Sights in California
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Venice Boardwalk
Venice Boardwalk is officially known as Ocean Front Walk. It’s a freak show, a human zoo and a wacky carnival, but as far as LA experiences go, it’s a must. This is where to get your hair braided, your karma corrected or your back massaged qi gong–style. Encounters with budding Schwarzeneggers, hoop dreamers, a Speedo-clad snake charmer and a roller-skating Sikh minstrel are pretty much guaranteed, especially on hot summer days. The Sunday-afternoon drum circle draws hundreds of revelers for tribal playing and spontaneous dancing. If the noise doesn’t show you the way there, just follow your nose towards whiffs of ‘wacky tabaccy.’ Alas, the boardwalk vibe gets a bit…
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Union Square
Louis Vuitton is more top-of-mind than the Emancipation Proclamation, but Union Square – bordered by department stores and mall chains – was named after pro–Union Civil War rallies held here 150 years ago. A misguided renovation paved the place and installed benches narrow enough to keep junkies from nodding off, turning this once-lovely park into a fancy prison exercise yard. Redeeming features include Emporio Rulli, the half-price theater-ticket booth and the stellar people-watching.
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Alcatraz
Alcatraz: for almost 150 years, the name has given the innocent chills and the guilty cold sweats. Over the years it’s been the nation’s first military prison, a forbidding maximum-security penitentiary and disputed territory between Native American activists and the FBI. No wonder that first step you take off the ferry and onto ‘the Rock’ seems to cue ominous music: dunh-dunh-dunnnnh! It all started innocently enough back in 1775, when Spanish lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala sailed the San Carlos past the 12-acre island he called Isla de Alcatraces (Isle of the Pelicans). In 1859 a new post on Alcatraz became the first US West Coast fort, and soon proved handy as…
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Griffith Observatory
Above Los Feliz loom the iconic triple domes of this 1935 observatory, which boasts a super-techie planetarium and films in the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater. During clear nighttime skies, you can often peer through the telescopes at heavenly bodies.
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Golden Gate Bridge
Imagine a squat concrete bridge striped black and caution yellow spanning the San Francisco Bay – that's what the US Navy initially had in mind. Luckily, engineer Joseph B Strauss and architects Gertrude and Irving Murrow insisted on a soaring art-deco design and International Orange paint of the 1937 Golden Gate Bridge. Cars pay a $6 toll to cross from Marin to San Francisco; pedestrians and cyclists stroll the east sidewalk for free.
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Santa Barbara Zoo
Big cats, monkeys, elephants and giraffes await at the 500-animal Santa Barbara Zoo , where you'll also find beautiful gardens. The Humboldt penguins are the current stars, and these tuxedoed show-offs seem to know it. If you're in need of a giggle, hit the 'Eeeww!' insect exhibit. Its hissing cockroaches and giant African millipedes will leave you giggling at the grossed-out kids. Or deeply disturbed. Parking costs around US$3.
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Dog Beach
The real action in Ocean Beach, of course, lies on the sands. Just north of the half-mile-long Ocean Beach Pier is the headquarters for the beach scene, with volleyball courts and sunset barbecues. Further up you'll reach Dog Beach, where pooches can run unleashed around the marshy area. A few blocks south of the pier, you'll find Sunset Cliffs Park, a great spot to watch the sun dipping below the horizon.
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Golden Gate Park
Golden Gate Park includes the following sights: MH de Young Museum, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco Botanical Garden, Japanese Tea Garden, Conservatory of Flowers and Stow Lake.
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Half Dome
According to Native American legend, one of Yosemite Valley's early inhabitants went down from the mountains to Mono Lake, where he wed a Paiute named Tesaiyac. The journey back to the valley was difficult, and by the time they reached what was to become Mirror Lake, Tesaiyac had decided that she wanted to go back down to live with her people at Mono Lake. However, her husband refused to live on such barren, arid land with no oak trees from which to get acorns.
With a heart full of despair, Tesaiyac began to run toward Mono Lake, and her husband followed her. When the powerful spirits heard quarreling in Yosemite, they became angry and turned the two into stone: he became…
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Sea Lions at Pier 39
Beach bums took over San Francisco’s most coveted waterfront real estate in 1990 and have been making a public display of themselves ever since, canoodling, belching, scratching their naked backsides and gleefully shoving one another off the docks. Naturally these unkempt squatters became San Francisco’s favorite mascots, and since California law requires boats to make way for marine mammals, yacht owners have to relinquish valuable slips to accommodate as many as 1300 sea lions who ‘haul out’ onto the docks between January and July, and whenever else they feel like sunbathing.
