Skip to main content

California: Long Beach

No more California after this, I promise!  We'll be back to normal life again.  This is just a scattershot tour of the highlights from Long Beach. in no particular order.  If nothing else, you get a few more cute photos of Toby to look at.

Long Beach is part of the greater Los Angeles sprawl, and while it might not be your first choice for a holiday destination, it has a pretty harbour area and a few good attractions (the Queen Mary of course being one).  We spent several days just pottering around and enjoying time in the sunshine.

Outside the Convention Center
Strolling along the boardwalk
The harbour and downtown.
An inoperative lighthouse had a pleasant little park around it...
...perfect for fun and games!
Shhh, don't tell him you can put money in it!
We drove to Huntingdon Beach one evening, where we were appalled to find that most of the car parks wanted $15 from us!  Finally we found a meter to put a few quarters in, and were rewarded with a nice sunset.
Sun setting over the palm trees at Huntingdon Beach
The beach baby look: sunglasses and dummy!
On Sunday we met up with some friends who live close by in San Pedro.  We joined them at their very friendly church, where we were greeted warmly and Toby, to our surprise, made a beeline for the nursery (probably thinking, "Finally!  Some different toys!")  After church we headed for a local park, where the adults enjoyed a cookout and the kids enjoyed the playground.  Their little girl is almost exactly the same age as Toby, and they seemed to get on well in that strange toddler fashion of mostly ignoring each other.


Being locals, they were able to give us a few recommendations, one of which was for the Frosted Cupcakery in the Belmont Shore area.  Graham and I went citrussy with lemon and key lime cupcakes, and we treated Toby to a chocolate "hi-hat" - kind of a mini cake and frosting sandwich.

Yummy!
Belmont Shore has some pretty streets, too, and so many of the homes had flowering bushes outside.
 Another recommendation was the Aquarium of the Pacific.  It's a great place, but let me further recommend that you don't try and drag your very cranky toddler around it.  Having said that, the penguins and rays were interesting enough to pull him out of cranky mode for a while, and we managed a pretty good tour before we hit complete meltdown.  We were even honoured with a great view of the octopus, who normally hides in her cave all day.  It was obvious something special was happening when all the employees were calling each other to come have a look!

Graham and Toby by the ray tank
You can even touch them if you want!
Look at those suckers!
One of the tanks was floor to ceiling and had some great big fish.
Anything with a steering wheel is always a hit.
Fast asleep on the bus back to the Queen Mary.
 On our final evening in Long Beach we were out looking for a place to eat, and stumbled across Kavikas.  The first attraction was a patio overlooking the marina, which we inexplicably had completely to ourselves.  The second was the sign saying, "Free kids meals".  This, we thought, has got to be worth a try.  We were not wrong.  Toby's food came on a plate almost as big as he is!  He thought he was in chip heaven, and tucked in with gusto.  Meanwhile we were wondering how big the adult portions were, if that was a child-size one!  Fortunately they were quite manageable and just as delicious.  Isn't it great when your lack of planning works out that well?

Is it bad that Toby is a pro at dipping things into ketchup?
Yummy!
Our trip home was mostly uneventful, at least until we picked up our car from the remote parking and somehow managed to set off down the wrong road.  What was worse was that it took us a good ten minutes to realise it!  Suffice to say that Hwy 183 - I820 - I35W is not the direct route home from DFW airport, and our Texas friends can laugh as much as they want, but I bet they've done something similar at least once!
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hiya Martha, so cool to see your photo's, it looks like your having a wonderful time & Toby looks full of fun. Many Blessings, love Su, (old cafe staff member.)
25 August 2012 at 12:39
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where am I going now? The Portway

I should probably explain why I am pottering around Nottingham and its western suburbs, rather than roaming the Derbyshire countryside. It's not just the abundance of paved paths, although that certainly helps - I recently went on a country walk across a cow field and found myself tiptoeing gingerly across boggy mud cratered with six-inch deep hoof holes. Then I was confronted by a sign which said: Private Property, Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. I congratulated myself on being on a public right of way, then, a few steps on, consulted the map and realised I wasn't. The path was across a completely different field. nice scenery, though I digress. Apart from the absence of cows and angry landowners, the reason I am walking around Nottingham is that it's the start of the Portway. There is a blog called The Old Roads of Derbyshire , written by a man named Stephen Bailey, who has also published a book of the same name. I can't remember now whether I came across the book fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Portway: Lenton to the Bramcote Hills

It was cold. My fingers were cold, and my phone was cold too. The OS map was totally failing to find my location, and the more I prodded it the less feeling I had in my fingers, so I gave up, shoved both my phone and my chilly hands into my pockets, and set off. After all, I knew where I was. This was Wollaton Park. And the path was very obvious. Just follow the avenue of trees... ...past the deer... ...and out through the fancy gates. Crossing a busy road brought me into a neat little housing estate with unusual round street signs. This was built when Wollaton Park was sold to Nottingham City Council in 1925. The old gatehouse, Lenton Lodge, is now estranged from the rest of the park, and stands by itself next to Derby Road. The bridge used to go over the Nottingham Canal, which has now been turned back into the River Leen. The unfortunate river got shoved out of the way whenever someone came up with a new building project. This is not its original course. My hands were warming up sli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Advent 2025: Mercy

I'm going to read the whole Bible. The question came up in my homegroup recently (have you ever...?) and even though large parts of the Bible are embedded in my brain, and even though I'm pretty sure I have read all of it at some point, I have never set out to read the whole thing. My friend Dave read through the Bible several times. He was one of the most Christian men I know, in all the best ways, and he died recently. So. This is for Dave, too. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. I was going to start on December 1st, and I was going to do the obvious thing and start with Genesis, alongside the Psalms. Then I saw something that mentioned reading Luke in Advent (24 chapters: 24 days) and then I had some spare time today and thought why not? so here I am, a day ahead of myself already. Luke 1 is hardly a voyage into the unknown. In the sixth month the Angel Gabriel was sent by God,  the Magnificat and the Benedictus ... all woven tightly into the liturgies of the church. But ...
Post a Comment
Read more