Port 05 Los Angeles, California

After one day at sea we arrived at the Port of Los Angeles on Jan 5th.  We hoped to see the armada of container ships waiting their turns to get unloaded, but we glided through at 5 AM – pitch black. By 6 AM we were tied up at Berth 93 at the cruise terminal. As the dawn broke we found we had a view of a cargo container ship being loaded straight out from our fantail veranda. This gave me the opportunity for this sunrise photo.

In the daylight, the “Ever Forgiven” looked like this:

Later we had a better look at the port, and the sea of containers that were waiting for something to happen, although we could barely see a fraction of the port!

The green bridge next to our berth is the Vincent Thomas bridge linking San Pedro (on the left side of the photos) to Terminal Island (on the right side of the photos), and has been seen in a couple of the Fast and Furious movies!  The pointy spikes in the middle of the lower photo is the Gerald Desmond Bridge in the distance.

We learned a new term: “Bunkering.”  This means the ship is being fueled, so no unauthorized personnel and no smoking!

Los Angeles is the end of our initial 16-day Miami to LA segment on our 196-day Around the World cruise, ahead of the official “180 Days Around the World” that starts in LA. This was initially broken up this way to satisfy the travel insurance companies that would not write policies for trips exceeding 180 days.  But then our insurance company did write a single 196-day policy for us!

As was the case in San Diego, we didn’t have any excursions planned. Since our wine did not arrive in Miami, we decided to make this our wine shopping port.

Heading out of the ship for the first time we confirmed we are at Berth 93, so we can find our way “home!”

Our research led us to the 5 Pours Wine & Beer shop in Rancho Palos Verdes, or “PV” as I learned to call it when I lived in LA attending college at the University of Southern California – USC. Go Trojans!

Justin, the owner who assisted us, explained he looks for wines that none of the big box stores will carry, but are exceptional wines. We asked him to help us identify a variety of wines that are easy to drink even if we don’t have food to pair with it. Less than an hour later we left with two cases and one extra bottle of wine. Since it is embarkation day for the new group of 180-day passengers we were able to have the longshoremen take the wine and deliver the cases to our cabin! We didn’t have to carry the boxes! Yay! (And these cases DID arrive at our stateroom!)

As I’ve already said, we are on the 196-day ATW cruise, but this is the beginning of the 180-day Around the World tour, and the beginning of the second segment. The first segment was Miami to Los Angeles. This second segment is Los Angeles to Papeete, French Polynesia (Tahiti). We have heard the number of new ATW cruisers boarding on Jan 6th is about 180. With the 78 of us who boarded in Miami we are now at about 260! But we’ve also heard the total number of passengers on board is less than 400 out of a possible 684 total passengers. The ship has a crew of 400, so this is a 1-to-1 passenger to crew ratio! We haven’t seen this low a ratio since our honeymoon cruise on the Wind Spirit!

We learned the itinerary published for the Los Angeles to Papeete segment changed even before we left Los Angeles. The Captain informed us San Francisco was cancelled and we are heading back to San Diego for two more days! Whirled!  This is fine for the new cruisers, but annoying to the rest of us.

Losing San Francisco was a bummer! We had excursions to see Alcatraz on day 1 and Sonoma wine country on day 2. We had online orders to pick up at Norstroms and The Container Store. And we had dinner reservations at Tadich Grill after receiving a strong recommendation from our good friends, the Puccinellis in Georgia who used to live in San Francisco. We cancelled specialty restaurant reservations so we could make it to Tadich Grill. Whirled!

We are beginning to call this the Magical Mystery Tour! (Cruise on, Cruise on, the magical mystery tour!- thank you John and Paul!) We don’t know how many of the planned ports we will really get to see, and how many unplanned ports will be substituted when possible.

We departed the port of Los Angeles the morning of Jan 7th. It was foggy, with a little over 1/4 mile of visibility. We watched a container ship back into the channel with the help of three tug boats just before we started backing out just in front of it.

It was a little sad to see how gaudy the Royal Caribbean “Navigator of the Seas” has become with the water slide tubes now covering the top of the ship. (We sailed on three of the Navigator’s sister ships, but never on the Navigator herself.)

We passed the USS Iowa, a battleship museum permanently moored in Los Angeles. We pondered if this was the battleship used in Cher’s video for “If I Could Turn Back Time” but I found out the video was filmed on the USS Missouri in Hawaii (we’ll be there in a week, we hope!)

Finally, we pass the entrance to the Port of los Angeles. We didn’t see this building on our way in to the port since it was in the early morning dark.

We have one day at sea heading south to San Diego. We’ll be there Jan 8th and 9th.

Overall the new passengers appear to be better at masking than the previous group! We’ll see how long this lasts and how well the ship policies are followed and upheld. Finger crossed for a healthy cruise!