Where to Go
Many Californians would like to divide their state into two new states, Northern and Southern California — corresponding to what they believe to be two distinct frames of mind as represented by San Francisco and Los Angeles. In fact you will find a little bit of both — San Francisco’s sophistication and Los Angeles’ sunny craziness — all over the place.
Our journey begins with San Francisco and its nearby attractions and works its way down the coast to Los Angeles and San Diego before heading inland to the mountains and deserts of the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley. You can turn this itinerary upside down if you prefer, but either way, you should also consider making an excursion to Las Vegas, California’s favorite out-of-state playground.
You can get to almost all these places by train or bus, and air travel is quite cheap. However, the car is king, and it’s difficult to enjoy the full scope of this vast and varied landscape without driving. San Francisco is unusual for California in that it is a walker’s town, with buses and cable cars to help you up and down the hills. Los Angeles is undeniably car country, though it is trying to alleviate its congestion and pollution by building a light-rail network. Out-of-town attractions such as the national parks, and especially Death Valley, are most easily reached by car, although once there it’s more rewarding to leave your vehicle behind and explore on foot.
San Francisco
San Franciscans are quite unashamedly in love with their town. Its natural setting, nestled in the hills around the bay, makes the city uncommonly cozy; the zip in the air is invigorating, and even the fog that rolls in off the ocean seems more romantic than chilling. If you have a car, one way to begin your visit is to travel along 49-Mile Drive, which provides a comprehensive tour of the main sights. You’ll need to use a good map, as the blue signposts with a white seagull in the center can be difficult to locate. Stop off at Twin Peaks (the road to get there starts near the southern end of Market Street) for an excellent panoramic view of the city and the bay, then park the car, put on a pair of comfortable walking shoes, and take to the city’s first-class public transport system (see page 120).
Start at the bridge. The city has more than one, but the one is, of course, the Golden Gate Bridge. The name Golden Gate was given to the city’s harbor entrance in 1846 by Captain John Frémont, but the mile-wide channel lay unspanned until the bridge, a masterpiece of engineering by Joseph Strauss, was completed in 1937. At 4,200 ft (1,280 m), it was the world’s longest single span until New York’s Verrazano Narrows Bridge surpassed it in 1964, but few would deny that it remains the most beautiful suspension bridge in the world. It took four years and $35 million to build; more than 40 million vehicles now cross over the span every year. You can take a bus to the bridge entrance and then walk across — it’s just as exciting an urban adventure as climbing up the Eiffel Tower or the Empire State Building. The bridge trembles underneath your feet, and the lamp-posts rattle as the wind whistles through swooping cables. But don’t worry — the 746-ft- (227-m-) high towers are well embedded in earthquake-proof foundations.
Visible in the distance is the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, known locally as just the Bay Bridge. This silver-gray structure swings across to Oakland via two suspension spans, a cantilever span, and a tunnel through Treasure Island. It’s the bridge you’ll take to go to Berkeley (see page 40) and is one of the routes to the wine country of Napa and Sonoma (see page 41).
Beneath the south end of the Golden Gate is Fort Point National Historic Site, the site of the brick fort built in 1857 to protect the entrance to the harbor. You can now watch surfers brave the waves here. The fort lies within the grounds of the 1,480-acre (597-hectare) Presidio, a former army post that was converted to civilian use in 1994.
You can stroll down to the yacht harbor along Marina Boulevard, which fronts a mile-long walkway popular with joggers. On your way, you’ll pass the Palace of Fine Arts, a restored relic of the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. The building’s Greco-Romanesque rotunda contrasts with the technological wizardry inside the Exploratorium — a modern hands-on science museum with changing exhibits that feature all kinds of natural phenomena.
The great age of sail is commemorated along the Hyde Street Pier by the majestic lines of the square-rigged ship Balclutha, and the many other exhibits of the National Maritime Museum. The museum can be reached from downtown by way of the Powell-Hyde cable car line.
The other main cable car route, the Powell-Mason line, terminates at one of San Francisco’s — and California’s — most popular sights, Fisherman’s Wharf. Geared more today toward tourists than fishing, the area offers a dozen or more seafood restaurants, as well as garish knick-knack shops and sweatshirt emporiums. Seafood stands line the wharfside — though the fish is very likely to be imported — and there are two shopping centers, Ghirardelli Square, a converted red-brick former chocolate factory (there are good free concerts summer weekends), and The Cannery, once a fruit-processing plant. The ferry to Alcatraz leaves from Pier 41 at the east end of the wharf. Pier 39 consists of two levels of open-air shopping and snacking, an arcade, and of course the famous sea lions who lounge and argue on platforms all day long to the delight of the crowds. Just follow the barking noises.
Alcatraz
Of the many cruises you can take on San Francisco Bay, the most entertaining is a trip to the abandoned prison island of Alcatraz. The name is a distortion of the Spanish Isla de Alcatraces (Pelican Island). National Park Rangers offer informative and witty self-guided audio tours around the former home of Al Capone as well as other convicts such as Robert Stroud, the famous “Birdman of Alcatraz.”
A 12-acre (4.8-hectare) rock with no cultivable soil, all the earth and water for the shrubs and trees here had to be shipped in by the US Army, for whom it had been a “disciplinary barracks” until 1934. Separated from mainland San Francisco by 11⁄2 miles (2.4 km) of treacherous, ice-cold water, haunted by sharks and dangerous currents, it was the ideal location for America’s most notorious federal penitentiary. However, it proved enormously expensive to run, and was closed down in 1963.
You will see what “maximum security, minimum privilege” meant for Alcatraz’s 300 inmates, each one alone in a tiny cell, with three 20-minute recreation periods each day. There were “luxuries” — hot showers so that inmates would be unable to acclimatize themselves to cold water and survive the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay, as well as remarkably good food. One inmate returning for the guided tour — surprisingly, some do, out of nostalgia — said the food was better than he had eaten in many San Francisco hotels. The prisoners named the cell rows after elegant streets of America such as New York’s Park Avenue, L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard, and Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The gangster Al Capone’s cell was on “B” Block, 2nd tier, number 200.
The Hills
There are around 40 of them, and they’re steep — it’s been said that if you get tired walking around San Francisco you can just lean against it — but you don’t have to tackle them all on foot. A tour of Nob Hill (from California Street or by Powell-Hyde cable car), Telegraph Hill (bus), and Russian Hill (Powell-Hyde cable car) will give you a good sense of the past and present splendors of San Francisco’s more wealthy residents.
The cable cars were installed in 1873 by British-born engineer Andrew Hallidie; one of the originals can still be seen in the fascinating Cable Car Barn and Museum at Washington and Mason streets, which is also the system’s working powerhouse. The hand-made cars are the city’s best-loved attraction, and the system was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.
The monumental Victorian houses of Nob Hill — home of the “nobs,” possibly a derivation of “nabobs” — burned down in the 1906 earthquake, and only the imposing brownstone house of James Flood, now the very exclusive Pacific Union Club, survived. Sadly, you won’t be able to get in, but you can loiter (with appropriate decorum) in the area’s two landmark hotels, the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins, both at the top of California Street. The panoramic view from the bars in the Crown Room or the Top of the Mark is well worth the stiff price of a drink.
Grace Cathedral, at the corner of California and Jones, is not an especially happy neo-Gothic effort, but it is worth a look in passing for its Ghiberti doors — bronze reproductions of the Baptistery East Doors in Florence — a remarkable example of San Francisco’s continuing romance with Europe. You may also be impressed by the 12 stained-glass windows dedicated to “Human Endeavor” depicting, among others, Albert Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Henry Ford.
Russian Hill is less opulent than Nob Hill, but the gardens and immaculate little cottages of this fashionable residential area make it far more appealing.
