Aug. 27-29, 2018. Los Angeles, Long Beach, The Queen Mary and Hollywood.

Aug. 27,

HMS The Queen Mary

The ship is now a hotel, with about 400 cabins. There are many more but are not in use.  Louise had booked a First Class deluxe cabin, as they had portholes. Ours had 2. The higher level cabins were Staterooms. Most of the fittings were the original beautiful wood paneling with etched glass doors everywhere. With my penchant for the 1930s, I was in seventh heaven. We took a guided tour of the ship which allowed us to go into areas only viewable on the tour. 

Here's the reason for all this excitement. 53 years ago my mother and I boarded the Queen Mary at Southampton for the voyage to New York, my first visit to the US. However, it was in January and crossing the Atlantic at that time is not the best to be on a luxury liner. In fact, I was so seasick, I stayed in our cabin the WHOLE voyage, being looked after by the doctor and nurses. I remember getting injections, but that's about all. Ever since then I felt I missed out on one of my favorite forms of transportation. I grew up traveling on these liners from South Africa to England, and it was always such fun. The Queen Mary is still in the water, but not moving, and I couldn't wait to get on her. My next project is to contact Cunard and try to find which cabin Mum and I were in.

The view from one of our portholes. 

The round attachments on top of the bookcases were thermostats for each bed. The ship was very cold, as the week before, the temperatures were in the 110s and with the AC on full blast, it was taking a while to warm up again. 

Louise making her first Belgian waffle. We had the buffet breakfast every morning, which sufficed us with nibbles until an early dinner. I still put on weight (mainly from the train, more on that later).

                                    Some of the amazing furnishings and objets d'art all around the ship. 

Etched glass everywhere. 

Pencil drawings outside the 2nd class auditorium. 

If I had been on the bridge all those years ago, I probably wouldn't have been so sick!

 Aug 29

I think the passengers in this First class Cocktail Lounge would have been much more elegantly dressed!

On the last morning, we visited the Diana exhibition.  Certainly, the clothes in that exhibit would pass muster in the Cocktail Lounge and as well in the First Class Dining Room. There were just a few dresses of Diana in that exhibit and brought back many memories of her halcyon days. The real focus of it was the period of over 100 years of the Royal Family from the reign of King George 5th and his wife, Queen Mary who christened the ship in 1934. There were many artifacts of commemoration plates, mugs etc., lots of photos of each monarch (George 5th, Edward 8th who abdicated and was never crowned, his brother George 6th did, and Elizabeth the 2nd became Queen in 1952 when her father died. Newly added photographs are of Diana's sons, William, and Harry with their wives. The collection of gorgeous outfits of clothing worn by the royals from all reigns are featured. 

We took longer than planned enjoying that exhibit, but one more visit was imperative. A video of the life of the ship. After luxury sailings from Southampton, Cherbourg and New York, she became a ship painted grey carrying thousands of troops after WW2. They were lined up shoulder to shoulder and took turns rotating to access the canteens and sleeping quarters. Refugees, especially Jews fleeing from Europe, were added on the passenger list to New York. One harrowing interview was with a Jewish survivor who managed to get on to the ship with 3 others after the captain waited 6 hours for them to come from Europe.  

After a long final look at the Queen Mary before getting on the Passport shuttle, we took the Metro to the Union Station to go to the Warner Bros.Studio Tour. There are so many addresses for Warner Bros, and we got the wrong one. However, we were able to get a taxi to get us to the correct address, and fortunately, the tour had only just started (we missed a video and a glass of champagne.) The Classical Tour was great for us. It was a small group and we went around the lot in a cart. I recognized a number of names and movie titles and found it fascinating to see how the buildings were made for camera shooting. 

Such a quiet street. Whoops, these are the studio lots! Recognize any of the facades? Acres and acres of these, all over, and not just US - a French Patisserie, Churches, on and on. We were driven around in one of the carts seen in this photo, easy to jump in and out of.

We didn't get the champagne, but did get an Oscar!

Our guide knew his stuff inside and out and in fact gave us a longer tour than expected, until we finally had to jump in a taxi and rush down to the station to catch the train to New Orleans. This section of the trip had been a truly wonderful visit, even more than I had anticipated.