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Downtown
Downtown
Exposition Park (1), just south of Downtown LA (off Figueroa Street) has a day’s worth of museums, so you will only need to park once for the day. Start at either end of the park.
The Natural History Museum (2) has more than 33 million specimens and artifacts. The foyer is the dramatic home for the skeletons of a T. rex and a Triceratops. Other halls feature dioramas, gems and minerals, and bugs. Kids will love the museum’s Pavilion of Wings where, for the seventh summer in a row, visitors can walk among giant swallowtail, monarch and other butterflies. Sometimes they even land on your shoulder. (Hint: They seem to like bright colors.) Open daily.
The California Science Center (3) is known for intriguing hands-on exhibits about everything from seeing how a periscope works to searching for camouflaged tree frogs. In the air and aircraft galleries, kids will find a Wright glider, an A-12 Blackbird (made mostly of titanium), a Bell helicopter and a Tigershark fighter jet. Open daily. Admission is free. There’s a small fast-food court inside for a quick lunch. An IMAX theater is also part of the complex; the theater often sells out, so it’s best to buy tickets ahead online.
Also in the park, The California African American Museum (4) focuses on the African American experience from the west coast of Africa to the west coast of the U.S. Closed Mondays.
End the day with a drive north on Figueroa for dinner at the Original Pantry Bakery (5), another LA classic. This diner-style place often has a line out the door but it moves fairly fast. Open 24 hours, daily.
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If you have teenagers, consider a stroll through the picturesque and historic USC campus (6), where many movies have been filmed. USC is next to the park, to the north.
