Downtown Los Angeles is an amazing collection of architecture; it has lots of eye-candy for those who appreciate stately buildings. Downtown has enjoyed a renaissance to become a clean, safe, comfortable place to wander and relax. It is becoming a fashionable district for young professionals who appreciate city life and prefer not to partake in the suburban-style living that makes-up most of this large, spread-out city. With its continuing improvements and increasing residential population it seems to be on its way to becoming a unique urban centre where people live, work, and play.

Gorgeous buildings abound throughout Downtown Los Angeles.

This parking garage has been given a fun, colourful treatment.

This is a 3D relief painting.

Toy town borders little Tokyo.

The displays in Little Tokyo did not remind me in the slightest of Big Tokyo in Japan. These Roman Catholic decorations show the Latin-America flavour that now dominates the neighbourhood.

These pinatas are also not typically Japanese.

I noticed many signs with phone numbers so that location scouts could easily contact for possible filming.

Imagine. A MILLION DOLLAR building. Must have been quite a while ago.

Beautiful art-deco Union Station was built in 1939 and has been featured in a number of films.

According to a local, this gorgeous square was a stinking mess of bathroom deposits only a few years ago. Downtown Los Angeles is truly not the city that people remember, it has cleaned-up and come into it’s own.

I quite enjoyed my week in LA. It could be that my negative stereotypes of the city made me easily impressed as the city proved my preconceptions out of date and incorrect. I would happily suggest adding Los Angeles to a USA travel itinerary and I had not anticipated that would be my finding. The cover of this book needs updating to match it’s current truth.

You can see more of my travels in LA as well as many other destinations especially in India and the UK (as of June, 2013) If you enjoy my blog, please share it with your friends! You can follow me by clicking on “follow” at the bottom right of the screen. Doing this will have you receive each post as an email so you can follow my current adventures! You can discontinue at any time. Thanks for reading! Cheers! Darren