Don & Kully's World Cruise on Viking Neptune

Today we are docked at the Los Angeles World Cruise Center and awoke to a beautiful sunrise over the harbor bridge.

The remainder of our World Cruisers, roughly 400, joined us today. We had the entire day to explore the area, so we decided not to take one of the Viking excursions so we could use the day to shop for some the consumables we’ll need to complete the cruise. We disembarked went through customs and took an UBER to Sam’s and Costco … shoppers paradise the two stores are next door to each other. Next stop was the San Pedro Double Tree Hotel to pick-up Amazon packages delivered to the Amazon lockers. We returned are purchases to the ship and headed off to Long Beach to tour the RMS Queen Mary.

The RMS Queen Mary is the last surviving of the luxury ocean liners. She played many roles throughout her career, and upon her maiden voyage in 1936 was considered the grandest of all ocean liners of her day. Many of the rich and famous considered her the only civilized way to travel. During WWII she was transformed into a troopship nicknamed the Grey Ghost. By the end of the war the Queen Mary had transported more than 800,000 troops, traveling over 600,000 miles. After the war she was refurbished and returned to her duties as a luxury liner. She was retired in 1967, sold to the city of Long Beach and is now a hotel and tourist attraction.

We were amazed by the beautiful art deco design of the ship and all of the wood paneling in the public spaces. Its was also fun to see how much ships have changed in the past 90 years.

Some fun facts about the RMS Queen Mary:

• Made 1001 transatlantic crossings
• Passenger capacity 1,957
• Crew 1,174
• Cursing Speed 28.5 knots (that’s fast even by today’s standards)
• Fuel consumption 13 feet per gallon
• Lifeboat capacity 145 persons each….you saw the picture.
• Over 10 million rivets used in her construction.

We returned to the Viking Neptune and Mr. & Mrs. Torstein Hagen the founder and CEO of Viking Cruise lines were boarding the ship. Mr. Hagen greeted us at the World Cruise welcome aboard cocktail party.

Our next port of call will be tomorrow, January 10, in Santa Barbara, California.