On Sat, 11 Jun 2011 10:41:54 -0400, MLD wrote:

There is a lot to be said about getting from one place to another via
the bus. In cities like NY and LA you don't need the hassle of a car
and you certainly will be able to get around using public
transportation.

For various interpretations of "get around". New York has very good
pyublic transit and horrible surface traffic (th cost of a cab ride can
rise quite a bit just from the cab having to sit in traffic).

But LA (by which I assume we mean the broader sense of the entire metro
area, most of which is not actually in the city of Los Angeles nor, in
many cases, in the county of Los Angeles) only has good transit if your
departure and destination points happen to lie along one of the Metro or
tram lines. The typical tourist points are very far apart and up to forty
miles might lie between two that you want to visit on a given day.

A lot of foreign visitors simply have no concept of the distances here in
The USA and Canada, even within metro areas.

Once there, if you want to see something special--in LA,
for example, wine country and even a side trip to Las Vegas,

LA? Wine country? Are you sure you're not thinking of San Francisco? San
Francisco proper is much smaller than most would imagine, only 49 square
miles, about seven miles by seven miles. Although the locals have chronic
complaints about local transit, it's actually pretty good. And quite a
bit of fun what with the cable cars, old street cars/trams and the Metro.
You can gt almost anywhere within San Francisco on foot or transit.

We lived in Daly City (aka "Little Manila") on the south edge of San
Francisco from 1987 to 2001 and almost always used transit in The City;
parking can be a real bear. Just trying to figure out whether you can
legally park in a certain spot can be difficult. And parking garages can
be pricey unless you only want to park for a few hours.

A lot in the rest of the Bay Area can also be reached by transit,
including CalTrain and Bart, but it's not very well coordinated. Tours
can be taken to some nearby places, like Muir Woods, but a temporary car
rental would be advisable for some of that.

--
Dave Hatunen, Tucson, Baja Arizona, out where the cacti grow