The roller-coaster dips and crests of the city’s hills, breaking up the monotony of the standard grid system of streets, reach a crazy climax on Lombard Street between Hyde and Leavenworth. After you’ve negotiated all eight hairpin bends lined with gardens of hydrangeas, you’re not going to quibble about the claim that it’s the “crookedest street in the world.” Two blocks south is Filbert Street, boasting the steepest slope — a stomach-churning 31.5 percent gradient, with no bends.
It is worth climbing to the top of Telegraph Hill for the view of the bay from the top of Coit Tower, built in 1934 to honor the city’s fire department. One of San Francisco’s many landmarks, its shape is not meant to resemble the nozzle of a fire hose, as is so often reported. Inside you will find Socialist Realist murals depicting “Life in California, 1934.” Take a look at the cottages and gardens around the Greenwich Steps, clinging to the steep slope overlooking the bay — this is one of the city’s most desirable addresses.
Downtown
Market Street forms the main axis of San Francisco’s city center, and halfway along, at the Powell Street cable car terminus, is the San Francisco Visitors Information Center (see page 123), where you can pick up a free map before you set off to explore the surrounding area.
A few blocks along Powell Street is Union Square, the heart of downtown’s shopping and theater district. Here you can browse in specialty shops, fashionable boutiques, and department stores, such as the famous Macy’s.
Head down to Montgomery Street, the heart of San Francisco’s financial district, also known as the “Wall Street of the West.” This area was founded on the profits of the 1849 Gold Rush (see page 16), and is now bristling with skyscrapers of chrome and glass. Take a look at the Old Coin and Gold Exhibit at the Bank of California (400 California Street), with its collection of gold coins and currency, or the Wells Fargo History Room in the Wells Fargo Bank (420 Montgomery Street), which displays Gold Rush memorabilia, including one of the original Wells Fargo stagecoaches. You’re not likely to miss the Transamerica Pyramid, a 853-ft- (256-m-) tall building with a 212-ft (64-m) spike, at the corner of Montgomery and Washington. It’s one of those buildings that purists start off hating because it clashes with the “spirit” of San Francisco, and then defend in the next generation as the very epitome of its age. If it’s time for lunch or dinner, head to Belden Alley (between Bush, Pine, Kearny, and Montgomery streets), where you’ll find an entire block of excellent restaurants, all with outdoor seating
Walk the few blocks uphill to Grant Street and suddenly you’re in Chinatown. This compact district has evolved from a ghetto (imposed on the Chinese in the 19th century by the city’s founders) into a local economic and political force. There are more than 150,000 Chinese living in the city, making it the second-largest Chinese community outside of Asia (New York’s is first). Chinatown is bounded by Broadway, Bush, Kearny, and Stockton, with the eight blocks along Grant Avenue making up its colorful center.
At the Bush Street end of Grant Avenue, you will enter Chinatown through the ornamental Chinatown Gate. The shops, restaurants, and street signs all have an English translation beside the Chinese characters for the benefit of tourists, but the banks, travel agencies, and law offices don’t always make the same concession. Not that you won’t see the influence of American culture in institutions such as the Catholic St. Mary’s Chinese School at Clay and Stockton, or in the neo-Gothic Old St. Mary’s Church.
Portsmouth Square, between Clay and Washington streets, was the city’s original town square, where Sam Brannan announced the discovery of gold in 1848 (see page 16). But what really grabs your attention is the chatter of Chinese voices, the crowds, the color, the smells of five-spice and dried shrimp — it’s a little corner of Hong Kong right in the middle of California.
At Columbus Avenue, Chinatown spills over into North Beach, a Little Italy of cafés, bakeries, restaurants, grocery stores, and coffee houses. This lively neighborhood, the center of the Italian community, was once the focus of the city’s intellectual and artistic life. From the days when the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti gathered fellow Beats around his City Lights Bookstore during the 1950s, North Beach has been a hangout for the bohemian literary crowd. City Lights (261 Columbus Avenue; open daily until midnight) opened in 1953 and was America’s first paperback bookshop. It’s still going strong today.
Once you’ve bought your copy of On the Road, cross Jack Kerouac Street and settle down with your purchase over a drink at Vesuvio’s, another famous literary hangout. Or if it’s a sunny day, buy a sandwich from a delicatessen and enjoy a picnic on Washington Square, a splash of green overlooked by the white spires of the Church of Saints Peter and Paul, where Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were married in 1954.
The area around the south end of Columbus Avenue was once known as the Barbary Coast, a seedy and boisterous waterfront district, with sailors on shore leave haunting the bars and brothels, while their captains shanghaied drunken civilians to make up lost crew. The Barbary Coast was burned down after the Great Earthquake of 1906, but its tawdry tradition lives on in the (now ever-dwindling) number of topless bars and strip clubs along Broadway.
Rather more highbrow entertainment is on offer in the angle between Market Street and Van Ness Avenue, where there is a sprawling complex of municipal, state, and federal buildings known collectively as the Civic Center. It was initiated during a burst of city planning after the 1906 earthquake, and the early structures — note especially the black-and-gold-domed, recently renovated City Hall — form the finest grouping of French Renaissance–style architecture in the country. Opposite City Hall are the twin façades of the Veterans’ Building and the War Memorial Opera House, where, in 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed; plus the curved glass front of the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, home of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
The district to the south of Market Street was once an area of slums, warehouses, and railroad yards, but redevelopment combined with low rents have gentrified the area. SoMa, as it is known (short for South of Market), is now home to the lovely Yerba Buena Gardens, Moscone Convention Center, Sony Metreon entertainment/shopping complex, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The surrounding streets have become the focus for restaurants, nightlife, and many an Internet start-up.
Golden Gate Park
Escape from the downtown skyscrapers by taking the number 5 Fulton Street bus to Golden Gate Park. The park was once a wasteland of sand dunes and scrub, but it was then transformed into lush parkland by the efforts of John McLaren, the park superintendent for 50 years, until his death in 1943.
Today the park is a delightful landscape of woods, rhododendron groves, small lakes, and hills, with an arboretum, botanic gardens, sports fields, bicycle routes, riding stables, buffalo paddock, and hiking trails. At the eastern end there’s a wonderful children’s playground, and the Conservatory of Flowers, a Victorian glasshouse from Britain that remains in disrepair after a particularly violent storm a few years ago.
Beyond the park lies the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, famous as the scene of the 1960s “Summer of Love,” when thousands of flower-children flocked into the city. Today you are more likely to spot yuppies than hippies shopping in the clothing boutiques and record stores, although a number of homeless youth and posturing teens hang out on the sidewalks seeking spare change. For a guided tour of the high points, check out the 2-hour Haight-Ashbury Flower Power Walking Tour offered Tuesdays and Saturdays at 9:30am (Tel. 415/221-8442).
Situated within the park are three major museums clustered around the Music Concourse. The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum has an impressive selection of African Art and of works by Titian, El Greco, and Rembrandt. However, it is better known for its outstanding collection of North American art from 1670 to the 20th century.
The Asian Art Museum next door exhibits over 10,000 magnificent art treasures, donated to San Francisco in 1966 by Avery Brundage; it will relocate to the old public library building in 2001. Across the way you will find the California Academy of Sciences, housing an excellent natural history museum, an aquarium, and a planetarium.
The western end of the park boasts two turn-of-the-century windmills that overlook the surf at Ocean Beach. Chilly water and dangerous currents make this more a beach for strollers, sunbathers, and experienced surfers — swimming is sternly discouraged. The northern end of the beach is overlooked by the Cliff House. The present building was built in 1909 and now houses restaurants serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner (the food isn’t highly recommended), a bar (drinks at sunset are a better idea), and the Musée Mécanique, one of the largest privately owned collections of old-fashioned coin-operated arcade novelties in the world. Admission is free, but a pocketful of quarters will be useful. There is also a fine view of Seal Rocks and, on a clear day, you can see as far as the Farallon Islands, lying 30 miles (48 km) offshore.
