The L.A. County Museum is at 900 Exposition Boulevard (Blue Line, Expo/Vermont station); 213-763-346

The L.A. metro area has a great public transit hotels birmingham uk system, one of the largest in the country by number of miles, routes and riders. You can get just about anywhere across Los Angeles where people live, all the way to San Diego, by riding a train or bus.
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OK, "town" for Los Angeles can stretch from Ventura to San Bernardino, San Clemente to Lancaster. In such a populated area, with 18 million residents and plenty to see and do, a car is going to be necessary more than not.
But in addition to its massive freeway network, the L.A. metro area has a great public transit system, one of the largest in the country by number of miles, routes and riders. You can get just about anywhere across Los Angeles where people live, all the way to San Diego, by riding a train or bus.
Some of those trips will be mind boggling in complexity, combining different transit agencies and schedules. And no one wants to spend half the day riding trains and buses, then the other half doing the same in reverse.
So here's a short primer on things you can see and do by using the Los Angeles Metro's six light rail passenger lines (akin to MAX in Portland). The L.A. light rail system isn't much larger than Portland's (though it has some underground stations and can run longer trains), so that leaves it a far cry from what it should be (but is also a testament how good the system is in Portland). But L.A.'s trains are there: they are user friendly and it beats sitting in traffic on the freeway during a few days of targeted sightseeing.
Go where the trains take you, don't worry about where the trains don't go. And yes, you could easily fly to Los Angeles to attend this year's Rose Bowl, featuring the University of Oregon and Florida State University on Jan. 1, see the sights of the city, attend the game and not need a car.
Even with the golden sands on the Pacific and the Disneyland-style theme parks, the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History stands out as a major must-see destination in the city. It's easily reachable via the light rail Expo Line, just five stops southwest of downtown's Metro Center train station.
I planned to spend a full day at the museum and could easily have used more. The avian, dinosaur, gem and California history hotels birmingham uk exhibits could all easily eat up most of a day. So could the landscaped grounds and gardens, including a Rose Garden with display of roses from the Portland Rose Festival.
And then there are the three halls of mammals, two on the main level and another upstairs. Step inside the museum's entry and your eye will be drawn deep into either hall, to dioramas of life-sized mounted African elephants, giraffes and Cape buffalo (on one side) and a herd of American bison grazing (on the other). The halls are simply mesmerizing.
Dozens of glassed exhibits each feature various animals in identified locations where they would live on the two continents. One look at the pronghorn display and I knew they were set beneath the San Francisco Peaks, hotels birmingham uk highest mountains in Arizona.
The printed museum guide lists a top 10 of must-sees, including a Simi Valley mastodon and the latest dinosaur being worked on by paleontologists as you watch, but also notes 10 hidden gems. Those include Walt Disney's hotels birmingham uk first animation hotels birmingham uk stand and wolves hiding in woods at the edge of the bison diorama.
The L.A. County Museum is at 900 Exposition Boulevard hotels birmingham uk (Blue Line, Expo/Vermont station); 213-763-3466, nhm.org ; L.A. County also has a Museum of Art ( lacma.org ), but it is located less conveniently from the train lines.
Downtown Los Angeles is both pleasant and interesting to explore on foot. And you can do that by skipping the freeway and riding the light rail trains to four underground stations in the city's central core.
Admittedly, Los Angeles downtown lacks a sense of place. Other than the palm trees and warm weather, you could be in just about any big city, except for the other big Pacific Coast cities that all hammer you in the eyes with where you are, including Portland.
L.A. got lots of attention a decade ago when the architecturally compelling Walt Disney Concert Hall opened, with a design as unique hotels birmingham uk as the Sydney Opera House. But the Disney hall is on a block in downtown L.A., not perched at the edge of Sydney Harbor hotels birmingham uk in Australia.
hotels birmingham uk With that shortcoming in mind, downtown L.A. still has plenty to explore. Begin at Union Station, near the site where the city was founded by the Spanish in 1781. The area looked hotels birmingham uk like the 1930s when I stepped out of the station, with dozens of men wearing fedoras, women in long skirts hotels birmingham uk and a line of vintage cars parked outside. hotels birmingham uk Someone asked me if I knew which movie was being filmed.
The iconic Los Angeles City Hall welcomes visitors to a panorama of the central city from the free observation deck on the 27th floor. Gaze down on Grand Park, a green pedestrian space that connects City Hall to the cultural hotels birmingham uk district, or outward to the city's highest towers in the Financial District, including one that has been tallest on the Pacific Coast for a quarter century (the 1,018-foot U.S. Bank Tower), but will be eclipsed by another in construction in the city by 2017.
While central L.A. is easy to explore of foot, lacking sidewalk crowds but not attractions, much of the impetus has shifted in the past decades to the south edge of downtown where the $2.5 billion L.A. Live entertainment complex was built to serve the heavy visitor traffic at the adjacent Staples Center and nearby Los Angeles Convention Center.
L.A. Live is the city's attempt to out-Vegas Las Vegas. Lacking legal gambling that won't happen, but Los Angeles has attractions Vegas will never have, including two major basketball teams (Lakers and Clippers) and an NHL team (the Kings) to play at Staples, plus the center of the music and American pop culture universe on display in the Grammy Museum and performing at the Nokia Theatre.
L.A. Live is served hotels birmingham uk by the Blue and Expo light rail lines at Pico station, though hotels birmingham uk not served very closely. The development hotels birmingham uk has acres of underground parking to show that Los Angelenos of means aren't giving up cars easily in favor of getting around by train.
hotels birmingham uk A full day walking around downtown Los Angeles can get wearisome, so it's nice to have some quick trip train options to break up that routine. During hotels birmingham uk my two recent days downtown, I switched gears by riding the Expo Line to the California Science Center and the Red Line to Hollywood.
The California Science Center is at Exposition Park, next to the Natural History Museum. Both have so much to see it's best to plan separate days to visit. Ride the Expo Line train to the Expo/Vermont hotels birmingham uk Station to visit the science hall.
The California Science Center is a bit like OMSI in Portland, the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville and the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport combined, except for one big difference. It's home to one of the retired space shuttles, the Endeavour.
The shuttle exhibit is set up to handle huge crowds (2 million visiting in 2013), but some of the luster must have worn off because I waked right in after trying to pay for the free admission. I was told, however, that it cost $2 to visit on a weekend.
The Endeavour is displayed in its own building, where it sits on steel posts high enough so visitors can walk beneath it. The shuttle is as spectacular as anyone can imagine it to be, still showing hotels birmingham uk as it does the wear and tear of 25 space flights.
A film shows how it was famously hotels birmingham uk delivered to the science center, towed over city streets part of the way by a Toyota Tundra pickup made famous by a TV commercial. Fund raising is under way for a new home, which should exhibit the shuttle in takeoff position by 2017.
Pop up to the surface and you're on the Hollywood hotels birmingham uk Walk of Fame, with the stars of so many famous (and infamous) entertainers. Some you will know, others hotels birmingham uk will bring to mind who? But that says more about the viewer than it does the about stars.
But by the time you've walked to the next Metro station at Hollywood/Highland, you have reached the mother lode of Los Angeles entertainment. This is where movie premiers have been staged since the 1920s in the TLC Chinese Theatre. Nowadays, Jimmy Kimmel holds court for late-night ABC television across hotels birmingham uk the street.
Hundreds of foreign tourists visit to compare their hand and foot prints with the stars in the pavement, while street entertainers in costume hover about, pretending to be everyone from Minnie Mouse to Spiderman and Michael Jackson. Dozens of hawkers try to sell bus trips to see the houses of th