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Ocean Front Walk
Between the South Mission Jetty and Pacific Beach Point stretch 3 miles of pure, unadulterated SoCal beach scene. Ocean Front Walk bristles with joggers, in-line skaters and cyclists - the perfect place for scantily clad pretty people-watching. Back from the beach, Mission Blvd consists of block after block of surf shops, burger joints and beer busts. Down at the Mission Beach end, beach bums pool their resources to rent small houses and apartments for the summer season. The surf is a beach break, good for beginners, bodyboarders and bodysurfers.
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Buena Vista Park
True to its name, this park founded in 1867 offers sweeping views of the city beyond century-old cypresses to the Golden Gate Bridge as rewards for hiking up the steep hill. When SF went up in flames in 1906, this was where San Franciscans found refuge and watched the town smolder; on your way downhill, take Buena Vista Ave West to spot Victorian mansions that date from that era. Hanging around after the park closes at sunset for boozing or cruising is risky, given recent criminal activity at night.
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People's Park
Just east of Telegraph Ave, between Haste St and Dwight Way, is the site of People's Park, a marker in local history as a political battleground between residents and city government in the late '60s. The park has since served mostly as an unofficial residence for Berkeley's homeless. A publicly funded restoration spruced it up a bit, and occasional festivals do still happen here, but on the surface it's still just a mangy patch of trampled grass.
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Universal Studios
Universal Studios first opened to the public in 1915, when studio head Carl Laemmle invited visitors at a quaint 25¢ each (including a boxed lunch) to watch silent films being made. Nearly a century later, Universal remains one of the world's largest movie studios, even if today's visitors are directed to movie-based theme parks at which their chances of seeing an actual movie shoot are approximately nil.
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Canal Walk
Just northeast of the intersection of Washington Blvd and Pacific Ave, it's a step through the looking glass from the traffic-clogged roar of Washington Blvd to the bougainvillea-lined bungalows bordering Venice's once-plentiful canals. Wandering the narrow, impossibly cute bridges and walkways, it's tough to keep envy in check as dog-walkers, surfers and grandmas pass by, enjoying their tranquil patch of paradise.
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Mt Tamalpais State Park
Mt Tamalpais State Park encompasses 6300 acres of parklands, plus over 200 miles of trails; get a map and don't miss East Peak. Panoramic Hwy climbs from Hwy 1 through the park to Stinson Beach, a mellow seaside town with a great beach. Park headquarters are at Pantoll Station, the nexus of many trails and location of a wooded first-come, first-served campground.
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Bradbury Building
This 1893 building is one of LA's undisputed architectural jewels. Its red-brick facade conceals a stunning galleried atrium with inky filigree grillwork, a rickety birdcage elevator and yellow brick walls that glisten golden in the afternoon light filtering through the tent-shaped glass roof. Location scouts love the place, whose star-turn came in the cult flick Blade Runner.
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Manhattan Beach
If Manhattan Beach had its own magazine, it would surely be called Gorgeous Living. Classy beachside cottages, bougainvillea-lined walk-streets, bustling sidewalk patios, friendly boutiques, surfers silhouetted against the setting sun, and babies who never seem to cry – all within half a mile of a portrait-worthy pier. It’s that impossibly perfect.
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Crystal Pier
Up in Pacific Beach (or PB) the activity spreads further inland, especially along Garnet Ave, with bars, restaurants and vintage clothing stores. At the ocean end of Garnet Ave, Crystal Pier is worth a gander. Built in the 1920s, it's still home to a cluster of rustic cabins built out over the waves.
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Pit 91
Excavations at the La Brea Tar Pits continue every summer when you can watch paleontologists at work in Pit 91 . At other times, they're fussing over bones in the glass-encased laboratory inside the Page Museum itself, cleaning, identifying, cataloging and storing their discoveries.
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Mission Santa Barbara
Established in 1786, California's hilltop 'Queen of the Missions' was the only one to escape secularization under Mexican rule. Look for Chumash artwork inside the vaulted church and a moody cemetery out back.
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Santa Barbara Museum of Art
These downtown galleries hold an impressive, well-edited collection of contemporary California artists, modern masters like Matisse and Chagall, 20th-century photography and Asian art, with provocative special exhibits. Sundays are pay-what-you-wish.
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Coit Tower
Up the Filbert Street steps at Coit Tower, you'll find 360-degree views of downtown and wrap-around 1930s murals glorifying SF workers - once denounced as Communist, but now a landmark.
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Cabrillo National Monument
Enjoy stunning bay panoramas from the monument, which honors the leader of the first Spanish exploration of the West Coast. The nearby 1854 Old Point Loma Lighthouse helped guide ships until 1891 and is now a museum.
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Natural History Museum
Dinosaur skeletons, an impressive rattlesnake collection, an earthquake exhibit and nature-themed movies in a giant-screen cinema.
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