The Bay Area and Beyond
The City of San Francisco covers only about 46 square miles (119 sq km) at the tip of its peninsula, but its suburbs and satellite communities, with a population of 6 million, spread all around the bay.
The Bay Area (as it is known) includes the Peninsula to the south, with the cities of Palo Alto and San Jose (the computer industry heartland of Silicon Valley and the fourth- largest city in California); the East Bay, across the Bay Bridge, which includes Oakland and the university town of Berkeley; and Marin County, San Francisco’s wealthiest suburb, with its mountains, forests, and pretty villages. Further north lie the wine-growing regions of the Napa and Sonoma valleys.
Marin County
Immediately north of San Francisco are two charming waterfront towns — Sausalito and Tiburon — which you can reach either by driving across the Golden Gate Bridge or by taking a ferry — from the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street, or Pier 41 near Fisherman’s Wharf.
Tiburon is the quieter of the two, while Sausalito is more of a tourist trap, but both have a colorful Mediterranean atmosphere, with art galleries, yacht harbors, craft shops, and pleasant bistros and cafés out on the boardwalk overlooking the bay.
Farther inland is the woodsy residential paradise of Mill Valley, and behind it rises the 2,604-ft (794-m) summit of Mount Tamalpais. The mountain bike was invented here in the 1970s, and there are plenty of hiking and biking trails, but if you’re feeling lazy you can drive along the Panoramic Highway to within a few hundred yards of the summit. The view from the top is memorable — across the bay to the city and then beyond to Mount Diablo, and on a clear day you might even catch a glimpse of the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains.
Highway 1 twists through the hills to the coast, past the Muir Woods National Monument, named after John Muir, the Scots-born environmentalist, who founded California’s conservation movement at the turn of the 19th century. The park protects several groves of magnificent coastal redwoods, some of which are 250 ft (76 m) tall and over 1,000 years old. Hiking trails wind among the giant trees.
The highway continues on to Point Reyes National Seashore, a large wilderness park on the coast, complete with beautiful rolling hills, sandy bays, and exciting wild surf. Find maps and hiking recommendations at the Bear Valley Visitor Center. Explore the bird-haunted lagoon at Drake’s Bay, a peaceful cove where Francis Drake claimed California for England in 1579, or hike your way through the Earthquake Trail, a path that follows the San Andreas Fault. The tiny burg of Point Reyes Station across the little bridge on Petaluma Road contains some good restaurants and an excellent spot for gourmet take-out, Tomales Bay Foods on Fourth Street.
Berkeley
Take the BART subway from Market Street or drive across the Bay Bridge to make a pilgrimage to the University of California campus at Berkeley (pronounced BIRK-lee), the scene of 1960s student radicalism. Opened in 1873, Berkeley is the oldest of the University of California’s nine campuses. Tours of the museums, library, gardens, and other sights are organized from the Student Union at the end of Telegraph Avenue (Monday–Saturday at 10am). The free and easy access to the university’s facilities will give you an insight into Berkeley’s open personality. The nearby streets are lined with lively cafés and interesting bookshops. If you’re driving, head over to Fourth Street for good food and prodigious shopping and people-watching.
Wine Country
The scenic valleys of Napa and Sonoma have been producing wine on a commercial basis since the middle of the 19th century, and today California wines are considered to be among the finest in the world. There are more than 250 vineyards — or wineries as they are called — and most of them offer guided tours and tastings. Some of the more interesting wineries to visit are Mondavi, Beringer, Sterling, and Beaulieu in Napa, and Matanzas Creek and Benzinger in Sonoma.
You can drive to the vineyards from San Francisco via Interstate 80, across the Bay Bridge, but bus tours are also available through the major providers. You can also arrange a custom tour, visiting wineries of your choice, through Wine Country Jeep Tours (Tel. 800/539-5337, toll-free in US). The Napa Valley Wine Train is another option for a scenic hands-off chug through the valley, including lunch or dinner, but no winery visits.
A note of warning: The entire region, and particularly the Napa Valley, is inundated with visitors all year round, especially on weekends. You would be well advised to book lodging, dining, and even tours ahead of time.
The Central Coast
Highway 1 runs for 400 miles (643 km) south from San Francisco to L.A., along a coastline of often spectacular beauty.
First stop for most tourists is the Monterey Peninsula, a wave-battered coast of gnarled cypress trees and jagged rocks, and the home of sea lions, pelicans, and otters. The principal town here is Monterey, the old Spanish and Mexican capital of Alta (Upper) California. Monterey Bay was discovered in 1542, but it wasn’t settled until much later, when Father Junípero Serra set up a mission in 1769. Serra’s statue looks down on the bay from Corporal Ewin Road.
The town is proud of its past and offers a self-guided tour of all the Old Town’s historic 19th-century buildings. Look out for the Larkin House, at Jefferson and Calle Principal, home of the first (and only) United States Consul in the 1840s, as well as the Stevenson House, 530 Houston Street, where the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson lived for four months after his arrival in California in 1879. Some think that the nearby coastline around Point Lobos provided the inspiration for the setting of his famous adventure novel, Treasure Island.
On Church Street you’ll find the site of Father Serra’s original adobe church. Rebuilt in 1795, it is now the Royal Presidio Chapel (or Cathedral of San Carlos de Borromeo). By the waterfront is the Customs House Plaza, with the Maritime Museum, as well as the Old Custom House (1827), where the American flag was raised by Commodore John Sloat in 1846 when he claimed Monterey for the United States.
Beside the Plaza is Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf. Like San Francisco’s, it is a collection of souvenir shops and restaurants on the dock, offering a great view across the boats in the marina. The fish on sale is most definitely fresh, but alas, no longer abundant enough to keep Cannery Row going as more than a weather-beaten curiosity. The famous sardine fisheries finally closed down in the 1940s as a result of over-fishing, but the waterfront district of timbered canneries, immortalized by the novelist John Steinbeck as “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia,” has found a new lease on life today as a tourist attraction with souvenir shops, delightful cozy boutiques, and artists’ studios.
One old cannery building has been splendidly converted to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the premier aquariums in the world as well as an educational showcase for the unique underwater environment of Monterey Bay. The centerpiece is the stunning 30-ft- (10-m-) deep Kelp Forest Tank, a window on California’s most important marine habitat. Kids will love the Sea Otter Pool and the Touch Pools, where they can both handle and learn about sea anemones, crabs, and even bat rays.
The 17-Mile Drive is a lovely scenic toll road starting at Lighthouse Avenue in Pacific Grove, a pleasant waterside town of Victorian houses and clapboard cottages a few miles beyond Monterey. The drive passes through beautiful cypress groves along a wild and rocky coastline, where you can watch birds, otters, and sea lions in the wild, before passing through the famous golf courses at Pebble Beach and finally reaching the exclusive resort town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, famous for once having Clint Eastwood as mayor. It is a quaint, picture-postcard village full of kitschy cottages, with narrow, tree-lined streets crammed with expensive restaurants, art galleries, and craft shops. At the foot of Ocean Avenue lies the beautiful white sand of Carmel Beach, backed by shady pines and cypress trees. Southeast of the town is the peaceful Carmel Mission, where Father Junípero Serra himself lies buried.
At Point Lobos State Reserve you can hike right down to the ocean’s edge. Watch especially for the playful sea otters, which can often be seen floating on their backs munching on a juicy abalone or two. From December to March, look out also for pods of migrating gray whales.
