January 9th, 2024
We docked bright and early in the morning so they could start off loading passengers by 8am. We are actually docked in San Pedro and this is exactly where we were docked 2 years ago and spent 2 nights while Viking changed the whole itinerary. Only difference was this time we were on the starboard side of the boat so no view of the cargo port and bridge.
We had bright blue skies and cool weather. We did an excursion that drove you 45 minutes to Santa Monica pier and gave you a briefing of what was around you and said they would be back to get us at 1:30pm. We had been to Santa Monica pier before but it was years ago.
View from our balcony in the am.
We had a ton of supplies on the dock for us including lots of Coke Zero, Diet Coke and Diet Sprite. We are unsure what else came on board but there were lots of supplies.
We walked around the pier and bought a magnet and listened to some of the musicians that were playing. Once was an acoustical violin which I love. There were some fisherman out but not many and the pier was not really crowded. One of the pier’s claim to fame is that it is the physical end of the famous route 66 that runs from Chicago all the way across the country and ends on this pier.
Everyone gets their picture taken by the signs so we did to.
There is also a famous carousel on the pier but it is inside a building to protect it and it is not open on Tuesday.
We took a picture of the carousel through the window.
After the pier we went into a very high end mall and did a little shopping. Then ran into one of our shipmates who had a Target bag and pointed us in the right direction so we went to Target to get a few things including a 12 pack of diet Sunkist for me and a 12 pack of Dr Pepper for Kathy. We tried to find a place to eat but the prices were ridiculous or maybe it is just that we have been on a cruise ship for so long we are not used to paying for food 🙂 Believe it or not we ended up at McDonalds and so did several other people from the bus.
The bus ride back was a little longer because of the traffic but we made it back around 2pm. Kathy and I went to the room and dropped off our purchases and then decided to walk into San Pedro. The San Pedro neighborhood is a little run down and there were quite a few homeless people. We felt pretty during the day but not so sure how we would feel once the sun went down. We went into a CVS pharmacy and grabbed a couple more things and then walked back to the boat.
They were having a big welcome on board party at the pool at 5:15 and champagne was flowing and the owner of Viking, Torstein Hagen, was on board to greet us. It was hard to hear what he had to say since we were in the back but apparently he reassured everyone that safety was Viking’s top priority and they had an alternate plan if we were not able to go into the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It was a bit hard to get everyone on the ship in the pool area and normally you can go up to deck 8 and look down on deck 7 but they did not open the retracting door because the weather was cool.
We spent a little bit of time walking around the ship seeing who else had boarded that we knew. We had some we were expecting like Linda & Michael from Nashville and Jo & Red from Florida but ran into some folks we did not know were going to be on board. I am sure over the next few days we will see more people we know. We also had to find our favorite bartender Aaron since they changed his assignment from the restaurant so after going top several of the ships bars we found him on deck 7 in the Explorers lounge. He said his new assignment is the pool bar during the day and then Explorers at night. We had a late dinner at the Italian restaurant with some friends who happened to be dining at the same time.
We did not sail from LA until midnight because we did not have far to go. The next stop is Santa Barbara and that will be a tender port but supposed to be another beautiful day.