Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Day 4 - Long Beach

I was pretty surprised when I opened the drapes this morning just after we docked and looked out at the Queen Mary!  Instead of the expected dock in San Pedro we were tying up alongside the pier in Long Beach!  Pretty great view and it was interesting to see the size difference in the two ships.

We had been informed yesterday that everyone would have to disembark in Long Beach to go through US Customs and we were given times related to which deck we were on starting with the first time being 7:45 am!  Our time was between 8:45 and 9:15 (pretty civilized!). Well, right about 8 am the first announcement was made that there was a “delay” with customs and they would be starting offloading “soon”.  Ha!  I knew their game!  I told the Commodore that I felt that things were going sideways and we would find a spot to relax and wait to be kicked off the ship!!  That’s exactly what we did and were finally shooed off about 11am.  There was still another “delay” in getting folks back on board so we decided to walk over to the Queen Mary for a little tour.  They were nice enough to offer all the Grand Princess passengers free admission so we enjoyed our tour of the antique luxury liner!  We finally got back onboard about 1:30 and the Captain was so sorry about the “ratgaggle” that he gave every passenger a ticket for a free drink!  Yay! I’ll drink to that!!  I did hear a rumor that several people were escorted off the ship in handcuffs!  That might explain some of the problem!


The rest of the day was spent enjoying the awesome weather aboard the ship.  I played trivia this afternoon and couldn’t find any good teammates so I ended up playing with a group that argued for the wrong answers….eejits!

Had dinner at a new venue called the “Crab Shack” where they turn part of the café into a specialty restaurant.  Lots of shrimp, crab, mussels and clams and it was pretty good.  No choices for people who aren’t into seafood so I see a short life span for this idea.

Tomorrow is our day in Santa Barbara and we will have to take a ship’s tender to shore.  We will probably go ashore mid-morning and just browse around downtown.  Weather will be good so that’s a real bonus!

It’s bedtime! 
XOXOXO
M




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