The coastal highway south from Carmel to Big Sur is only 30 miles (48 km) long, but it takes more than an hour of careful driving. Squeezed in between the Pacific and the Santa Lucia mountains, the road twists and turns along a quite narrow ledge hacked out high above the pounding surf, with spectacular bridges spanning the deep canyons.
The numerous state parks along the Big Sur coast offer marvelous opportunities for outdoor activities like camping, hiking, and fishing. The writer Henry Miller made his home here during the 1950s and 60s, and communities of artists continue to live in cabins in the woods and canyons.
At Nepenthe, Orson Welles built a honeymoon cottage for Rita Hayworth in the days when film stars did the romantic things expected of them by their adoring public. Now it has been expanded and converted into a restaurant, well worth a visit for its incomparable view of the ocean.
The rugged coast continues south for another 65 miles (105 km) along to San Simeon, where William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate immortalized by Orson Welles in the film Citizen Kane, built his unbelievable dream castle on a hilltop high above the sea. Hearst Castle now forms the centerpiece of the Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument, and is one of the most popular attractions in all California (guided tours only). Allow at least two hours for a tour — you can book one at the Visitor Center, but it’s advisable to make an advance reservation, especially during the summer, by phoning Destinet at (800) 444-4445; group tours (800) 401-4775 (both toll-free in US).
William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) was a millionaire newspaper baron. He began building this grandiose retreat in 1919 on a ranch that he had inherited from his father, who made his fortune mining Nevada’s Comstock Lode. It was still not completed by the time of Hearst’s death in 1951. Here he entertained the movie star Marion Davies, his mistress for 30 years, and famous guests such as Charlie Chaplin, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Greta Garbo, Winston Churchill, Charles Lindbergh, and the photographer Herman Mankiewicz, who recorded life at San Simeon for posterity.
You approach Hearst Castle on a tour bus that climbs the 5 miles (8 km) from the Visitor Center to the hilltop, passing through the parkland that was once Hearst’s private zoo. The lions, monkeys, cheetahs, kangaroos, and polar bears are long gone, but zebra, goats, and Barbary sheep can still be seen.
The San Francisco architect Julia Morgan built the “castle” to Hearst’s specifications as a showcase for his extraordinary collection of European art. The truly mind-boggling variety of that collection begins to register as you pass the 104-ft- (32-m-) long Roman mosaic swimming pool, complete with Greek colonnade and a copy of Donatello’s Florentine statue of David.
The main building and its four surrounding guest houses, with their terraces and gardens, is a fantasy concoction derived from Greek, Roman, Gothic, Baroque, and Spanish styles, with both fake and original artwork thrown together. Genuine Spanish tilework sits beside locally made copies; a Roman sarcophagus and a 3,500-year-old Egyptian goddess are both authentic, but the castle’s façade, with its equestrian friezes on the balcony and Gothic-style canopies, is made almost completely of reinforced concrete. Above the huge main door, in quiet simplicity, sits a genuine 13th-century Madonna and Child.
Inside the castle, the hodgepodge of periods and styles runs riot. The dining room has a magnificent cedarwood coffered ceiling from a Bologna monastery, and is decorated with the flags from the Sienna palio pageant. At the table set for 22 guests, Hearst’s dilettantism is emphasized by the sight of splendid, solid silver Queen Anne candlesticks and wine cisterns, which are set beside tomato ketchup, pickles, and mustard, all in their original bottles and jars.
Beyond San Simeon the rugged coastline begins to relent, and farms and oil rigs take the place of crags and canyons. Rural Route 1 joins the multi-lane US Highway 101 at San Luis Obispo for the final leg to Los Angeles, but two places are worth a detour from the freeway.
The city of Lompoc (Route 135 and Route 1 from Santa Maria) sits prettily among the fields of flowers that have made it the “Flower-Growing Capital of the World.” On the edge of town is La Purísima Mission, founded in 1787 and rebuilt in 1813 after an earthquake. It is the most extensively and authentically restored of California’s 21 Franciscan missions, and the old pink-and-white adobe walls provide a haven of peace amid the former living and working quarters of missionaries, soldiers, and Native Americans. The garden is full of olive and mulberry trees, and livestock such as burros, turkeys, and four-horned churro sheep all contribute to the 1820s atmosphere.
When you get to Santa Barbara you know for sure that you’ve arrived in Southern California. Its palm-fringed streets, red-tile pavements, and low-rise Spanish Revival buildings spread up the hillsides from the beautiful beach, oozing sun-tanned health and the scent of money. It’s a favorite weekend retreat for many of Los Angeles’ wealthier residents.
On State Street, which runs from the beach up through the center of town, you’ll find a thriving downtown filled with stores, theaters, and restaurants. In particular, take a peek at the Arlington Theater; the inside was designed to mimic a Spanish-style courtyard at dusk, including a star-filled sky. There’s history on display, too, at Mission Santa Barbara (corner of Laguna and Mission streets). The mission, which was founded on 4 December 1786, the Feast of St. Barbara, offers a self-guided tour of its restored church and outbuildings. Also worth a visit is the beautiful Santa Barbara County Courthouse — a magnificent Spanish-Moorish–style edifice dating from 1927.
Los Angeles
Los Angeles is the quintessential 20th-century city. Only modern technology could have turned this former patch of desert into one of the world’s most flourishing metropolises.
A combination of engineering genius and shady business deals brought water hundreds of miles across mountains and desert to slake the city’s thirst and nurture its lush gardens and palm trees. An abundance of space then allowed the city to sprawl, but distance was no problem — cheap oil and the car produced a vast freeway system, which links the coast, the hills, and the farthest-flung valleys in one huge metropolitan region. Visitors flying into L.A. at night get a grand view of the network of traffic arteries, with cars and trucks surging along like blood corpuscles pumping through the veins of some living organism.
L.A. covers such an immense area that the first-time visitor can easily feel overwhelmed. The best way to approach the city is to break it down into smaller regions and then take them one at a time — Downtown, Hollywood, Westside, the Coast, the Valleys, and Orange County.
Downtown
L.A.’s downtown commercial district is steadily becoming a more attractive and culturally active area, but the activity here diminishes once the workday is over. Surrounded by three freeways and the river, historically this district is the heart of Los Angeles. It’s now also the terminus of L.A.’s new Metro Rail system, which is housed in the Spanish Mission–style Union Station.
El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park preserves a few blocks of the original Mexican village around which the city grew up. The center is Olvera Street, a bustling Mexican marketplace lined with colorful handicraft and food stalls and historic buildings, including the Avila Adobe, L.A.’s first house, dating from 1818. Half of California’s Mexican-American (chicano) population lives in central Los Angeles, but you’ll find the full range of the city’s ethnic population — represented by comestibles — at Grand Central Market, north of Pershing Square.
Just north of the Pueblo are the crowded streets and Oriental architecture of L.A.’s Chinatown, while to the south is Little Tokyo, the cultural center of the Japanese community. The Japanese Village Plaza is a popular shopping spot, with twisting paths lined with bonsai trees, rock gardens, and sushi bars. Nearby is a monument to the space shuttle Challenger, including a statue of the Japanese-American astronaut Ellison Onizuka, one of the seven who died in the 1986 disaster.
The most dynamic area of downtown is the commercial district around Flower Street; many of the new cultural institutions that have surfaced in recent years are located here. The beautiful Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) at California Plaza (250 South Grand Avenue) is a striking setting for important works by Piet Mondrian, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jackson Pollock, as well as many other innovative American artists. MOCA curators keep one step ahead of the pack by commissioning new work, which is then displayed beside contemporary classics. The Geffen Contemporary (152 North Central Avenue) is an annex to MOCA a few blocks away in Little Toyko, focusing on film and performing arts.
The Music Center, at First Street and Grand, is an important L.A. venue for concerts and plays, which are performed in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Mark Taper Forum, and the Ahmanson Theater. Tours of the Center’s architecture and sculpture are available.
