Queen Mary 2

On February 22nd, 2006, Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2 made her maiden entrance into the Port of Los Angeles at San Pedro.  It would have been a special event had we merely gone down to see her arrive, but on this day my family and I were going to get aboard for a three day trip.  Not just any old three day cruise to nowhere, but the glistening new QM2 was headed the next day to Long Beach to salute her namesake the original Queen Mary, in an event dubbed by Cunard as A Royal Rendezvous.

The giant Queen was parked, across not one but across two terminals, pier 91 and pier 92.  Unfortunately these are not the best location to get pictures from, but I would have ample opportunity to get pictures of her later at Ensenada after we had met QM.  In fact, her parking job as it were, is the only one possible for her in Los Angeles.  She can't turn around in the turning circle and she's too large for any other berth, so she had to come in the breakwater and turn around before sailing backward down the channel to her pier!  Her captain would be right at home parallel parking in my crowded SoCal neighborhood! We unloaded our baggage and were sent over to the terminal building that is actually for pier 93.  It took us about an hour to go through the whole process of checking in and walking to the bus that was going to take us back to where we had originally come from (and of course we had to be photographed).  Then we walked outside and were on our way to the ship.

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(C) Copyright Amy Blume 22nd-25th February 2006 & 6th March 2007 Not to be reproduced without permission