California

Americans call Calfornia "the Golden State". And it's true that people onec came to look for gold and silver in the mountains. Now they come to see the great cities, the big parks and beaudiful desert, the wonderful coast of Big Sur, or to enjoy Disneyland.

More than thirty millions people live here, and millions more visit the state every year. Of the fifty states of America, only Texas and Alaska are bigger than California. It's the home of Hollywood and the American film business; of computers and California wines. Its long dry summers and wet winters make it a wonderful place for growing most thinks. But 150 years ago it was just a land of desert and mountains..California is a sunny heawen on earth, it has sandy beaches, an ocean, high mountains, large cities, forests. However a real threat in the from of large earhquake also exists, which one day might push half of the state into The Pacific. California is very large nad too differentiated to get to know it well.

Los Angeles is the largest and most exiting city with it's a beautiful motorways, elegant districts fascinating by the richness and extravaganza. Los Angeles also accommodates many museums and other interesting places such as Disneyland, Hollywood- a symbol of dreams about the success and money and wealthy residences in Beverly Hills and Malibu.

Lying between the San Gabriel mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Los Angeles is one of the world's largest cities and it is more than 10.000 square kilometers in size. The only way to move around easily is by car. You can stay a mounth and still not have time to see and do everything.
A visit to El Pueblo de Los Angeles State Historic Park in Downtown Los Angeles is a good place to begin. Here you can see some of the Mexican village where Los Angeles began in 1781. Olvera Street is a busy Mexican markrtplace with colorrful stalls and old buildings, like Avila Adobe,Los Angeles's oldest building, nad the Old Plaza Church.

Just north of here is Chinatown where there are exciting and colourful parades during the Chinese New Year.

Not far away is Little Tokyo, the centre of the Japanese-American area, with more then eighty restaurants and lots of interesting shops. American film-makers first came to Los Angeles because the weather was good all through the year, and because Californian workers were cheap.
Today, some of the film studios- Paramount at 5555 Merlose Avenue , and Universal at 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City -give tours. Hollywood Boulevard has the names of more than 2,500 film stars on stars in the sidewalk on its five-and-a-half kilomrtre Walk of Fame.
And on the sidewalk outsite Mann's Chinise Theater, also on Hollywood Boulevard, you can see the hand and footpirs of many film star. The famous Hollywood sign up in the hills above Beachwood Canyon was put up in 1923. It first said "Hollywoodland". In 1920, film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks built theri Pickfair home in Beverly Hills. Other stars soon followed them, and Beverly Hills is still the place to see some of the city's most beautiful houses and gardens. Near to Beverly Hills , Bel Air is also a place where famous people make their homes, and above Beverly Hills is Rodeo Drive, famous for its expensive shops.

A short drive away is Griffith Park, the USA's biggest city park. Here you will find the Los Angeles Zoo, with more then 2,000 animals. For those who like sport, there is lots to see and do in Los Angeles. Visit Dodger Stadium and watch the Los Angeles Dodgers play baseball. At different times of year, you can also see American football, ice hockey, horse racing and basketball. There are more than one hundert places to play golf, and there are lots of bicycle paths.

The sixty-four kilometers of coast, including Malibu, Santa Monica and Venice Beach is what Los Angeles people call "the beach". Surfers from all over the world come to Malibu's Surfrider Beach. It's often said that Santa Monica is the place where LA's people and vistors go to play. It has a busy nightlife, and some of Los Angeles finest restaurants. It also has one of the best piers in California, and on it is a carousel which is almost a hunderd years old. At Long Beach , you can visit the famous British ship . the Queen Mary. Anaheim is forty-three kilometers south- east of Downtown Los Angeles on the Santa Ana Freeway , and is the home of Disneyland- Walt Disney's famous Magic Kingdom. Since it opened in 1955, millions of people from all over the world have come to enjoy its riders and parades, and to visit " Tomorrowland", " Fantesyland" ,"Adventureland" and all the other 'lands' of excitement.