A few miles southwest of central downtown, next to the University of Southern California campus, lies Exposition Park, the setting for the 1932 Olympics. Of special note is the Natural History Museum (900 Exposition Boulevard) with its child-geared Discovery Center, and the California Museum of Science and Industry (700 State Drive), which features technological exhibits.
If you’re heading west from downtown, avoid the freeway and follow another great thoroughfare, Wilshire Boulevard. Once an Indian trail, in its heyday this 16-mile (25-km) roadway glittered with the prosperity of its department stores and luxury hotels. A living museum of the Art Deco architecture that characterized Los Angeles’s rise to greatness during the 1920s and 1930s, the section of Wilshire between La Brea and Fairfax avenues, known as the “miracle mile,” is slowly being renovated after years of neglect. Notable buildings include the former Bullocks Wilshire department store standing at the corner of Kingsley, and the Franklin Life Insurance building situated at Van Ness and Wilshire.
The primary reason to cruise along Wilshire is to arrive at Hancock Park, home of the famous La Brea Tar Pits. Here petroleum deposits ooze through fractures to the surface and evaporate, leaving natural tar lakes (brea is Spanish for “tar”). From viewing stations, visitors may observe the excavation of fossilized remains. The adjacent George C. Page Museum (5801 Wilshire Boulevard) has on display the skeletons of mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, and other unfortunate creatures who became trapped in the sticky tar during the last Ice Age.
Next door to the tar pits is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), whose provocative modern architecture houses one of the state’s best art collections, including outstanding examples of Nepalese, Indian, and Tibetan art, Japanese scroll paintings, pre-Columbian art, and German Expressionist drawings. Other highlights include important works by Rembrandt, Dürer, Frans Hals, Picasso, and the Impressionists.
Motoring aficionados should drive another two blocks to the Petersen Automotive Museum (6060 Wilshire Boulevard), which houses the largest collection of cars, motorcycles, and related memorabilia in the country.
Hollywood
The actual city of Hollywood has not lived up to the idea of Hollywood for quite some time. In fact, it’s a somewhat seedy area still surviving on its outdated reputation. Tourists continue to flock to landmarks made famous over the years, but don’t make the trek expecting to see anyone associated with the film business. The studios themselves have long since moved over the hills to set up shop in North Hollywood and Burbank, and everyone else is busy cutting deals over in Beverly Hills.
Along Hollywood Boulevard you’ll find over 2,500 actors’ names on bronze stars embedded in the pavement — the Walk of Fame. You’ll pass Frederick’s of Hollywood, with its lingerie museum, and the beautifully restored Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, site of the first public Oscar ceremony. Between La Brea and Western Avenue, the boulevard exhibits the fine, tacky splendor of the 1920s and 30s, with its low, flat stucco buildings, a droopy palm tree or two, and even some vintage Packards and Buicks parked out on the street. While the neighborhood is less than scintillating, the second-hand bookstores specializing in film-related books and posters are excellent.
The hand-, foot-, and hoof-prints of Hollywood stars are immortalized in the concrete courtyard of Mann’s Chinese Theater (at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard) erected in 1927. Most stars were obliged to get on their knees and make a hand-print, but it was natural for Fred Astaire to leave a foot-print, John Wayne to leave a fist-print, and cowboy Tom Mix to leave his horse’s hoof-print.
A couple of freeway exits away is the Hollywood Bowl, a splendid open-air amphitheater where the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra holds concerts under the gigantic illuminated letters of the Hollywood sign planted up in the hills.
South of Hollywood Boulevard is L.A.’s most famous street, Sunset Boulevard. The section between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, known simply as “The Strip,” continues to be the playground of the rich, famous, young, and hip. A drive down Sunset can be dangerous, as the billboards touting the latest movies and records may make it difficult to keep your eyes on the road.
While you’re on the north side of town, take a drive around the Hollywood Hills for a superb view of the city. The classic Los Angeles cruise is along Mulholland Drive. On a clear day you can see Long Beach, 25-miles (40-km) away across the vast, sprawling metropolis.
Another great viewpoint is the Observatory in Griffith Park (off Highway 5). Fans of James Dean will recognize the Observatory — it was the scene of the climax of Rebel Without a Cause. The panorama from the terrace on a clear day is fantastic, from the spiky skyscrapers of downtown to the distant Pacific. Griffith Park is the biggest city park in the United States. It sprawls across the eastern Hollywood Hills and is criss-crossed with drives and hiking trails. Toward sunset is the best time to go, just as the city lights are coming on.
Westside
At Doheny Drive, the western edge of Hollywood merges with the slopes of Laurel Canyon and Beverly Hills, dotted with the sumptuous mansions of the movie moguls. While these homes are heavily guarded and hidden from view, you can sense the opulent atmosphere as you drive through the plush, carefully manicured avenues. The architecture is an astounding mixture of Spanish, Gothic, Bauhaus, and Renaissance, in every pastel shade under the sun. Don’t bother slowing down for the street vendors selling “official” maps showing the homes of the rich and famous — unless you get a kick out of security gates.
Rodeo Drive (pronounced Ro-DAY-oh) is the famous shopping street (if you saw the movie Pretty Woman, you’ve seen Rodeo Drive) and it’s just as upscale and sophisticated as advertised. If you’re visiting in the summer or around Christmas, take a half-hour guided tour on the sweet Beverly Hills Trolley for $1. Meet the trolley on the corner of Rodeo and Dayton Way — it’s the only bargain you’ll find in the neighborhood.
Nearby in Century City, the Museum of Tolerance (9786 West Pico Boulevard) uses high technology to explore and encourage understanding between cultures. Its interactive exhibits focus on the history of racism in America, highlighting Beit Hashoah, the Holocaust.
There’s a more scholarly feel to Los Angeles around the campus of UCLA (University of California-Los Angeles) at Westwood Village. The Village is a fine place in which to see a movie — new films always open here first. At the edge of Westwood, the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center (10899 Wilshire Boulevard) features a fabulous collection of paintings personally collected over the last fifty years by Hammer. If your visit to Hollywood has filled you with nostalgia for the great days of cinema, then you might like to pay homage to Marilyn Monroe in Westwood Memorial Park (1212 Glendon Avenue, south of Wilshire Boulevard), where a modest plaque bears silent testimony to the actress.
West of the campus in Brentwood, on a bluff high above the 405 freeway, is the Getty Center (1200 Getty Center Drive), opened in 1997. The major attraction among the impressively designed arts education and research buildings is the J. Paul Getty Museum, which contains all the art (and more) formerly housed at the Getty Villa at Malibu. Among the paintings are superb works by Raphael, Rubens, van Dyck, and Rembrandt. Visitors can also see a selection of Greek and Roman antiquities housed here until the year 2001, when they are scheduled move back into the newly renovated Getty Villa at Malibu. J. P. Getty had a coherent idea of the kind of art he wanted to collect — Greek, Roman, Renaissance, Baroque, and French Rococo. His antiquities collection is impressive, highlighted by the “Getty bronze,” a fourth-century b.c. statue of an Olympic champion, believed by some experts to be the only remaining work of Lysippus, court sculptor of Alexander the Great.
The Coast
“The beach,” as locals refer to it, stretches some 72 miles (115 km) from Malibu, through Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey, Hermosa, and Redondo to Palos Verdes, before the white sands run into the pollution around the San Pedro and Long Beach shipyards. There’s no better way to get the special feel of Los Angeles than by heading right down to the beach, because in L.A. the beach is not just for holidays and weekends — it’s a year-round playground, community center, gymnasium, solarium, and singles bar.
