Walking tour of LA

Just so you don't think I created this blog as nothing more than a series of rants, I also plan to include examples of some very cool things to do by rail in LA. And the first of them is one of my most recent excursions.

My fiancée and I spent the Christmas holiday at home, one of those 'stay-cations'. We wanted to do things that someone visiting Los Angeles might do as a tourist. So on this particular day we set off on a walking tour of LA. We started out by taking the Red Line downtown; the instructions actually said to get off at Pershing Square. So after a 30-minute subway ride, there we were, on a rather chilly December morning, guide book in hand, ready for an adventure.

And it was an adventure! It was a self-guided tour; the booklet we'd brought had brief descriptions of each point of interest, and specific instructions on how to get from one place to the next. Among other things, we saw (drawing from a not-so-great memory here): the Angels Flight funicular, a rail system unto itself, incidentally; the Grand Central Market; the Oviatt Building; the Gas Company Building; the Biltmore Hotel and the Bradbury Building. We missed things like the Los Angeles Central Library because we ran short on time...we had an appointment to meet a horse. We honestly thought two hours would be enough time to see everything in the guide booklet, but were we ever wrong. We didn't realize that we'd want to spent so much time at each stop.

It was really fun seeing LA through the eyes of a visitor. We didn't imagine many locals have done such a thing. In fact, one person, overhearing us reading from the guide and talking about what we were seeing, asked us where we were from.

When we were finished, we wound just just about where we'd started, near the Pershing Square station. We descended the escalator (how can it be called an escalator when it's going down?), boarded the subway five minutes later, and road the train back to the North Hollywood station where we started.

This kind of activity would have been much more complicated if we'd had to drive and park somewhere, not to mention more expensive. Riding the Red Line made it simple, affordable and mostly fun. There was an odd-smelling person sitting a bit too near on the journey home. Otherwise, the train was clean and on time.

One final note: until very recently, the train operators on the Red Line would announce the station stops and transfer information themselves over the PA. I'd say about half the time they could be understood. But on this particular day, I noticed that Metro had employed a recording similar to that used on the Gold Line since its first day of operation. A big improvement, I say. Now "stand clear, doors closing" doesn't sound like "stand here, you're boring". Nice job, Metro!