HELP!!! Visiting LA, Las Vegas, Washington and NY.

[thomasortega]

Hi Folks!

My boss, his wife and their daughter are going to enjoy their vacations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Washington and New York next August.

Would you please help them with informations about those cities, what they should visit and what they should avoid, best restaurant options, best hotel options and of course, the touristic sights.
The tour agent offered the Hilton hotel in Las Vegas, is it a good option? They still have time to cancel the reservations if they know a better option (cost x benefits)

They plan to spend 4 or 5 days in each city.

Also, they want to go from Washington to NYC by bus or car to know the American routes and enjoy the view. Can you suggest a bus company?

Also, please help them with overall tips. weather, shopping, the best outlet stores to buy clothes and some kitchen small appliances, etc.

Thank you very much in advance.

 

[panthera]

In August,

LA can be seriously hot.
New York is not only hot but muggy.
Washington DC is hot, muggy and it will rain.

Las Vegas will be hot and dry.

They should under no circumstances take standard American buses, they are hell-holes only for those who have no other option.

Las Vegas, NYC and DC all have fabulous exhibitions and concerts - they need to book them now.

Obviously, in LA the only thing really worth seeing is the Guggenheim, I'd fly into LA, go to the Guggenheim and fly out again immediately afterward. There, you've seen all of LA worth seeing. Better yet, buy the DVD and spend the extra time in Reno - great place.

Las Vegas is so wonderful, they may well want to stay there permanently. Again, find out who's performing what and when.

There are outstanding tours from LA to Las Vegas going through several national and state parks - well worth it.

New York City is beyond belief. They will need to plan in advance or they will only get to see 1/1000 of what's worth seeing...why not just skip LA? They can always go to some hell-hole pit of a big city in South America if they really want the feeling and save the time for Las Vegas. I usually have to be thrown out of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art...and Radio City Music Hall and and and and when I'm in NYC.

Washington DC is just as bad as New York City - too much to do, too little time, only you have to pay attention to where in the city you are. Except for the tourist areas, it is a very dangerous city. The National Art Gallery and the Smithsonians are far more interesting than the usual touristy stuff. Lincoln's Memorial moved me, the rest was just hubris.

I've driven that stretch - NYC to DC, it is a pleasant drive. Might be worth doing and detouring through some of the rural areas. Yeah, scratch LA and split the extra time between Las Vegas and that drive. But don't take a commercial bus. Or, go to San Francisco instead of LA. Now that is what an American city was meant to be.

 

[MikeS]

Heading To Vegas? Shop Around!

Vegas is a bargain for travelers right now. I would suggest to your boss that he get on one of the major travel sites or call some of the hotels on the Strip directly (the LV Hilton is NOT directly on the Strip; it's on Paradise Road, about a block or two east). Depending on the days and time he and his group stay, some of the hotels may be willing to cut room rates or offer perks such as restaurant meals, gambling money and show ticket discounts. Some of the resident headliners will cost an arm and a leg, but there are also kiosks on the Strip where you can get tickets to big shows for a fraction of the hotel's asking price. As for the hotels themselves, it's a matter of taste--but among resorts on the Strip, the ones owned by either Harrah's or MGM Mirage may be more willing to discount. Ditto independent but aging hotels such as the Sahara and Tropicana. But Vegas is one case where the Internet will be your best friend!

 

[revvinkevin]

Oh come on Keven, LA is not THAT bad... is it??

Yes the traffic can really suck (I know... I live here), but there are SO many different things to see and do here.

BTW Keven, CORRECTION: The Guggenheim is in Manhattan, New York. The museum here in LA you must be thinking of is The Getty Museum, which is perched high atop the hills and offers spectacular views of the LA basin. For those interested, plan on a full day at the Getty, there is so much to see!

Thomas, I suppose it really depends on what your boss and his family want to see and do. If they are just doing "the tourist thing" there are tons and tons of things to do and places to go.

Griffith Park and the Griffith Observatory
The Getty Museum
Amusement Parks - Disneyland, Universal Studios, Magic Mountain, Knott's Berry Farm and more.
Hollywood (Sunset Blvd, Graumans Chinese theater) etc., Santa Monica, Venice Beach, etc.
The Queen Many in Long Beach
1.5 hours south is San Diego… a very beautiful city. 2 hours east is Palm Springs.

Restaurants…. there are soooooooo many restaurants here, many good, others not. Being that the greater LA area is so culturally diverse, you can find almost any type of food from most parts of the globe.
IF they happen to like garlic…. there is a fun restaurant here called "The Stinking Rose.. a garlic restaurant". At least 95% of everything on the menu has garlic in it… and before you ask, yes they even have garlic ice cream! (It is different!)

There are many, many other things to do in LA as well, but this should be enough to get them started.

There are a number of websites you can search regarding tourist info for Los Angeles as well as Las Vegas, New York and Washington DC.

BTW, New York has an excellent subway system and it's very easy to get around. Unfortunately LA is just too spread out and they started there subway system about 100 years too late.

I hope this helps!