Malibu is the favored residence of the more relaxed members of Hollywood’s film community. Rather than barricade themselves behind electrified fences guarded by huge Dobermans, as they do in Bel Air and Beverly Hills, film actors and hot young directors can be seen here jogging along the seashore or simply gathering their groceries at the local supermarket.
Perhaps the most famous attraction here is the Getty Villa at Malibu (formerly the J. Paul Getty Museum) at 17985 West Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. At first the museum buildings awaken echoes of Hearst Castle at San Simeon (see page 45). It is undoubtedly a serious art collection, but its setting — in a vast replica of a palatial Roman villa — has something of the pretentious inclinations of San Simeon, without Hearst’s pick-and-mix flamboyance. The museum is currently closed for renovations and will reopen in the year 2001 with only Greek and Roman antiquities.
Malibu’s Surfrider Beach attracts surfers from all over the world as well as the locals, many riding the old-fashioned “big guns” — boards at least 10 ft (3 m) long. Malibu Pier is a good place to fish, but sunbathing and swimming are a little more peaceful down the road at Las Tunas and Topanga beaches. The only natural hazard that can disturb Malibu’s cheerful complacency is the odd storm tide or landslide that washes the precarious beach houses into the Pacific.
In contrast, Santa Monica is built on more solid ground, befitting the upper-middle class community that inhabits it. This attractive seaside town, one of the most pleasant places to stay in L.A., is very popular with people in the arts and entertainment industries. At night there are many good restaurants, clubs, and theaters to enjoy, and by day there is the glorious beach, complete with an amusement pier, antique carousel, and the nearby shopping arcades.
However, it is neighboring Venice that attracts all the only-in-Californians. The beach and boardwalk here are a non-stop open-air circus of L.A.’s extroverts and eccentrics, all vying with each other to be the center of attention. In 1892 a millionaire, Abbot Kinney, planned construction of a replica of Venice here, but shortly after work started, oil was discovered and the idea was abandoned. The neighborhood has now been revived as a diverse community of artists, writers, and bohemian types. Venice artists are among those who have pioneered the street-painting that has spread throughout L.A. — the trompe l’oeil murals covering whole façades, often three or four stories high, some creating optical illusions by depicting mirror images of the street on which they appear.
South of the more staid Marina del Rey, the world’s largest small-boat harbor, the beaches continue in an unbroken golden curve — Dockweiler, Manhattan, Hermosa, Redondo — to the rocky bluffs of Palos Verdes. Around the point lies San Pedro, the Port of Los Angeles, and the city of Long Beach.
Long Beach — which is 7 miles (11 km) long, in fact — is the last resting place of one of the world’s biggest ever cruise ships, the Queen Mary, a nostalgic reminder of the grand era of luxury ocean liners. Since being moored here in 1967, the Queen Mary’s staterooms have been turned into a hotel, and her dining rooms into a restaurant; the rest of the ship is open to the public with self-guided tours (admission is free). Launched on the River Clyde in Scotland in 1936 for the Cunard line, the Queen Mary is 1,019 ft (310 m) long, displaces 81,237 tons, and carried a complement of 1,174 officers and crew, with accommodation for 1,959 passengers. Firework displays are staged over her on Friday and Saturday nights during summer.
The Valleys
The great mass of Los Angeles’s population lives in the sprawling suburbs of the valleys — the San Fernando Valley north of the Hollywood Hills and the San Gabriel Valley stretching east towards San Bernardino. It’s composed mainly of suburbs and uninspired strip centers (block-long low-rise shopping malls), but there are a few reasons to drop by.
One of the most enjoyable is a tour of the film and television studios located in the San Fernando Valley. Two major TV networks — CBS and NBC — welcome you onto their sets for a look behind the scenes at some of America’s most popular TV shows. A limited number of tickets to live shows are available. Universal Studios Hollywood, just north of the Hollywood Freeway (either the Universal Center Drive or the Lankershim Boulevard exits), offers an elaborate tour in open trams. In the course of displays of special-effects trickery you’ll be attacked by the shark from Jaws, meet up with a three-story-tall King Kong, and be subjected to all the earthquakes, floods, and fires you ever saw in a disaster movie. You can also take a look behind the scenes and learn about techniques that are used to create film’s great illusions. The highlight is the Back To The Future ride. Seated in a flight simulator shaped like the famous time-traveling DeLorean car in the films, you will be taken on a hair-raising chase through time and space.
Warner Brothers is located just off the Ventura Freeway (4000 Warner Boulevard). It organizes tours for smaller groups around the special effects and prop departments and the back-lots — even during the shooting of a film, if you’re lucky.
In the San Gabriel Valley east of downtown, Pasadena is one of the oldest and richest suburbs, home to the renowned California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) and the handsome, modern Norton Simon Museum (411 West Colorado Boulevard), just off the Ventura Freeway. This museum houses a truly remarkable range of European paintings, drawings, and sculpture from the early Renaissance to the 20th century, along with Indian bronzes and Asian stone carvings. Outstanding attractions are works by Raphael, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Rubens, and Cézanne. You will also find an extensive collection of drawings by Picasso and, one of the museum’s great joys, the Degas bronzes. The sculpture garden includes works by Maillol, Picasso, Rodin, Giacometti, and Henry Moore.
The neighboring suburb of San Marino was once owned by railroad tycoon Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927), and his fine mansion now houses the Huntington Library (1151 Oxford Road). Its collection of rare books includes one of the First Folios of Shakespeare, a Gutenberg Bible, and a first edition of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. The most seductive attraction is perhaps the 130-acre (50-hectare) Botanical Garden, with its magnificent Rose, Desert, and Japanese gardens.
Orange County
Orange County, bedrock of conservative Southern California, is the birthplace of ex-president Richard Nixon, and land of the lawn sprinkler, the two-car garage, and the “planned community.” Along the coast, however, you can rediscover the beach culture that gave birth to the Beach Boys, and at Anaheim you can indulge yourself in the delights of California’s number-one tourist attraction.
Anaheim, 27 miles (43 km) southeast of downtown L.A. on the Santa Ana Freeway, is the home of Disneyland. It’s best to allow a full day for a visit, as the entrance fee is expensive and there is so much to see. You can buy a Passport for one, two, or three days, covering the entire Disneyland complex and valid for unlimited use on all the attractions. Food and drink are not included in the admission price.
Main Street sets the tone with its sunny evocation of small-town USA at the turn of the century. The houses and shops are all three-quarter size — in his effort to escape from the realities of the outside world, Disney made everything a little smaller than in real life. In Adventureland is a boat trip through simulated jungle on a river that makes its way through Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific. A miniature railroad carries you through Frontierland, the pioneer country of the Old West, where loudspeakers warn you to “watch out for Indians and wild animals.”
Tomorrowland, one of the most exciting theme lands, is constantly being renovated to keep pace with technological progress. The various rides include a submarine, a spaceship bound for Mars, and up-to-date experiments in public transport. Two new attractions are Mickey’s ToonTown, a 3-dimensional, living cartoon world, as well as Fantasmic!, an after-dark light-and-sound spectacular where heroes and villains clash inside Mickey’s imagination.
Northwest of Disneyland you will find the Movieland Wax Museum (7711 Beach Boulevard, Buena Park), which displays wax figures of film stars in scenes from their best-known films. For film buffs, the most interesting display will be the collection of old nickelodeons, autoscopes, and movieola machines that projected the very first moving pictures.
Just one block south of the wax museum yet another kind of fantasy can be experienced at Knott’s Berry Farm, where the American Wild West is brought to life in three different theme-park areas. The Wild West Ghost Town, White Water Rapids Ride, loop-the-loop roller coaster, and the Good Time Theater will keep the entire family entertained for hours on end. If you feel a little peckish after all that action, you can feast on the boysenberry pies and chicken dinners with which Mrs. Knott started up her business over 50 years ago.
