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

Trent Valley: Twyford, both ways

To complete my loop along the Dove Valley  from the mouth at Newton Solney up to Dovedale at Thorpe, across to Matlock on the Limestone Way , and back south along the Derwent Valley , I needed to walk one last section along the River Trent from Derwent Mouth to Repton. Originally I planned to do it in that direction. But for various reasons I ended up doing it the other way. The walk from Repton to Ingleby was completed weeks ago, at the beginning of June, and, for the sake of completeness, I also, later, walked from Findern to Twyford, on the other bank of the river. If I had done the walk sixty years or more ago, I could have crossed the river by ford or ferry at Twyford, and that would have been my most direct route home. the Trent at Twyford Walk 1: Repton to Ingleby Starting from the centre of Repton, I made my way out of the village and crossed the fields to Milton. Wystan Arboretum Milton The Trent Rivers Trust has been busy establishing the Trent Valley Way . This sect...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trent Valley: the march of the pylons

In the 1980s, the River Trent supplied the cooling water for fifteen coal-fired power stations, each one gobbling up coal from the local mines and quenching its heat with gallons of river water. The area was known as Megawatt Valley . As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, the mines closed, the coal trains stopped running, and the iconic cooling towers, one by one, fell to the ground. The high-voltage electricity lines which connected the stations to the grid are still there, however, and they dominated the walk I did today. The stately silhouettes of pylons stalked across the landscape, carrying fizzing power lines which sliced up the sky. At one point, I was within view of two of the remaining sets of cooling towers. Diving further back into history, I parked by Swarkestone Lock on the Trent & Mersey Canal, walked past St James' Church, and arrived at Swarkestone Bridge, a 14th-century causeway which still, remarkably, carries traffic today. It was famously the southernmos...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Churnet Way: a wonderful walk

The loop from Oakamoor to Froghall and back was one of the most enjoyable walks I've done in a long time. It had a bit of everything: woods, ponds, rivers and railways; steep climbs and sweeping views; an unusual church, an ex-industrial wharf, and, as a final bonus, car parks with toilets. Of course, the sunny weather helped too. I parked in Oakamoor and set off along a quiet lane called Stoney Dale. This is the route of the Churnet Way, which deviates away from the river for a couple of miles. After a while I turned right and climbed up through the woods on a gravelly path, then dropped down to the B5417. a spring in Oakamoor   Crossing the road, I entered Hawksmoor Nature Reserve. It has some fine gateposts commemorating John Richard Beech Masefield, "a great naturalist". I found a photo of the opening of the gateway in 1933; unsurprisingly, the trees have grown a lot since then! A track took me down through the woods to East Wall Farm. Lovely view! Nice duck pond as ...
Post a Comment
Read more