoid it if you can!!!