The Port of Los Angeles was my destination for this week's Tuesday day off. More specifically, the area tourists and regular people can visit that's south of the nitty gritty of the 24/7 working container port. Did you know the Port of LA and the Port of Long Beach are twins? And by the way, passenger cruise ships also sail out of the Ports of LA and Long Beach. The eight day Mexican Riviera cruise I took in 2010 was out of Long Beach.
I sort of have a "thing" about container ports, shipping, hauling, and rail transport, and the part all of them play in the supply chain. I follow a dozen container ports on Twitter and I get the Port of Amsterdam's newsletters. One of my best ever long ago memories was trying to stay awake most of the night in a hostel right beside a working section of the Port of Hamburg. It was so exciting and glamorous!
Although I planned Tuesday knowing the battleship Iowa and the Maritime Museum both were closed on Mondays and Tuesdays (I trust this won't be my forever schedule), I'd hoped to take a harbor boat cruise. Advertised at $15 for close to an hour around the bay, it sounded like a don't miss it activity. It turned out they needed to have enough people sign up before they sailed, so I decided not to wait around this time.
I'd gone south to the city of San Pedro that's the skinny strip of land where the Port of LA resides because I believed there was a fancy commercial strip some distance away from the major port activity, but that's another "as it turned out" because it been razed and they were in the process of building a new, improved, exciting mile long row of shops and restaurants.
Apparently I looked dazed, because a harbor police officer approached me in front of the closed museum and asked if I was lost. Yes, I was! She told me what was going on and said there was a brand new Starbucks about a mile away at the end of the currently empty new development. Close to the end of the promenade, it was a beautiful small store, with a lot of outside seating, so I got my favorite large hazelnut frappuccino with whipped cream.
And on the way – of course on the way back in the opposite direction, too – there were two schooners moored in the water. I looked closely and I knew one of them had to be American Pride, one of my favorites from the Labor Day weekend San Diego annual Festival of Sail. I don't know why seeing her there surprised me; probably because I hadn't remembered American Pride is the official tall ship of the city of Long Beach.
I had to search "two mast schooner beside American Pride in San Pedro" and it was the Swift of Ipswich. Yes! named after the north shore town of Ipswich Massachusetts of fried clams fame.
Despite no museum, cruise, or shopping strip, it was a wonderful day along the bay.
I'm ending with an American Pride trilogy from San Diego Festival of Sail 2013 and 2014. The one on the right is one of my best captures of American Pride in full red sail.