San Diego
This is where California’s recorded history began when, in 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo stepped ashore at Point Loma (see page 12). Today, San Diego is America’s seventh-largest city, home to a major naval base, and has been voted one of America’s most desirable cities in which to live. The climate is perfect, the beaches are beautiful, the revitalized downtown area is lively, and the number and range of activities for people of all ages is impressive.
The modern city center contains 16 blocks of preserved Victorian buildings — the Gaslamp Quarter. Here you can stroll along the red-brick pavements and admire the charming restored architecture from the turn-of-the-century while you browse among the shops, galleries, restaurants, and bars. This section of town is particularly busy on Friday and Saturday nights, when the young locals jam the sidewalks and fill the many café tables.
At the Broadway Street edge of the Gaslamp Quarter, you can’t miss Horton Plaza, one of the best modern shopping malls in the United States. Along with six floors of shops and restaurants, open-air terraces, and quirky decorations, visitors will find the local half-price ticket booth, Times Arts Tix (Tel. 619/497-5000). Broadway ends at the harbor, where visitors can visit one of several 19th-century ships moored on the Embarcadero and belonging to the excellent Maritime Museum.
The city’s pride and joy is the iron-hulled square-rigger Star of India, built in the Isle of Man in 1863. The Star is the oldest sailing ship that is still seaworthy; she makes a celebratory cruise twice each summer. A brief walk along the waterfront leads to Seaport Village, a lively complex of shops, restaurants, and galleries overlooking the harbor.
One of the best ways to appreciate San Diego’s sparkling beauty is from the sea. You can take a cruise along the bay — boat trips leave from Harbor Drive, just south of the Maritime Museum — out past the man-made Harbor and Shelter Islands and around the tip of the Coronado peninsula (occupied by a US Naval Air Station — the film Top Gun was set nearby in northern San Diego) to Point Loma out on the Pacific coast. The seemingly endless procession of fishing boats, yachts, and US Navy vessels makes for a fascinating tour.
The superb 1,200-acre (462-hectare) Balboa Park is situated northeast of Horton Plaza just up 6th Avenue. There are over a half-dozen museums concentrated around El Prado (the Promenade), including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Museum of Man, the Natural History Museum, the Aerospace Historical Center, the Automotive Museum, and the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater and Science Center. San Diego’s renowned Old Globe Theatre is one of five stages in the area, offering entertainment from Shakespeare to favorite American musicals.
The highlight of the park is the San Diego Zoo, one of the finest in the world. Established in 1922, the zoo was a pioneer in the use of moats, ravines, rocks, and embankments rather than bars and cages, giving the animals as large, free, and natural a living space as possible. It is famous for its Sumatran tigers and Malaysian sun bears as well as a colony of koala bears — the only breeding population outside Australia. You can enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the zoo from the Skyfari aerial tramway, or take a guided tour bus. An extension of the zoo is located 30 miles (48 km) north at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in Escondido, where 2,500 animals, including zebra, lions, elephants, cheetahs, and rhinoceros, roam freely.
The oldest part of San Diego is situated 3 miles (4.8 km) north of downtown in the area known as Old Town (bounded by Juan, Congress, Twiggs, and Wallace streets). Here, in 1769, the European colonization of California commenced, beginning with the construction of Father Junípero Serra’s Mission San Diego de Alcala. In this area of restored adobe buildings, you can enjoy a rest under the palms and eucalyptus of Plaza Vieja (originally the town plaza and bullfight arena before the Yankees arrived), browse among the stalls selling Mexican handicrafts, or eat at one of the many restaurants.
Cabrillo National Monument, situated on the Point Loma promontory (I-5/I-8 exit on Rosecrans Street and follow the signs), celebrates the man who discovered San Diego Bay. You can walk the trails around the point, visit the Old Point Loma Lighthouse, and at low tide explore the tide pools for crabs, starfish, anemone, and, if you are lucky, perhaps even the odd, elusive octopus. If you’re here between December and March, watch for migrating gray whales from the look-out point near the lighthouse.
Other aquatic pursuits can be enjoyed at Mission Bay, a first-class watersports center and park. The bay is also home of the famous Sea World marine park, where you’ll be able to watch performing two-ton killer whales. Children especially will enjoy the antics of the trained dolphins, sea lions, and otters.
San Diego’s beaches are truly beautiful and remarkably unspoiled, stretching for some 27 miles (43 km) up to the elegant suburb of La Jolla (pronounced “la HOY-a,” Spanish for “jewel”), whose centerpiece is the tiny rock basin of La Jolla Cove. The rocky coast to the south is marvelous for walking, and away from the ocean there are stylish shops and elegant restaurants to visit. The marine life of southern California is splendidly displayed in the Birch Aquarium at Scripps, which is spectacularly sited on the hilltop above La Jolla.
The Mountains and the Deserts
If California’s great outdoors is a religion, then its cathedrals are found in the Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks, as well as the Death Valley National Park. In these magnificent stretches of wilderness — the mountains of the Sierra Nevada, the huge, silent redwood forests, and the awe-inspiring emptiness of the desert — you can begin to recapture the adventurous spirit of the earliest American experience. These parks are, naturally, immensely popular with Californians and tourists alike, Yosemite more so than the others, but they all have ample room for everyone to escape the crowds.
Certain regulations must be observed within the national parks. There are strict speed limits, usually lower than on normal highways. It is forbidden to feed or otherwise interfere with the wild animals, and it is essential that food storage regulations are followed in any parks where bears are found. Hunting is illegal and you are required to have a state license to fish. Hikers intending to camp in the back country must first obtain a wilderness permit (see page 108).
Camping is allowed only in designated campsites, and fires are restricted to certain areas. None of the regulations is a real burden, however, as there are excellent public campsites, picnic areas, and barbecue facilities to be found in all the parks.
Yosemite National Park
The scenic Yosemite Valley is a perfect example of a glacier-carved canyon, with its sheer granite walls 3,200ft (975m) high plunging to a flat floor of woods and wild-flower meadows, enclosing the waters of the Merced River. Your “base camp” could be a plush hotel room, more modest lodge accommodation, or even just a tent. From the valley meadows you can hike, bike (rentals at Yosemite Lodge or Curry Village), or take the shuttle bus to all the principal sights.
You can grade the hikes according to your fitness and experience — if in doubt, seek advice at the Visitor Center — but try at least one walk, in sturdy shoes, for the sheer exhilaration of making it to the end. The 11⁄2-mile (2.4-km) round-trip trail from Happy Isles to Vernal Falls is within the scope of any reasonably fit and healthy person, following a well-marked path through the pine trees, with easy gradients. The brilliant light and intoxicatingly clean air on the trail are a true delight, and the thundering falls, at their best during the spring snow melt, are awe-inspiring.
If you’re feeling up to it, push on along the Mist Trail, past Emerald Pool, to Nevada Fall, and you’ll begin to lose the crowds. Here you’re on part of the John Muir Trail (see page 39), which heads past Merced Lake and on to the lovely Tuolumne Meadows up in the high country. The final destination of the John Muir Trail is Mount Whitney, more than 200 miles (322 km) away.
Less exhausting is a drive or shuttle-bus ride past Badger Pass (good skiing slopes in winter) to Glacier Point — 7,214 ft (2,200 m) above sea level. The view over the whole valley and the High Sierras beyond is breathtaking, as is the other way to get here — a steep hike up the Four-Mile Trail.
You can see Yosemite Creek drop down half a mile from the opposite wall in the spectacular Upper, Middle, and Lower Yosemite Falls, and you’ll get an outstanding view of the majestic Half Dome, a granite monolith sliced in two by the Ice Age glaciers. From here you may feel like leaving the bus and hiking back down to the valley, along the Panorama Trail via the Nevada and Vernal Falls, a trip of 8 miles (13 km), most of it downhill!