Disneyland is a symbol of pop culture and the fantasy world duplicated all over the world. Therefore you have go to join the fun. The adult ticket is 43 USD and children ticket is 33 USD. In the summer season it takes a few hours of queuing to get inside. The fun has to be family fun. Indiana Jones A dventure is the largest attraction and is based on the idea from the Spielberg film. It involves a journey along a 750 metre long tunnel filled with sculls. Then come the archaelogical excavations, moving pictures, fireballs, avalanche and rock slide and poisonous snakes. However no one is at risk. The astronishing effects can be admired thanks to computer programming.

215 kilometers south of Los Angeles is San Diego, California's oldest, andsecond largest,city. It a home to a US naval base, and to many of world's biggest fighting ships. More than a million people live in San Diego, and its sunny weather and 112 kilometres of beautiful sandy beaches make it a favourite place for holidays. The oldest part of the city - Old Town - is about 5 kilometres north of the city centre. Here are many old buildings, museums and art galleries. Gas Lamp Quarter was San Diego's main street area in the 1800s.
Seaport Village, with its art galleries and small shops , is on the side of the harbour. It is meant to show how the harbour-side looked a hunderd years ago. The wonderful Balboa Park is in the centre of the city. Here, as well as many delightful walks and bicycle paths, are several museums and the San Diego Zoo. You can take a five kilometre bus tour which covers most of the zoo, or enjoy a bird's eye view from the Skyfari Aerial Tramway which crosses the zoo fifty- two metres above the ground.
East of Los Angeles is the Mojave Desert. It begins in Antelope Valley where, between March and May, you can see hundreds of California poppies. The best time to visit is between October and early May when it is not so hot.

Two of the most interesting parts of the desert are the Joshua Tree Monument, and Death Valley. The Joshua Tree Monument is sixty-four kilometers from Palm Springs. It s name comes from the staange-looking Joshua trees which can grow up to eighteen metres high. The best place to see the trees are from Key's View. Death Valley National Park got its name when some of the families traveling to the gold fields in 1849 died here. It is one of the hottest and driest places in the world and covers 8,399 square kilometres. Get a bird's-eye view from Dante's View, whith is 1.750 metres high. On a fine day , you can see Mount Whitney which is 137 kilometres away. Down it front of you is Badwater, the lowest place in the western half of the earth. At is it nearly nine mertees below the lewel of the sea. . There are places to camp at Furnance Creek, also shops and restaurants, and a Vistor's Centre where you can get information about the desert.

Palm Springs, east of Los Angeles , was once a quiet little town. Then the film people of Hollywood discovered it in the 1930s, and film stars started coming here for the winter. Palm Canyon Drive is the place for the best shops and restaurants. Go to Moorten's Botanical Garden, where you can see more than 3.000 cactus and other desert flowers. Or visit Palm Springs Desert Museum. When you get too hot , have a ride on the Aerial Tramway to the top of Mount San Jacinto. The Anza-BOOREGO desert, north-east of San Diego , is America's largest state park. There are more than 950 kilometres of roads, and as many walking paths. The park's Visitor's Centre is at Palm Canyon.

