Another beautiful, yet chilly day on the West Coast. We arrive early, so once again, we just hang out aboard until we are ready to get off. We’re docked today, so we can just wander on off whenever we feel like it – which we do around 10ish, push the button for the Uber and start our LA adventure a little past 10. Today is another easy day, we’re just going to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, then the San Pedro brewery for lunch, followed by a walk back to the ship and a stop at the maritime museum. Easy peasy. Once ensconced in the Uber, the driver asks to confirm our destination, and when we tell re-confirm the aquarium, he says with this incredulous voice, “the Aquarium????” Um, yeah. Is that a problem? Guess he’s not used to adults without children heading there!

The driver’s surprise is deserved, because when we pull up we realize the Annual Whale Fiesta is today (which I’m all in for!) but which also serves as a huge draw for hundreds of families with tons of kiddos. And seriously, we are the only adults there without children!

It’s actually a pretty cool museum, with all sorts of displays – starting with an excellent environmental and pollution display which details the dangers of just about everything that can harm the ocean (including antibiotics – prescriptions and hand sanitizing soap – other prescription drugs, plastic of course, and even coffee which is a natural pesticide!). The rest of the museum moves through tons of local species divided into living areas (think beaches, mudflats, rocky shores), with a jelly fish “lab” and lots of informational displays about whales (again, of course!).

We wander in and out of the displays and the building, walking through all the tents and tables set up for the Whale fiesta. They’ve got lots of cool things (mostly for kids of course), but we enjoy going through the displays on the fossil table and the blubber, baleen and bones display where the experts talk to us about tons of whale things. We also run into the exploration center when they say there is a whale watching expedition beginning. We’re all excited, but turns out its a couple of cut out whales that are being hoisted up next the windows from the outside to give the kids a “watch” experience. Cute…well…the kids reactions are cuter than the watching, but still.

Probably the coolest thing about the aquarium is that it has a working scientific laboratory where they focus on growing, as they put it, “young sea animals and young scientists.” There are a raft of volunteers (all young) in there, taking care of the different species – from sea horses to jelly fish to crab to you name it. It is really heartwarming to walk through there and see all these youngsters so involved in science and the environment. A happy way to end our little tour.

Next, we hop an Uber back toward the pier for our lunch break at the San Pedro Brewery. Our Uber driver is great, an older guy, talks to us the whole way there – and also tells us he’s quitting for the day after our ride and heading to the Mexican restaurant just down the street (I swear he was almost inviting us to stop in later to join him! Very sweet.) He drops us at the brewery, and as we enter, we realize we were there the last time we docked in San Pedro, back in 2016! Too funny!

Well, it’s the same. Great pub, good food – we had wings and cerviche and beer – of course! This time we didn’t have quite the same interesting conversation that we did last time, we were sadly too busy glued to the TV watching film from Kobe Bryant’s helicopter crash. A very sobering event, the whole bar was in shock and disbelief and quiet and downcast. Sad.

Walking off our lunch, we wander down W. 6th street, past the Green Onion where our Uber driver was probably still holding down the bar, and onto the Downtown Harborfront to the Maritime Museum. This is a small little museum that talks all about the history of the LA waterfront. While small, it is surprisingly interesting with exhibits explaining the start of canned tuna (it started in 1903 when sardines disappeared from the harbor and the California Fish Company started canning tuna. It didn’t really catch on until WWI when there were meat shortages!) and that both Starkist and Chicken of the Sea started here in San Pedro. Who knew?

Also in the Who Knew? department, the museum houses the model of the Poseidon! The famous star of the 1972 film Poseidon Adventures! I’m just fascinated. I loved that movie, and never really thought about how it was filmed. But here is the star – built to scale based on plans for the Queen Mary, it took 3 months and 15 men to build. This is the actual model that floated out in the sea, that was subjected to all the explosions and also overturned in the water. Totally cool.

Circling around all the other interesting displays, we come upon an operating ham radio station. There are signs all over talking about the operation, the volunteers who staff it. As we are ogling all the different radios and buttons and gadgets, one of the operators shows up and we have a great time chatting with him about the operation, how he got started, how he became a volunteer. As we chat, he starts to gear up for a call he has scheduled with a friend on the East Coast. So we get to watch live, as they send codes back and forth to each other, conversing through Morse Code – totally fascinating!

It is time to head back, so we bid our radio pal goodbye and wander back down along the harbor front, passing the USS Iowa Museum on our way to the ship. We’re sailing at 5 today, so we don’t really have the time or the desire to dilly dally with a visit the Iowa (which we’ve done before). We’re happy to just head straight for the ship, grab a wine and a beer and prepare for our first day at sea tomorrow.