Visit To The Queen Mary

March 13, 2011

While in Long Beach, we visited The Queen Mary ship and bought tour tickets for two, which was a self-guided audio tour. We wanted to tour where we could take our time and where we could explore the ship in our own pace with an audio guide.
Part of the tour that was included in our tickets was the "Ghost & Legends Tour" of the Queen Mary which is sort of an interactive show tour with special effects that highlights some of the ship's famous paranormal hotspots as we were guided into the ship's haunted past. The entire tour was an hour and a half. It was actually kind of fun for us because our tour guide would try to scare us at times while walking on the dark alleys, lol!

After the ghost tour, we had the audio tour to visit the entire ship. I found the audio tour a little bit boring later on because we had to do a lot of walking back and forth and the distances are quite far. We even had to use the escalator to go up, but the escalator happened to be not working, so we had to climb it like stairs and it seemed to me it was more than a hundred steps way up high! UGH!
Unfortunately, we didn't finished up that tour, and instead I had to tell my hubby we need to find a food shop because I was starving, lol!
But in fairness, the place has a lot of food shops, so it wasn't hard to find one ;).
There is also a hotel at the ship if you want to take your time in the ship.

I got some achy feet with all the walkings, but I could say it was still fun as an experience.

Our Catalina Island Experience

March 12, 2o11

We're now on the middle weekend of our 2-week trip in California and now settled here in Long Beach. Since it's the weekend, we planned of going to Catalina Island. It so happened that our hotel was just 5 minutes away from the Catalina Express Ferry Station.
We bought tickets for the 11AM schedule going to Avalon, and took a quick brunch at the ferry terminal canteen since we still had few minutes of waiting.

The ferry trip is one and a half hour before reaching Avalon. This is when you are boarding Catalina Express at downtown Catalina landing in Long Beach, CA.
Once you're in Avalon, you can already see the scenic view around the area. Awesome views!

There are lots of discovery tours that can be done in the island, so if you want to experience all of them, one day isn't enough. Hotels are also in the island, so when you want for a few more days of R & R, you can choose to check on the hotels and the packages before going there. I am not sure if they can accept walk-ins but the island is really busy and can be crowded during peak days.

We signed up for the "Skyline Drive Tour" where we had the bus tour with a narrated journey by the tour driver himself. We were taken into Catalina's protected wilderness area as we ascended ten miles where spectacular vistas, deep canyons, quiet coves, the blue ocean and the exciting part was seeing the island's largest inhabitants at a close range...the buffalos!

This tour lasts 2 hours and 15 minutes and has a bus stop at the Airport in the Sky. This is an old airport that is no longer operating, except that some private planes are still using it. It is here where you can shop at the small shopping store and they have a a food shop too. Restrooms are also available.

After we got back from the tour, we walked around a little bit and we toured some shops as well. There are lots of them in every street, including food shops and other business establishments.
How I wish we could have just spent few days there, but next time is always a good chance! ;).