 

[hydralique]

Keven . . .

thanks for the hatchet job on LA . . . it's rather like saying that visitors to Munich should hit a beer hall and then get out of there. Yes, LA can be hot in August, but remember that greater LA includes a lot of beach area and that’s rarely uncomfortable.

Here are a few spots worth mentioning:

The Getty museums. There are two, the original Villa in Malibu (very south end of Malibu, a little south of Topanga Canyon on Pacific Coast Highway), and the newer, larger one in Brentwood on the 405. They’re only 20 minutes apart, but remember one must arrive in a cab or make reservations to park. Both offer world class art. Link: http://www.getty.edu/

LACMA and the Peterson: These are both on Wilshire just east of Fairfax. LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) has a variety of art, including the wonderful Japanese annex. This is housed in a special building designed by Bruce Goff, a fine mid-century architect who rarely did buildings outside of Oklahoma and the Midwest. LACMA link: http://www.lacma.org/

The Peterson is a large and very professional museum devoted to automobiles as art. They have a couple of floors of permanent exhibits, plus there is usually a visiting exhibit. If you like cars, this is a great place where you’ll see stuff normally found only in private collections. Link: http://www.petersen.org/

MOCA: MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) is located downtown, and their collection is self-explanatory. It’s a quick walk from the Disney Concert Hall, which is worth seeing as well. MOCA link: http://www.moca.org/

Sunset Strip: This is an acquired taste, but if one is into flashy nightlife then it will appeal. Located on Sunset in West Hollywood, just east of Beverly Hills. A very easy drive down Sunset from the main Getty on the 405.

Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica: Lots and lots of shops and restaurants here; it’s an old downtown shopping street that is restricted to pedestrians only. Located near the beach in Santa Monica, a nice place to spend an afternoon. It’s also near the Santa Monica Pier, and just a little north of Venice Beach. The latter is an LA institution, especially on a weekend afternoon.

There are plenty of restaurants everywhere, but one of my favorites is a tiny bistro called Le Petit Jardin. It’s at 1456 S. Robertson, just south of Pico Blvd. It’s not fancy and you have to bring your own bottle of wine, but the proprietors, Raul and Celine, are super nice and do all the cooking themselves. BTW, they are from South America but cook as well as the French

Orange County shouldn’t be left out either. There is Disneyland if you’re into that sort of thing, but my favorite place is the little city of Laguna Beach. It’s located south of Newport Beach and has what is probably the prettiest beach in California. The best place to stay is the Hotel Laguna. It’s been in the same building on the main beach since the ‘30s, so it’s not as fancy as newer hotels, but the view and location can’t be beat. It’s well worth the trip south from LA to spend a couple of days if you like beaches. Remember too that John Wayne airport is very near Newport, so it’s easy to fly into John Wayne, do the Orange County stuff, then drive to LA for the LA attractions and fly out of LAX.

Link to the Hotel Laguna:

Hotel Laguna

www.hotellaguna.com

 

[whirlcool]

And don't forget the Peterson Auto Museum on Wilshire Blvd. It's one of the nicest automobile museums I have ever seen. Definitely family fun.

My favorite period of LA was in the late 60's & early 70's. Everything was out in the open, not behind security bars & doors like it is now. I wonder how LA morphed into the city it is today?

Petersen Automotive Museum

petersen.org

 

[panthera]

Sorry, Kevin, Getty is right

My job required me to fly regularly from San Francisco to LA. It was a nightmare. I've lived in Berlin and NYC, traveled through pretty much every major city in Europe on foot, spent quite some time in Naples and Southern Italy...and never was I ever anywhere as full of violence and crime as LA.

Forgive me, but I really found the city appalling.

I know several nice people from LA, but gosh...only place I've ever felt I needed to be armed to just walk down the street.

 

[beadsobleach]

Vegas in August

As someone who lived and worked outdoors in Las Vegas, I would recommend indoor activities during the afternoon, unless you're use to blazing heat and microwave sidewalks. Lake Mead is nearby with some beaches there. Caesar's Palace was always one of my favorites for going through, it has a nice shopping arcade, and seeing the staff dressed as Romans is fun. The Liberace museum is worth a look too.

 

[rexaircollector]

YAY for LA!!

Keven,

Atlanta is much worse crime wise than LA will ever be. Having lived both places and grown up in LA, I feel safer there walking the streets at night than I do in Atlanta. Can't wait to get the hell out of here and when the economy affords me the opportunity, it's back to Cali again!

Robb

 

[panthera]

Let's focus on helping Thomas' boss' Family

have a great time and not on my preference for Atlanta to LA.

(Look, there's a reason I lived in San Francisco when I could have earned 40% more in LA.)

So let's just let it go at that, ok? Some folks love LA, great! Some folks don't.

And I really, really like Atlanta. I mean, when push comes to shove, all American cities have more crime individually than all of Germany and Italy together. That's just the way things are. Maybe if I were to give LA another try today, I might feel differently than I did in my early twenties.

But gosh, oh, golly, gee. I loved San Francisco from the very first moment I got there.

 

[jeffg]

Tom, I always enjoy reading reviews of L.A. from people who never lived there.

