The Real-Life La La Land Is Continues To Be A Desired Destination For Travelers
LA’s still the place.
At least when it comes to travelers.
The real-life La La Land had 50 million visitors in 2018, according to LA Tourism, which is the eighth year in a row tourism has increased from the previous year. In 2017, Los Angeles had 48.5 million visitors.
So that’s why the freeways are always so crowded!
At least we’re not New York City. The Big Apple reported 65.2 million visitors in 2018. That’s a 3.8% increase from 2017.
It stands to reason why Los Angeles is a such a popular tourism destination. After all, we are La La Land in real life.
We have Hollywood, Malibu, Santa Monica, movie and TV set locations, hills and hiking trails, miles of a bike path along the Pacific Ocean, great restaurants, good bars (tho in this case, if you ask me, the nightlife here could use a kick in the pants, especially considering the bars have to start kicking you out at 1:30 in the morning) and.,of course, there’s the spectacular weather.
And don’t forget the sunsets along the coast, a nightly gift from nature.
I do have a few suggestions, however.
For starters, we need better public transportation. I won’t go into the gritty details but all you need to know is that one of the Metro lines stops a mile short of the airport. Another one being built will also stop a mile short of the airport. You can see where I’m going here.
The freeways and surface streets suck. Most people are under the impression that is because there is so much traffic. But the real reason there is so much traffic is that CalTrans can’t design a freeway interchange to save its life (thus backing up traffic in all direction for miles) and many major roads – called “surface streets” here – don’t have turn lights or even turn lanes.
However, LA’s compensating virtues highlighted previously obviously make up for these shortcomings.
In case you are curious, by the way (and I was, which is why I’m including it here), the population of Los Angeles is four million. However, that’s deceiving because L.A., is made up of 86 different cities and towns. When you factor that into the equation, the population is 10 million people. And that does not even include those from “behind the Orange Curtain,” which is neighboring Orange County. And neighboring Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
In short, there’s a heck of a lot of people here.
But don’t let that stop you. This is a wonderful place to visit and, unlike most destinations, it’s great 12 months a year because of the weather.
Cheers!
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