Los Angeles - Too much to see and so little time

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Los Angeles, USA 24th January

LA is one of the worlds largest metropolitan areas in the World.The area extends to over 452 sq miles, and the neighbouring communities are linked by six and eight lane highways.

You cannot do justice to a city like this in a day and the trips offered on board reflected this. The map issued showed the vast distances you would have to cover to see some of the sights and shopping areas on offer.For instance, Disneyland was 28 miles from the ship, Santa Monica 17 miles and central. LA is about 21 miles.

Everything is done on huge scale, we sailed to our berth in San Pedro. The container port is huge as is the cruise terminal. It an take quite a number of cruise ships in any one time and the turn round is fast.

We visited the Queen Mary ocean liner situated a half hour journey to Long Beach. There is a huge amount of money being invested in the area to keep the infrastructure up to speed. Long Beach itself has huge attractions.The Queen Mary is now a floating hotel and tourist attraction, we were able to visit some of the rooms on a guided tour which the general public don't get to see.Obviously there is a lot of work going on trying to keep her from falling into disrepair, in some places they seem to be fighting a losing battle but our guide assured us the restoration work will be carried out as it is a profitable attraction.

I hope the photos show what a beautiful ship she once was. On our return we passed through the San Pedro area which is walkable from the ship.

We are here on our return trip, so unless Lin needs to go shopping in Rodeo Drive, a walk round San Pedro will be the order of the day!!!

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