Robbins Ramblings: A Visit to an Old Queen.

The sun was shining brightly as we slowly docked at San Pedro pier in the midst of Los Angeles port, our first stop on this cruise.

We had all planned to do different things today. Victoria and her family had booked a ship’s excursion to see the main sights of the city and Helena wanted to take her children to the beach. Sylvia and I however had decided on a visit to the old liner Queen Mary, but first we had to clear US Customs and Immigration!!

The process appeared very easy, passengers would make their way to the Vista Lounge at the rear of the ship at designated times from where they would be guided to the immigration officials and onward to the USA. Passengers going on trips were to gather in a separate lounge and presumably “fast-tracked” through the system to get them to their waiting coaches. We made our way to the lounge at our designated time but due to the number of waiting passengers joined a queue that stretched almost the half the length of the ship and was growing by the minute. After about half an hour wait we made it to the lounge, ten minutes later we left the ship to join the real queue for immigration. This line slowly inched forward and before long we could see the immigration officers processing the 2500 passengers from the ship. Incidentally just in front of us were Victoria and her family, so much for the fast-track!

I’m happy to say that the rest of the process passed without incident. Sylvia’s fingerprints worked perfectly on the Californian machines, which according to the very nice border officer are far better maintained than those in Florida.

Having successfully entered the USA we made our separate ways to our chosen destinations. We last visited the Queen Mary in our 25th wedding anniversary year some nineteen years ago and before we had ever set foot on a cruise ship. I’ve got to say that I was a little disappointed at how the ship now looked, the years have not been kind to her and she needs some TLC. My view is that if some work is not done on her soon she will cease to be a tourist attraction. The Princess Diana exhibition was not open today and the most interesting part were the models of the various trans-Atlantic liners. Many of these featured cutaway sections showing the different cabins and public rooms. Nearby was the Worlds longest Lego model ship, a scale model of the Queen Mary containing some 250,000 bricks.

From Long Beach, Sylvia and I made the short trip back to San Pedro to visit a very colourful farmer’s market. Small stalls offered a mixture of fruits and vegetables, some that looked very exotic and all grown in the local area.