Day 6: Long Beach

Well by this time we were really getting sick of the train, but we had to use it again for our longest trip yet, to Long Beach.
After finding the usual Metro Stations we set off down another line to Long Beach. This train ride in total took almost 2 hours. Eventually however we arrived at our destination, and set out towards the waterfront.
Strangely though as we arrived we found that the city of Long Beach itself seemed to lie on the mariner, and no actual beach was in sight. However, what lay across the harbour was something very interesting: The Queen Mary - our intended destination. Turning down signposted offers of a ship to take us across the harbour to it we instead set off to walk there, over one of the main harbour bridges, a little further down the waterfront. This walk helped us see the true scale of this ship, dwarfing a large dome which we later discovered had been home to the "Spruce Goose", the largest plane in aviation history. After we eventually reached the Queen Mary herself we found her berthed beside a WWII Russian submarine, a symbol of the Queen Mary's involvement in this war.

We bought our tickets at the booth and hopped on board to start our guided tour. We were led through the main levels of the Queen Mary including the grand first class areas by an exasperatingly overacting tour guide, but the information was interesting an the tour definitely worth it. Including stories from her days as a luxury cruise liner and a look into the original cabins (period perfect for the time apart from the flat screen TVs installed in the corner - the first class suites are now a hotel) this tour took about 30 minutes. After this tour we quickly had nice sandwiches from the Deli on the top of the ship (great views of the harbour) and went off to the second of our tours: The Ghosts and Legends tour which scared us out of our skins and concluded with the hull (apparently recently fixed with hot glue guns) leaking horrifically, forcing us to evacuate (or walk slowly to the lift). It was an impressive use of smoke and mirrors through the tour, which was made scarier by the prior introductory movie.

Eventually we waved the Queen Mary goodbye and set off back towards the main city of Long Beach to the huge Borders we had seen prior (after we discovered that the largest bookshop in California which had before been in Long Beach had sadly closed). On the way there we discovered multiple New Zealand trees next to the aquarium, including Pohutakawas, just like we had seen in Portugal about two years ago. Evidently this tree is having a world tour. Waving goodbye now to these homely plants we arrived at Borders. We managed to refrain from buying and books (this time) though and set off home to the hotel. It took just under 2 exasperating hours by train this time. Still, the swim was great upon arriving back at the hotel.

Before we had dinner we went to Griffith Park observatory in Hollywood by car (on this same hill stands the Hollywood Sign) and we watched the sunset while also observing the moon through the powerful telescope, originally put there 75 years ago. After observing both the sign and the sunset we set off down the hill again and at the bottom found a terrific restaurant (just like in Portugal this was at the bottom of a hill). After dinner we attempted in vain to see the star's houses in Beverly Hills and then returned again to the hotel.