If you fly into LAX, stay anywhere in the L.A. Basin (especially downtown), and fly out again, you'll likely come away with an opinion similar to Keven's. But I lived there for 22 years and can tell you, if you actually learn about the area and know where to go, where to live, what to do etc, it's as close to paradise as anywhere else in the world. Even today, although I moved away from SoCal due to a job offer many years ago, I still consider it to be the center of the universe. If you're not in L.A., you're basically nowhere.

Just for starters, and depending on what your bosses interests are, have them check out Rodeo Drive, drive on Sunset Blvd. from the 405 freeway all the way to the beach, and while there check out Malibu, Zuma, Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, Manhattan Beach or one of two dozen other beaches in the area. Further south is Laguna Beach, which has an artist vibe all its own.

If beaches aren't their thing, they can check out the stars on Hollywood Blvd, take a tour of Universal Studios, drive down to Disneyland in Anaheim, or Knotts Berry Farm. If they're into movies, by all means have them check out the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood: 70mm films shown on three projectors on a wraparound, 86-foot wide movie screen. You haven't lived until you've seen "2001: A Space Odyssey" in 70mm on this screen.

If they don't like movies, there's also Chinatown, L.A. has one of the biggest and best farmer's markets in the world, or trek to Glendale to see the Huntington Library and Museum.

And this isn't even beginning to scratch the surface of L.A. What they should do really depends on what their interests are.

 

[panthera]

Thank you for another perspective, Jeff

"If you fly into LAX, stay anywhere in the L.A. Basin (especially downtown), and fly out again, you'll likely come away with an opinion similar to Keven's."Jeff

That is precisely my experience. My first visit, there were several gang related murders just down the street from our offices. Second day, bad car accident in front of my hotel - kids stripped the cars while the people trapped inside were bleeding.

It turned me off to LA completely. Of course, San Francisco already had me in her charms. I'll take your and Kevin's word for it - considering I'd just lived in NYC, it was not exactly as tho' I was naive...

 

[hydralique]

Oh my . . .

more disinformation here. There are plenty of places downtown and in the LA basin that aren't unusually dangerous. Just a few weeks ago I was at an evening concert at the Disney concert hall downtown. My friend and I walked (on city streets, no less!) to the parking garage and lived to tell about it, as did lots of other people. I used to regularly bar hop through Silverlake late at night and often alone. Never a problem there either. One of the loveliest neighborhoods in the city is Hancock Park, only a few miles from downtown. It's full of spectacular pre-war mansions, and even that close to downtown people still pay millions for a house there. I have an elderly, disabled client who's lived in the same house in Hancock Park for 30 or so years, and doesn't even have an alarm system. He's right down the street from George Takei and his partner, who presumably could live elsewhere if they wished. Other nice places in the LA basin include the Westside, most of Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, etc.

According to the Census Bureau, the LA-Long Beach-Santa Anna metopolitan area encompasses 4850 square miles, and has nearly 13 million people. That's not including San Bernardino, Riverside or Ventura. That's more land mass than some countries, and more people than many countries, so of course we have bad neighborhoods, as do New York, San Francisco, and even Atlanta. It's OK to not like LA, some days I don't like it either, but it's really not fair to paint a slanted picture of a mostly ordinary American city with all the good and bad that implies.

 

[panthera]

I think it's all a matter of perspective

It's all personal. I do apologize to those Los Angelenos here whom I've offended - and can we now please, please please stop defending LA and start giving recommendations on what to do in the 'States?
My trips to LA from San Francisco were, to put it mildly, culture shock. Remember, I lived in the Marina in San Francisco and this was pre-aids San Francisco to boot. Peace, love, happiness...compared to, can we agree, not perhaps the very best part of LA? During my time in California, everyone from all our offices had to do the once-a-month thingy in LA. We averaged two attacks per month from ~50 visits per month. Can you see why that might have jaundiced my views?

To return to which, just how much time do they have in all and which routes must they fly? A drive from LA to Las Vegas at that time of year will be demanding, but very very enticing. Just think of all the National Parks along the way.

 

[appliguy]

Panthera...it does not always rain in DC in August

I have lived in the Metro DC area since I was born and while it will surely be hot and muggy it does not always rain in DC in August. We do have some thunderstorms but its not like you gotta call Noah and borrow the ark......PAT COFFEY

 

[panthera]

Pat,

Tell you what - I will be in DC in August-. What you wanna bet? I'm batting 100% so far for my DC visits. Which I love.

Wasn't a criticism. Just reminding Thomas that even in summer, DC can have wet weather.

 

[dogboy44]

Where did you spend your time in LA Panthera?

Our city is huge, if you went to NY and spent all your time in the South Bronx, or went to DC and spent your time in SE, I wonder if your report would be so glowing? Please tell us, we Angelinos would love to know what we are being judged on. Las Vegas, once you leave the strip, is a pretty normal city, with plenty of areas that are no big deal at all. Answer me, I want to know.

 

[panthera]

dogboy44

you made your drift perfectly clear with the "answer me".

I already apologized.

You'll get nothing more out of me.

Why don't you focus on telling Thomas about all the wonderful things his boss should do in LA?

 

[sudsman]

I have been to LA 3 times and the wonderful thing about it

WAS LEAVING!