A beautiful and easy hike goes out to Mirror Meadow, tucked in underneath the vertical northwest face of Half Dome. The trail is especially good during early spring or summer mornings, when the waters are perfectly still, capturing the most breathtaking colors from the trees and the cliffs of Mount Watkins behind it.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
These two parks lie adjacent to each other, and are usually visited together — one entrance fee covers both. The main attractions are their giant sequoias, many of them approaching 3,000 years old, and the spectacular rock scenery of Kings Canyon. The forests offer a gorgeous array of dogwoods, sugar pines, and white and red firs, and a rich flora of orange leopard lily, lupine, bracken fern, chinquapin, and white corn lily.
Start at the Visitor Center at Lodgepole or Grant Grove, where you can pick up a map and information about the best forest walks and back-country hikes, and perhaps watch their interesting audio-visual presentations about the parks.
The best introduction to the forest is Congress Trail. It’s an easy 2-mile (3-km) walk, but worth lingering over for a couple of hours to absorb the beauty of the largest living creations in nature. The trail begins at the General Sherman Tree, the biggest of them all. Measuring 274 ft (84 m) tall, 103 ft (31 m) around its base and still growing, it’s one of the largest living organisms in the world. Reaching up for light well above the rest of the forest, the first branches start 130 ft (40 m) above the ground.
Another beautiful walk, and by no means an exhausting one, is out to Crescent Meadow, passing on the way such venerable trees as the Bear’s Bathtub, the Shattered Giant, and the Chimney.
The real back country is found 11 miles (18 km) along the High Sierra Trail, beyond Crescent Meadow at Bearpaw Meadow. The hike is not too formidable, and the meadow has a rudimentary campsite — though spaces are limited. Within a day’s walk are a lake and streams with good fishing, especially for trout, and you’ll have a fair chance of spotting some of the park’s wildlife, too — bobcats, coyotes, golden eagles, black bear, spotted skunk, and cougar.
Death Valley National Park
Of all the wonders of California, the high desert is perhaps the greatest surprise. The desert is no monotonous expanse of sand dunes, but a beautiful, variegated land full of color and space. In summer it is a bizarre landscape of jagged rock and gravel, naked mountains and salt lakes, baked and shimmering in the desert heat. Go in winter and you may see drifts of spring flowers blooming in the wake of the sparse rains that make it over the snow-dusted Panamint Mountains in the west. Unhidden by vegetation, the colors of the rocks — brick red, ochre, green, and purple-brown — are dramatically deepened at sunset and dawn, creating unforgettable views.
Don’t be put off by the name Death Valley. It is a legacy of the bitter hardships endured by Gold Rush hopefuls who set out to cross the desert from Arizona and Nevada. Some never made it. Today’s travelers, however, are well catered to, with motels and campsites at Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells. Begin at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, where you can pick up maps and information on the road conditions, hiking trails, and general desert safety. Driving is the only way to get around, but remember that distances are great and gasoline stations few and far between. Make sure your car is in good mechanical condition and that the tank is full before you begin each day’s tour. Also, you would be well advised to carry spare water, just in case the radiator boils over.
Get up at dawn — you won’t regret it — and drive out to Zabriskie Point. As the sun rises behind you, the light hits Tucki Mountain and the tips of the Panamints to the west before plunging into the valley’s primeval salt lake far below. Continue to Dante’s View (altitude 5,745 ft/1,750 m), where you can look out westward to Wildrose, Bennett, and Telescope peaks. Down in the valley in front of you lies the salty puddle called Badwater — at 282 ft (86 m) below sea level, which is the lowest point in the western hemisphere.
The crazed and pinnacled surface of the salt-caked lake bed has earned it the nickname of Devil’s Golf Course. Take a walk out across that glaring expanse of baked salt — the atmosphere of desolation is almost exhilarating. If you look closer at the salt under your feet, you’ll discover that the expansion of the crystallizing mineral has heaved it into bizarre funnels, swirls, and other intricate patterns.
On the way back toward Furnace Creek lies Artist’s Drive, where the road (one way only from south to north) carves its path through a canyon of multi-colored rocks, culminating in the very aptly named Artist’s Palette. Here, oxidization has turned the rocks bright mauve, ochre, green, vermilion, turquoise, and purple.
Death Valley was an irresistible magnet for prospectors, who once scoured the hills and canyons for signs of copper, lead, gold, and silver. Thus the mountains are riddled with old mines and exploratory shafts, but only a few of the miners struck paydirt. You can explore the remains of the Keane Wonder Mine on the east side of the valley and the ghost town of Skidoo in the west, where $3 million worth of gold was dug out of the ground over a period of two years.
At the northern boundary of Death Valley, 52 miles (84 km) from Furnace Creek, lies the remarkable Scotty’s Castle, a luxuriously furnished 1920s Spanish-style mansion that rises improbably from the bed of Grapevine Canyon. It was built for a Chicago millionaire, Albert Johnson, who spent his winters prospecting for gold with his partner and friend, Walter Scott, known to all as “Death Valley Scotty.” Guided tours take you round the lavish interior; you can wander the grounds at will. Nearby lies Ubehebe Crater, the spectacular result of a volcanic explosion. A short trail leads to the floor of the crater.
Excursion to Las Vegas
Inland from the urban jungle of L.A. lies the dry and desolate expanse of the Mojave Desert, a vast, empty landscape that stretches 200 miles (322 km) to the Nevada border. Interstate Highway 15 slashes through the desert and, before reaching the neon sprawl of Las Vegas, passes through Stateline — a smaller resort area with hotels, casinos, and a theme park.
The city of Las Vegas grew out of a stopover at a natural oasis, which burgeoned after Nevada’s legalization of gambling in 1931. Today, visitors converge on Vegas from all over America. Many are still here for a bit of fun and titillation, and to lose a few bucks at roulette or blackjack, but Las Vegas now touts itself as a family destination.
The famous focal point of Las Vegas is The Strip, some 4 miles (6.5 km) of Las Vegas Boulevard crammed with huge casino and hotel complexes, as well as some of the newer megaresorts — the MGM Grand, the Excalibur, Treasure Island, and the Venetian, gondolas and all.
The older hotels continue to make improvements to keep up with the megaresorts — Circus Circus built Grand Slam Canyon, a family theme park sheltered within a climate-controlled pink glass dome. Most hotels offer family amenities and shows, many of them first-class (although kids are never allowed to loiter in the casinos). Any show by Cirque du Soleil (at Treasure Island or Bellagio) is worth seeing — this international troupe of performers reaches mystical heights.
If it’s the traditional Las Vegas you dream of, the best time to arrive is at sunset, when the city lights loom out of the desert darkness. For the same reason, nighttime is the best time to roam along The Strip, when the lights are brightest and the tables at their liveliest. Apart from the décor, the casinos are pretty much alike — admission is free, and they’re open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. There are one-armed bandits (slot machines) near the doors, the delights of roulette, blackjack, craps, and Keno further in, and everywhere huge television screens showing horse-racing and other big sporting events from all over the country. For the bewildered, there are free booklets explaining how best to lose your money at the various tables, and free blackjack lessons in the afternoons. You will notice there are no clocks or windows in the casinos — the management wants you to lose track of time.
There are also alternatives to gambling — the big casinos offer live stage shows with all kinds of entertainment, from major singing stars to leggy extravaganzas like the Folies Bergères to world-title boxing matches. If you want to get out and about, there are opportunities for almost every type of recreation activity, including winter sports, within an hour of the city.
Look out for the numerous “wedding chapels” along The Strip where you can get married in about 10 minutes for a flat $50 fee, “witnesses extra,” then spend your neon-lit honeymoon in the conveniently adjoining motel.