At 5.13 a.m on April 18, 1906, there was a terrible earthquake in San Francisco. The earthquake destroyed about 5.000 builidings immediately. Most of the other buildings in the city burned down in the great fire that followed it. 3.000 people died and 300.000 people lost their homes in the fire and the earthquake. Today, the buildings in San Francisco are much stronger. They are specially built so that they usually stand up well in earthquakes. In 1989, when there was another earthquake in the city, only eleven people died and 1,800 lost their homes. San Francisco sits on a hill between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. One of the best places to see nearly all of the city is from the top of Twin Peaks, its second and third highest hills. Coming into San Francisco by sea, you enter through the Golden Gate - the name Capitan John Fremont gave to the way in to the city's harbour in 1846. The famous Golden Gate Bridge opened to traffic in May, 1937. It joins San Francisco to Marin Country. The bridge was the work of an engineer, Joseph Strauss, and he and his men built it in four years. At 1280 metres it is one of the longest bridges in the world. 1OO.OOO cars travel across it every day.
Golden Gate Park, between Fulton Street and Lincolm Way, has beautiful trees and flowers, and small lakes. There are three museums to visit, and a Japanese Tea Garden. Or you can ride on a horse, go fishing, watch baseball or play tennis or golf. Fisherman's Wharf , on Jeffrerson Strett, is now a tourist area , with little shops and seafood restaurants. But fisherman still go out early every morning and come back in the afternoon with fish for the restaurants. The boat for tourists going to Alcadras, the prison island, leaves from Pier 41. Alcatraz was a prison between 1931 and 1963, but now you can tour the cell rows. Prisoners once named these cell rows after famous American streets (New York's Park Avenue Los Angeles' Sunset Boulevard etc:). One prisoner was Robert Stroud. He was called the 'Birdman of Alcatraz' because he was famous for keeping birds in his cell. San Francisco is a city of hills- Nob Hill, Telegraph Hill, and the often- photographed Lombard Street which is on Russian Hill.

On August 1, 1873, the first San Francisco cable car climbed up Nob Hill. Andrew Hallidie, an engineer from Scotland who built it, was driving it. Soon there were 600 cable cars in the city, but today there are only thiry- seven. They travel between Downtown and Fisherman's Wharf, and Nob Hill and the Financial District. There is an interesting Cable Car Museum at 1201 Mason Street.

Union Square, in the middle of Downtown , is where you find the biggest shops- like Macy's and Saks Fifth Avenue- and the hotels. City Hall, in Van Ness Avenue, is one of the city's most beautiful buildings. It was built in 1915. By 1850 there were about 4,000 chiniese people living in San Franciso. Many more came to work in the gold mines, and to build the railway. Today, people come from Japan, Korea and Vietnam , as well as China. And tourists go to the part of the city called Chinatown to see the beautiful buildings , and to visit the the little shops and food stalls. The interesting gateway to Chinatown , with its dragons across the top, is an Grant and Bush Streets. San Francisco is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. 800.000 people live here , but every year another 2.5 milion vistors come to enjoy it.

California is the home of some of the oldest and biggest trees in the world. The famous giant redwood trees can be seen in a number of state parks. These begin about 300 kilometers north of San Francisco , and US Highway 101 takes you throught them. Humboldt Redwoods State Park is a twenty million year-old forest. Visitors drive through its fifty-two kilometre Avenue of the Giants to see some of the world's talles redwood trees.

East of San Francisco are three of America's wonderful National Parks. Yosmite National Park covers more than 1.600 square kilometres of the Sierra Nevada mountians. Three million tourists visit the park every year. Most of them come to see the beautiful waterfalls and rocky cliffs of the eleven kilomerte Yosemite Valley at its centre. You can take tour bus or drive into the valley. Yosemite is also a favourite place for climbing, walking, bicycling and camping. And in winter, cross-country skiers ski along the valley floor. South of Yosemita are the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. These are next to each other and they are usally visited together. The sequoia tree is another kind of redwood, not quite as tall as those in the redwoods parks, but very much fatter. The General Sherman Tree in Sequoia Park's Giant Forest is 31 metres round and 84 metres tall. On the eastem side of Sequoia Park i s Mount Whitney, 4.418 metres high, and the highest place in California. The General Highway joins Sequoia and Kings Canyon. North of Yosmite is Lake Tahoe. Most of the Land around the lake is private, but there are public parks where visitors can enjoy California's most beaudiful lake.

Lake Tahoe is 35 kilometres long and 19 kilometres across, and it is a favouritte place for water sports, horse-riding and walking- and in the winter for skiing. The prettiest part of the lake is the south-western corner where Emerald Bay State Park meets Emerald Bay . There are places to camp, and it is a good place for swimming and boating.