Los Angeles

2 February 2026

As mentioned earlier, I’m not opposed to saving money at every opportunity. I knew when I booked this “Doubletree by Hilton” hotel by a huge marina, that breakfast would be a problem for me. It’s like Las Vegas and most inner-city hotels: you’re “captive” since you’re miles from a cheap hot breakfast, so if you want a decent breakfast, you’ll pay dearly for it. In my many travels I’m been known to book hotels strictly based on their proximity to a McDonalds and a liquor store, to avoid hotel prices. I’ve even, on occasion, carried freeze-dried breakfasts in foil pouches. Just add hot water and you have a decent, cheap hot breakfast.

But I left the camping food at home this trip, and this morning I did the math, and paid the hotel’s price. Sadly, an Uber round trip to the nearest McDonald’s, 2 miles each way, along with the meal price at California rates, would be even more costly than the hotel breakfast, which, with automatic 20% service fee (also known as a mandatory tip) and sales tax, came to $28!! Should have brought the freeze-dried biscuits and gravy! I bit the bullet and paid Hilton, this time.

So this morning I had my first breakfast burrito, which I coated in a green salsa they offered, and it was quite delicious. I also enjoyed a generous portion of what I’d call a western omelet in the form of a breakfast casserole. Good breakfast, but not $28 good!!

At 11 a.m. Jennifer Robles arrived at our hotel. Jennifer, the sister of Vicky DeClerk of Pocahontas/Engelberg, lives in a suburb of Los Angeles, and we’ve met her a few times during her visits to see Vicky in Pocahontas. Jennifer drove us to nearby Long Beach, where we toured the old British ocean liner Queen Mary, which has been docked as a hotel, restaurant, and tourist attraction in Long Beach since being retired from service in 1967.

The Queen Mary was launched in 1936 and was, at the time, the largest, fastest ocean liner ever built. She was slightly faster than the modern Queen Mary 2, which we will board tomorrow, and she could make the trip from Europe to New York City in less than 4 days. She also served as a troop transport during World War II because, in addition to being able to carry thousands of soldiers, she was so fast the enemy ships and submarines couldn’t catch her. She was finally retired after the speed of jet airplanes made ocean liners obsolete for speedy Atlantic crossings.

Our tour started with a visit to one of the ship’s restaurants for lunch, then we were given a 1+ hour tour of the old ship, which was built in the height of the Art Deco period. Its fixtures that seem dated today were considered ultra-modern in the 1930’s. The ship’s walls are covered with photos of famous people who crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary in the old days, when it was the ultimate in luxury and speed for traveling overseas.

Next door to Queen Mary there’s a dome which once housed the Spruce Goose, the huge wooden “flying boat” airplane built by Howard Hughes during World War II. The war ended before the airplane was finished, so it was never used, making just one flight, in 1947, to prove that it COULD fly. After the airplane was moved to a new display venue in Oregon, the dome became the Carnival Cruise Lines terminal for Los Angeles.

Queen Mary 2 arrived here this morning, and will spend the night here before we board it tomorrow. It’s only the second time that the original Queen Mary and the Queen Mary 2 have been together like this.

3 February 2026

Attached below is a brief “walk through” video of my personal space for the next 90+ days. My “stuff” took 75% of the stateroom’s allotted storage space. Since I’m away for 3+ months, I didn’t travel light this time! I can’t imagine how couples share a small stateroom, but that’s not my problem.

Our hotel check out time was 11 a.m. and the hotel shuttle had us at the dock by 11:20, where we found that we could not check in to the ship until 1 p.m. So we spent some time looking for a shady place to sit and kill time for a couple of hours. Luckily, they let us move into the boarding queue at 12:15. By 12:45 I was at the check-in desk and, unfortunately, got a newbie clerk. She checked my visas for the trip and disappeared for 20 minutes, talking with a man some distance away.

She finally returned and said, “They told us it has to be good for 6 months, and your Australia visa expires in July.” I explained that a) my cruise ends in May, so no problem and b) the 6 month thing applies to the PASSPORT expiration, not the visa. Most countries require you to have, before entry, a passport with at least 6 months before expiration, so an unexpected illness isn’t likely to keep you past your passport expiration date.

