Los Angeles, CA - February 8-9, 2014

I can say with 100% confidence that this, our first trip to Los Angeles, will not be our last in 2014. I predict 3 more, at least. This trip was college basketball-centric, as USC was hosting UCLA. After going to the PAC-12 Tournament last year, it became a goal of ours to make it to each of the PAC-12 basketball arenas. 1 down, 11 more to go!! One of Robbie's coworkers, Hilary, went to college at USC, so we asked her to come along for the weekend, and she was in. It was a quick trip to LA (leave Vegas on Saturday morning, and get back on Sunday afternoon), but as always, it was really fun. After picking up our car rental and Hilary on Saturday morning, we were on our way. As we got closer to L.A., the fog was lifting in the valley, which made for a very picturesque drive!!!

It's inevitable that we run into some type of traffic in LA, and this time was no different. We had just hit the eastern suburbs of LA with our destination being Long Beach, and traffic was at a stand-still, at 2:30pm mind you! But with map skills like a wizard, Robbie came through yet again, and got us to Long Beach without taking one freeway after we left the 605.

We stayed in Long Beach because Hilary had some college friends who lived there. So we decided to stay aboard the Queen Mary, and old ship that was restored into a hotel. We had seen the Queen Mary on our honeymoon, and we always thought it would be fun to stay in. Before the basketball game, we quickly checked in, and were off. Although I wasn't able to get any pictures at that time, I did get a few that night when we returned, and the next morning, so I'll just talk about our experience now. We knew the Queen Mary was restored into a hotel, so we stayed there for the experience. Neither of us had ever been on a ship of that size; the only other large vessel of that sort was a ferry boat, and the only thing we could think of to compare it to in our heads was the Titanic ship, from the movie. When we got there, it was very much like the Titanic, but on a smaller scale. We checked in, and were given directions to our room. We had a center "stateside" room, so there were no windows, which was weird, but it proved to be a blessing come sun-up!! That night, we noticed the air-conditioning was outdated, and when inquiring about it, we were told that it needed to be turned on from a "control room." Ha! We had never heard of such a thing! We eventually had to have 2 maintenance guys come in at 11pm and fidget with the air ducts in the room. Oh man. In the morning, we noticed that the bathtub water knobs were also outdated. It would either spray scalding hot water, or freezing cold. We were finally able to to get it to a luke warm setting. All in all, it wasn't a terrible stay, just some things to get used to. The bed, on the other hand, was extremely comfy!! Sunday morning, we were able to walk around the ship for some photo opportunities before we left. For anyone looking for an historic stay, the Queen Mary would be the place for you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, the reason we went to LA in the first place, the USC/UCLA basketball game!! After we checked in, me, Robbie, Hilary, and 2 of her college friends were off to the USC campus! Time allowed us to walk around the USC campus for a little bit. Robbie really wanted to see Heritage Hall, which paid homage to all the USC greats who went on to bigger and better things, sports-wise. We spent a bunch of time in there, and on our way to the basketball arena, we crossed the quad and stopped for pizza.

 

 

 

The Galen Center is the venue for home USC games, so that's where we were for the evening. After getting to our seats, we had a few minutes to watch warm-ups and listen to some tunes!

 

 

The game itself was very action-filled, in the first half anyway for USC! UCLA was the favorite, but USC took an early lead, and then pretty much dropped the ball (ha-ha) in the second half. All in all, it was an entertaining game!!

Before we went back to the Queen Mary, one of Hilary's friends who was riding with us took us over a few bridges that overlooked the Long Beach Harbor. All the pictures I took of the harbor turned out blurry, but I did get a pretty good one of the bridge itself, and a cool shot of a bunch of overpasses, and I think they turned out pretty great!

 

 

The next day before we left LA, we went to the best breakfast spot, the Original House of Pancakes!!! The best thing about it was that it was located right along the Pacific Coast Highway!!

 

 

The weekend went by really quick, but it was really fun!! As we were driving out of the valley and making a steady incline, we drove through the fog, which was pretty neat! Now onto planning our next trip to LA!!!

 

"It is very hard to generalize. Everyone's adventure is original." -Bernard Pivot