Hi everyone, the photo’s today are of our last few days in L.A. and then the start of our cruise. I hope you enjoy them.
They start with 2 sights from out AirBnB house in Glassen Park. While in Australia we have problems with possums here it is squirrels. We thought they were cute but the locals hate them. Like possums they make a racket on your roof in the middle of the night. (at least I hope that’s what was on our roof some nights). Shane took the next pic which is of a huge church/castle like structure across the valley. The are some monstrous houses about here. Following that is an interesting thing I saw in a local mall. In Target to be exact. It is a 2 storey shop that carries most things from groceries to furniture. But when you need to go up or down between floors you get on the escalator while your trolley goes up a ‘trolley escalator’. This intrigued me. Finally before I get onto the real stuff I noticed this parking sign in the city. Parking spaces for Chinese Chooks. Hope you get a giggle. This as with the next few pics are from the Chinatown area.
We headed into L.A.’s CBD to a favourite haunt of ours from last trip here and that’s Olvera St markets and Union Station. This particular block is the location where L.A. was founded. Olvera Street is a set of ‘Mexican’ markets where you can get all types of Mexican themed souvenirs from cow’s hoof water bottles to colourful blankets and lots of things in between. We wished we had room to carry some of this stuff home. It was time for a late lunch so we popped into El Paseo Inn for a true Mexican feed and a song by the Mariachi band.
From Olvera Street it’s only 100 meters to Union Station. We have nothing like this in Australia. Union Station is the main rail terminal in L.A. and the building is beautiful. It is huge, spotless almost shiny and the décor is wonderful. We love it in here. In any case we set off back to our car and on our way past Olvera Street we caught a performance by a Brazillian Tribal group of ‘buskers’. They were very authentic and colourful.
Next day we were packed and on our way back to the car hire firm to return the RAV4 we’d had for the 11 days here. I don’t know if I’d ever get used to the L.A. freeways let alone having no-one in the ‘drivers seat’. A quick Uber ride to the ship terminal at San Pedro (the Uber driver got lost) and we were aboard the Pacific Princess to Florida via the Panama Canal. While looking around I felt a sense of déjà vu when I noticed some poor bloke had had a fall by the pool and busted his knee. I did the same on our cruise to Hong Kong a few years back. We have a nice balcony suite on this ‘small ship’ of 600 travellers and 350 staff.
At 1630 we cast off and slowly sailed by the USS Iowa which we visited only days before. All of a sudden we had said goodbye to L.A. and hello to the open sea. As we almost hit the open sea I noticed a second vintage ‘warship’ but I can’t find her name at the moment because we don’t get internet at sea (by my choice – $25USD /hr). I’ll google it when we turn our internet on.
We’ve been at sea for 30 hours as I type and this lovely little cruise ship seems great. Being small the visitors are friendly and there are heaps of Aussies aboard. Staff are great and can’t do enough for you and there is heaps to do. Shane and I even attended the wedding of new friends we share our dining table with. They decided to elope and have no one else with them so we made up the ‘crowd’.
So I’m knackered and going to bed. I’ll post this as soon as I turn on the internet. Watch this blog as we hit Cabo San Lucas on the Baja Peninsula in 36 hours so there will be some interesting news from our visit there.
P.S. Before I have had a chance to post this we have had a change of itinerary. “Due to security concerns and civil unrest arising from street demonstrations in Nicaragua….” our visit to San Juan del Sur has been cancelled and another port (Puerto Chiapas) has been substituted. I know nothing of this new port so will need to google it now. I think it is in Guatamala.
Bye for now
Garry & Shane