Anyway, I finally got on board, where I discovered that the newbie clerk also didn’t program my room keycard. So I spent 20 minutes in line at the purser’s desk to get my card updated. All was forgiven when I finally got access to my room and found a full size bottle of complimentary champagne waiting for me!

After attending the mandatory safety drill, I settled in for a LONG voyage! I happened to wake up and check the time at 11 p.m., and got up to see if we had left the Los Angeles pier yet. We had not, it seemed, but upon closer observation from my balcony I saw that we were about 10 feet from the pier, rather than still touching it. Indeed, the big ship had just begun using its bow and stern thrusters to push us away from the pier. We pushed out into the center of the ship channel, which was too narrow for us to turn around in, so we BACKED the two miles down the channel to the larger harbor. Along the way, I passed within a biscuit’s throw of the WWII battleship Iowa, which is permanently docked beside the cruise ship terminal.

The Iowa is huge, so it was strange to look down upon it from my balcony and think of Iowa as small. At “only” 890 ft long, vs 1130 ft for QM2, the Iowa is both shorter and much lower than the 18-deck-tall QM2. But one look at Iowa’s nine 16″ guns and one knows the difference between an ocean liner and a battleship!

I stayed up until about 1 a.m. as I watched us clear the harbor and head north west, past Catalina Island, heading for San Francisco. Below, I’ll post a map of the first leg of our voyage, you can see my first meal on the ship, the thickness of the QM2 hull (and it’s about twice as thick below the water line), and I’ll post a video of my stateroom below.

Stateroom video

I was on one of the lower decks, so I had what’s called a “sheltered balcony,” meaning that rather that projecting out from the ship like David and Linda’s, who are on a high deck, my balcony has a hole cut in the steel side of the ship to give me access to ocean views. I wanted a regular balcony room, but they were all taken by the time I booked my voyage, so I had to take what was left, which was just fine!

4 February 2026

So how old is QM2? Making her maiden voyage in 2004, QM2 is so old there’s a wall-mounted ashtray in the bathroom, and an old-fashioned bottle opener from the days before most bottle tops were twist-off. QM2 must have seemed phenomenal when she was new, because she’s still quite wonderful.

Last year I enjoyed an eastern Caribbean cruise aboard the Virgin Cruises ship Scarlet Lady, which had her maiden voyage in 2020, and there’s quite a noticeable difference from QM2. Scarlet Lady makes great use of color-changing LED lighting in the stateroom, and the room includes an iPad-like tablet which lets you remotely control the room lights and their color, open and close the balcony curtain, and other features. Those are nice little pluses, but far from essentials.

This was a day at sea, no stops. I spent about an hour sitting by one of the pools on a big open deck on the ship’s stern. I found a spot shaded by a deck above. I don’t sit in the sun, and I envy those who can do it without having skin cancers popping up everywhere. So I sat and read my book and tried not to look at all the saggy old people with their tops off. There aren’t many young people who can take 3 months off for a world cruise, so almost every passenger on the ship is a retiree.

I had a great bratwurst sandwich for lunch, from one of the places that make stuff to order, rather than having sat on a buffet warmer for an hour. Very good. The Bowlins attended a watercolor class in the morning. After lunch I went to a lecture on book publishing, just because it sounded more interesting than the alternatives, and it was good.

All three of us enjoyed a lecture at 2:30 p.m. on the history of Cunard’s great ocean liners, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, QE2 and Queen Mary 2. I don’t want to bore people with a history class, but some may enjoy just a little history about Cunard: The Cunard line began in 1839, when Samuel Cunard was awarded the first British transatlantic steamship mail contract. Cunard ships still are still known as, for instance, RMS Queen Mary 2, the RMS standing for Royal Mail Ship.

In 1947 Cunard bought its rival, the White Star Line (of Titanic fame) and in 1998 Cunard was purchased by Carnival Cruise Lines, in part due to the success of the 1997 movie Titanic. Cunard is still operated as a thoroughly British company. It was the billionaire owner of Carnival who decided to build Queen Mary 2, because he sailed on the Queen Elizabeth as a child and loved the experience!

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