In Long Beach everybody had to get off the ship for about three hours for customs and immigration – nobody gets back on until everybody is cleared.
The ship was using the foghorn all night long as we were coming in to port. The Splendor docked right behind the Queen Mary. That was some comparison. The QM is quite a bit smaller than the Splendor, but the old style elegance of the interior was said to be better.
The day started cold and foggy. We were not too excited about trying to be tourists in a cold and foggy LA, but there was an aquarium fairly close by. After a late breakfast we walked over to the Queen Mary Hotel – that is what the ship is now – and caught the free shuttle to the aquarium. Long Beach has free shuttle service to many of the major tourist areas – very nice, if not all that frequent.
The aquariun is not all that large, but it is very well laid out and the volunteer staff was amazing in number and quality. We got there just in time for shark feeding. Then we went to the lorikeet cage. Lorikeets are colorful parrotlike birds. Libby bought a little cup of nectar and the lorikeets went crazy to get at it. At one time she had three of them on one arm. The greedy little critters drank up all the nectar right away. Then they weren’t so interested in sitting on you, fickle little devils.
Walking through one of the underground viewing areas, I noticed a sealion looking very closely through the glass at a kid’s shoes. When the kid moved on, the sealion took up looking at another kid’s shoes. When that kid moved on, I stepped up and let it look at my “havaiianas” (that is the correct word for flip-flops). I took the shoe off to see if the sealion wanted to see my foot. Not at all, it wanted the shoe, so I started moving the shoe around. The sealion followed it like it was a magnet. I really started getting into it, moving the shoe around and round, up and down, and in circles. The sealion was on it like it was the only thing in the world. I threw in every ballet move I could remember from Mrs. Hayden’s after-school ballet class that I took way back in 3rd grade. We were covering the entire 8 ft tall and 12 ft wide window, just dancing and having a ball.
After a long time, I was getting tired and I figured I was hogging the window so I stopped. A crowd of about 50 had gathered to watch. They gave us a standing ovation. OK, they were already standing, but they did clap and cheer. That was as much fun as I have ever had playing with an animal. Really really cool. The only picture that got any of it is the blue one with the silhouette of my shoe.
We finished the aquarium and went back to the ship.
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