Inland Cities

Understand

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.

Cities

• Aliso Viejo
• Anaheim - The most populous city in Orange County, home of the famous Disneyland theme park and two major sports teams: the Anaheim Ducks hockey team and the Los Angeles Angels baseball franchise.
• Anaheim Hills
• Brea
• Buena Park - Best known as the home of the popular Knott's Berry Farm amusement park.
• Costa Mesa - Home to the Orange County Fairgrounds, a large performing arts center, and the large South Coast Plaza shopping mall.
• Cypress
• Fountain Valley
• Fullerton - Home to Cal State Fullerton, the Fullerton Arboretum, and Downtown Fullerton.
• Garden Grove - Home to the Crystal Cathedral, a stunningly huge structure of glass used as the cathedral of the local Roman Catholic Diocese.
• Irvine - A somewhat gentrified community with a significant Asian-American heritage, this is one of youngest and largest cities in Orange County.
• La Habra
• Laguna Hills
• Laguna Niguel
• Lake Forest
• Los Alamitos
• Mission Viejo
• 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.
• Placentia
• San Juan Capistrano - A small and charming historic town that's home to a beautiful Spanish mission.
• Santa Ana - The seat of Orange County, home to a number of museums and a small historic downtown.
• Stanton
• Tustin
• Westminster - A small city with a prominent Vietnamese-American population — arguably the largest Vietnamese community outside of Vietnam — with many Vietnamese shops and restaurants.
• Yorba Linda

Get in

By plane

John Wayne Airport (SNA) is the best and closest plane connection into the area and to avoid the traffic congestion from LAX. Long Beach AIrport (LGB) is also worth considering if connections are available.

Get around

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.

Go next

• Beach Cities
• Gateway Cities