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Long Beach, CaliforniaINTRODUCTION 
Long Beach is located 20 miles south of Los Angeles, on the Pacific coast. The port of Long Beach is one of the largest ports in the world – larger than the port of Los Angeles – allowing the city to be both an industrial hub and a visitor-friendly area at once, with nice beaches and vivid nightlife. The city is separated into two main visitor-friendly areas: downtown, which consists of the Pike at Rainbow Harbor, the waterfront, and the harbor; and Belmont Shore, which contains 2nd Street. Long Beach has a population of 492,682, which makes it the fifth largest city in California. HISTORY Like many California cities, Long Beach was settled by Spanish rancheros in the late 1700s. In the city’s early days, two main ranchos, Rancho Los Cerritos and Rancho Los Alamitos, controlled the area. In 1880, a man named William E. Willmore bought 4,000 acres of Rancho Los Cerritos with hopes to found a farm community. When his farm community failed, the Los Angeles-based Long Beach Land and Water Company bought the land and renamed it “Long Beach”. Long Beach became a city in 1888. KNOW BEFORE YOU GO Power: 120 V, 60 Hz Languages: English Climate: Its Southern California location makes Long Beach’s climate moderate, averaging 80 degrees in the summer and 55 degrees in the winter. Currency: US Dollar Time Zone: PST (UTC-8) - Summer (DST) PDT (UTC-7) If you are flying domestically into Long Beach, save yourself the time and trouble of going through a large international airport and fly into the Long Beach Airport. Conveniently located within the city, the airport is small, no-hassle, and services major airlines as well as budget carriers like JetBlue. Carnival Cruise Lines is the only cruise line that sails from Long Beach Harbor. Carnival Cruise Lines offers cruises of varying lengths from Long Beach to Baja California, Hawaii, Alaska, and Mexico. ATTRACTIONS Pine Ave and Downtown Nightlife Earl Burns Miller Japanese Garden NEARBY ATTRACTIONS Knott's Berry Farm and Soak City LODGING Hotel Queen Mary: A luxury hotel in which guests can stay aboard the RMS Queen Mary in a stateroom designed to look like guest rooms from the ship’s heyday in the first half of the 20th century. Long Beach accommodations mostly consist of hotel chains such as Holiday Inn. Long Beach’s only low-cost hostel, HI-Los Angeles South Bay, is currently closed until June 2010. Visit http://www.longbeachcalodging.worldweb.com/(approve sites) to find out more about hotels in Long Beach. 
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