10 August 2013 Los Angeles

We docked this morning in San Pedro the port for LA.  We did not have a tour booked for today.  The Immigration officers came on to the ship to process us all, so much better than in New York.  It was indeed seamless and Sam and I did our face to face and we were thru.  We took a walk thru San Pedro, had a little bit of a look around, mostly Spanish, we ran into a couple who were doing the same as us and this old Irish gentleman had told Jessica how to get to Long Beach by bus, showed us where to catch it etc.  The four of us did that, Long Beach is lovely, we then caught a free bus which did a loop of the town centre, we found somewhere to have some lunch, the four of us, then we parted ways, Sam and I caught a free bus down to the harbour which was very lovely, there were these lovely boats open (their owners on board) so we had a look at one belonging to a lovely couple who we stayed and talked to for about half an hour, such a pretty harbour.  The old Queen Mary is docked there as a hotel.  When we were walking along we saw this boat called the Karin Lyn and it was doing tours, we bought ourselves a tour and went out into the harbour, very interesting, there are these islands in the harbour and what they are, they are oil wells, this is where they struck the oil, so they are disguised as little islands.  It was quite cold on board even though it was a very lovely day, Sam had long sleeves on and I had a jacket luckily, there was this little girl about 4 with her Mum and Dad and she was freezing, so I asked her Dad if he spoke English which he did and I said I have my husband’s polo top in my bag would you like to put it on your daughter, this little Japanese girl pretty as pretty she was spent the entire journey wrapped in Sam’s polo top, she snuggled up to her Dad, very cute she was.  When the journey was over she gave me back the polo and said thank you, you never know who you are going to meet and why.  We caught the free bus back then found our bus to take us back to San Pedro and then walked back to the ship.  We had a very lovely day, met people we would not have done and now I can say I have been to Long Beach, California.  We arrived back in time to set sail for Hilo, Hawaii. 

This was interesting, as we walked from the ship this morning, we saw this monument to a fellow called Harry Bridges, it described what he had done, he was an Australian who arrived in San Francisco in 1922 and he changed the working conditions for all the dockworkers, stevedores etc. they had terrible conditions, bad pay etc no way of making it better for themselves and this Aussie came in and battled for all their rights and conditions, the same ones as they have today, it is a beautiful monument, you never know what you are going to find out do you. 

All the best Sabine and Sam   XXX