Orange County's inland region is densely populated. Most of the cities here are suburban communities with light industry and commercial offices and services.
Cities
[edit]
- 1 Aliso Viejo
- 2 Anaheim - The most populous city in Orange County, home of the famous 1 Disneyland theme park and two major sports teams: the Anaheim Ducks hockey team and the Los Angeles Angels baseball franchise.
- 3 Anaheim Hills
- 4 Brea
- 5 Buena Park - Best known as the home of the popular Knott's Berry Farm amusement park.
- 6 Costa Mesa - Home to the Orange County Fairgrounds, a large performing arts center, and the large South Coast Plaza shopping mall.
- 7 Cypress
- 8 Fountain Valley
- 9 Fullerton - Home to Cal State Fullerton, the Fullerton Arboretum, and Downtown Fullerton.
- 10 Garden Grove - Home to the Crystal Cathedral, a stunningly huge structure of glass used as the cathedral of the local Roman Catholic Diocese.
- 11 Irvine - A somewhat gentrified community with a significant Asian-American heritage, this is one of youngest and largest cities in Orange County.
- 12 La Habra
- 13 Laguna Hills
- 14 Laguna Niguel
- 15 Lake Forest
- 16 Los Alamitos
- 17 Mission Viejo
- 18 Orange - Among the oldest of Orange County's cities, Orange is home to a historic downtown district surrounding a plaza, large parks, and a major outdoor shopping mall.
- 19 Placentia
- 20 San Juan Capistrano - A small and charming historic town that's home to a beautiful Spanish mission.
- 21 Santa Ana - The seat of Orange County, home to a number of museums and a small historic downtown.
- 22 Stanton
- 23 Tustin
- 24 Westminster - A small city with a prominent Vietnamese-American population — arguably the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam — with many Vietnamese shops and restaurants.
- 25 Yorba Linda
Understand
[edit]This is a large conurbation of residential and commercial areas, the border between individual cities sometime a little subtle. There are however between the cities large differences in wealth as well as distinctive cultural and ethnic differences in some suburbs.
Get in
[edit]By plane
[edit]1 John Wayne Airport (SNA IATA) is the best and closest plane connection into the area and to avoid the traffic congestion from LAX. 2 Long Beach AIrport (LGB IATA) is also worth considering if connections are available.
Get around
[edit]Although the OCTA provide a good coverage of the area with buses this is a car metropolitan. People drive everywhere, it is rare to see people walking outside of the malls and a couple of cities that have retail streets.
The majority of the roads have a grid structure. Having the relative position of a few north-south and a few east-west roads in your head will be enough to get around the region without a map, although it takes a little time to remember exactly where the diagonally running Interstate 5 and Interstate 405 cross the main grid roads.