Long Beach

We had some time to kill between summer and fall semesters, so we decided to make a spontaneous trip to California.  We didn't do much in the way of planning.  We just improvised as we went, and it was a great trip!

First, I have to say that the drive from Phoenix to LA is one of the ugliest, most boring drives I've ever taken.  But it was definitely worth it to see the beach and enjoy the cooler weather!

We stayed in Downey, about 20 minutes north of Long Beach and 20 minutes south of LA.  We ended up spending most of our time in Long Beach and fell in love with it!

We'd gone to San Diego about a year ago, and Ellie wasn't a huge fan of the beach.  But this year she loved it! 

There's a really nice shopping area called The Pike right along the coast where we spent our first evening walking around and enjoying the beach.

We decided to buy a discount bundle of tickets for both the Aquarium of the Pacific, and the Queen Mary. 

The Aquarium was awesome! 

There was a netted-off area where you could hold little cups of nectar and these birds would land on you and eat right out of your hand.  Ellie loved it!

My favorite part was seeing these Comb Jellies.  They have these tiny cilia lining their bodies that allow them to move.  But those cilia also refract a rainbow of light as they propel themselves through the water.  They were beautiful to watch, and almost hypnotizing!  You can see some cool videos of them on YouTube. 

They also had the standard aquarium tidal pools where you could pet certain underwater creatures, but these creatures were so much cooler than other places we've been to!  We pet sharks, and sting rays, and even jelly fish!  I've never pet a jelly fish before and it was so cool!  The volunteer at the jelly fish pool was telling us that with this species, our skin is too thick for them to sting us, which is why we can pet them.  They were a lot more solid and jelly-ish than I pictured them being.  They look so fragile when you see them swimming around, almost like a plastic bag floating in the water.  But these were dense!  It was really neat!

This was Ellie's souvenir from the Aquarium gift shop.  For some reason, she has always been obsessed with Sting Rays and every time we see them she yells, "Look!  It's my favorite!"  So we had to get her a stuffed one.  I suggested we name him Sammy the Sting Ray and she gave me a look and said, "No.  Spunky."  So he is lovingly known as Spunky now, and she sleeps with him every night. 

As I mentioned before, we bought a ticket bundle that got us into the Queen Mary, which is anchored in the bay.  It's an old cruise ship/WWII troop ship that functions as a hotel and a museum now. 

Apparently, it's also one of the most haunted places in the US, attracting hundreds of ghost enthusiasts every year.  The picture below is the longest hallway in the ship.  I had Mike walk all the way down the hall so I could take a picture.  He only went about 1/2 way, and you can barely see him, and I guess he looks sort of ghost-ish in the picture.  I can see why people might think they've spotted a ghostly specter.

We didn't know it when we bought them, but our tickets included a special tour in addition to admission to the ship.  The only tour with openings left was the "Ghosts & Legends Tour" which turned out to be a Haunted House of sorts, with special effects and strobe lights.  There were several small children who went on the tour, but we still worried that Ellie might be totally freaked out by the experience.  But she LOVED it!  The laughed at the loud noises and the flashing lights were "rocket ships".  She was giving her own commentary of what was going on that was making me, and some of the others around us laugh.  All theatrics aside, it was a pretty neat tour.  We got to see parts of the ship that you normally wouldn't be able to, like the 1st Class Swimming Pool, bunk beds where the WWII soldiers slept, and the boiler rooms.

One part of the ship I really wanted to see was the propeller.  They've built a large fresh-water box around one of the ship's propellers so it won't erode, and you can look down 30 feet into the water and see how big they are.  There's a big railing around it, but other than that, it's open water, and looking down into it was kind of scary.  It made me dizzy, a little like how I feel when I'm up high looking down. 

The propeller was down on the lower level of the ship, and you had to walk through the Engine room and up and down a bunch of stairs to get there.  Since we had a stroller, I left Mike and Ellie on the upper decks with the promise that I'd run down to snap a picture and hurry back up to them.  

Even the picture makes it seem kind of eerie, no?

After I saw the propeller, I kept walking through the Engine Room, thinking that I'd make it to the end of the exhibit soon.  But I kept walking, and walking, and walking.  I even got lost at one point in a circular part of the engine room.  Maybe it was the talk of ghosts earlier, or the lack of any other patrons walking around down there, but I started to get kind of creeped out.  After about 15 minutes running around the lower decks of the Queen Mary all by myself, I finally stumbled upon the exit.  When I made it back to the place I'd left Ellie & Mike, all I found was our empty stroller with no one in sight.  I laughed, cause this added to the spooky ambiance of the place.  Mike and Ellie surfaced about 10 minutes later and the only scare they'd encountered was when Mike almost dropped Ellie into the water in the propeller room.  Oh boy!  That would've been a good story. 

Riding the Ferris Wheel overlooking the beach! 

The next day we drove to Torrance to visit Mitsuwa Marketplace: a huge Japanese grocery store, gift shops, and food court.  It was awesome!  I stocked up on a lot of Japanese snacks and junk food and we ate lunch at their food court.  The food was incredible and very cheap! I was in heaven!

I love the plastic food displays in lieu of a menu.

Takoyaki: a popular Japanese street food with Octopus in the middle.

And then we spent the rest of the day at the beach!!!  It was so relaxing, the weather was beautiful, and we loved it! 

All wrapped up to stay warm!

We only spent 2 1/2 days in California, but we had a great time!  It was nice to get away as a family, especially since Mike's been so busy this summer.  It was nice to escape the heat too, but it made it horribly difficult to come back home to 110+ degree weather. 

At lunch on the way home we ordered a Bacon Sundae... it wasn't that great, but we got it for the experience!