Not that it would ever happen to me, but if you live in San Diego and get bored after a few years, we’re fortunate to have Los Angeles just ninety miles up the road. Put San Diego, Los Angeles, and Palm Springs together — all within 100 miles of each other — and you couldn’t possibly be bored in Southern California!
I didn’t have a great appreciation for Los Angeles until recently, mainly because if I’m driving, I want to be driving! Not stuck on a freeway doing 10 mph, something that’s quite common on freeways like Interstate 5 and U.S. Highway 101 going through the heart of Los Angeles. Both freeways need a serious case of widening or, as San Antonio did, building an upper deck.
Last month, though, on National Train Day (May 11), I took Amtrak to Los Angeles and then hopped on the Los Angeles Metro subway to go over to Hollywood. Until then I had not realized that Los Angeles, in 1994, had started building a subway system. And it’s a nice one! In some future posts, I’ll show you just how nice. I might go to Los Angeles more often now that I know I can use the Metro to go to 90% of the places in Los Angeles that interest me.
My first stop on National Train Day was, of course, the historic Union Station:
Union Station opened on May 3, 1939, to serve passenger trains from Union Pacific Railroad; Southern Pacific Railroad; and Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad; and commuter trains of the Pacific Electric Railway and Los Angeles Railway. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, it currently serves 60,000 passengers a day.
Along with passenger trains from Amtrak and Metrolink, Union Station has a separate platform for the Los Angeles Metro subway, and another area for buses, taxis, and bicyclists.
A day pass on the Metro is only $5. That allows you to ride Metro trains all day long, get on and off as you like, and really have some fun. I can highly recommend it as a way to get around the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Sightseeing is so much more fun when you don’t have to try to find a parking place!
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I like! 🙂
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but am partial to trains, sir! love the last shot… 🙂 thanks for sharing…
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Great stations and some seriously nice photos of those double decker trains.
Cheers
Laurie.
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Train stations are always such interesting architectural works — I like how LA’s reflects the more temperate climate and culture, when compared to the classic icons of Grand Central, for example.
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Zoey the Cool Cat always seems to find a parking space of her own.
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Well when you own the place, you can park yourself wherever you want!………..lol
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Exactly.
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Perfect timing … my friends are traveling by train this week! They left Clifton Forge VA yesterday, heading for Colorado! I’ve only taken short trips up the East Coast. Love the photos of the stations as well as the trains.
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I really might do a train trip to LA to check this out.. definitely sounds more appealing than freeway scene 🙂
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I think you’ll love it! And with the quality of your HDR, you should find a lot of places where you can have a lot of fun since train tracks usually take you through, and to, historic places.
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