World Cruise Day 20/152 - Duke Duke and we're moving moving

Cruise day: 20/152
Ports days: 8
Sea days: 12
Countries: 4
Continents: 1
Ports: 6

Today is our last day in LA.  Since they scheduled us for an excursion, we decided to go ahead and take it, even though there was some overlap with our other tours.  Today, we cruised through Beverly Hills, Malibu, and Santa Monica.

We wound up on a bus with the same tour guide, Mary, that we had on yesterday's tour.  She was quite knowledgeable and did a good job narrating as we drove around.  We stopped briefly in Beverly Hills for some photo ops.

Here's a nice shot of our tour bus and the Beverly Hills City Hall.

Petersen Automotive Museum

The Beverly Wilshire Hotel where Pretty Woman starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere was filmed.

Center for Performing Arts

This was just a pretty cool sculpture out in front of an architectural firm.

At the park, where we stopped, there were several sculptures to admire.  Of course, we did so, in our own way...

The sculpture above was donated to Beverly Hills by none other than Ringo Starr.

I thought this was interesting.  Beverly Hills is OK with you smoking, as long as you're moving.  But, if you stop walking - you have to stop smoking.  Not sure how they enforce that.

We cruised by the La Brea Tar Pits and then Fox Studios.  Of course, studios dot the LA landscape - Warner Brothers, Sony (formerly MGM), and so on are scattered throughout the LA area.

As I talked about previously, California is all gaga over electric vehicles as evidenced by the thousands (no exaggeration) of them that we have seen over the past three days.  Today, I noticed a few Chevrolet Bolt EVs, so GM is making some inroads into the California electric car market.

We passed a Lucid dealership.  If you haven't heard of Lucid, it is a boutique high-end electric car brand that is just getting going.  Shortly after that, I spotted the first Lucid I have seen in the wild.

Today was also a Duke-Duke day.  In Beverly Hills, we spotted a statue dedicated to John Wayne.

Then, in Malibu, we cruised past famous surfer Duke Kahanamoku's restaurant. You can see Santa Monica in the distance.

We stopped in Malibu to take in the views.  Our guide told us we're on a tight timeline so be sure to be back to the bus on time so we can make our next stop!

Here's a look at Catalina Island in the distance.

Pepperdine University

Everyone did as they were told and all 34 of us were back on the bus, ready to go on time.  Perfect.  Well, almost...

Our driver was nowhere to be found. He decided last-minute that a bathroom break was in order.  That delayed our departure slightly but provided a good laugh for all of us.

On the way to Santa Monica, we spotted surfers in the water.

What if you're a surfer but don't own a car?  What if your only transportation is a motorcycle?  How can you support your surfing habit?  Turns out that there is a solution.

We cruised past Malibu Pier on the way to Santa Monica.

For the second day in a row, we were at Santa Monica Pier.  This time, we got a chance to walk around a bit.

In most of the bus tour stops over the last three days, we saw ride-share devices.  There are bikes, scooters, and these three-wheeled scooters.

It is an interesting model.  You download an app to your phone.  Then, you grab any scooter or bike, scan or tap it with your phone, use it, and leave it.  The app charges you based on how far you ride.

We've been amazed for the last three days how easy it was to get around LA on the freeway.  Today, we finally got to enjoy a little real-LA freeway traffic.  Still, it wasn't too bad.  The visit wouldn't have been complete without it.

Our guide pointed out this palm tree both yesterday and today.  We were zipping by pretty quickly so it wasn't easy to get a good picture.

Yes, that is actually a cell phone tower.  They are experimenting with disguising them as palm trees to improve aesthetics. 

If you've read this far, you understand the "Duke Duke" reference in the title.  What about the "move move"?  Today was moving day for us.  We moved rooms this afternoon for the remainder of the World Cruise.  We will move again for the Viking Homelands after we get to Bergan, at least as of now.  Everything seems to work in this new room,  so we're happy with that.  And, at 6 PM, we started moving - the whole ship. We began our retracing cruise, and are headed for Cabo San Lucas again.  We have three sea days ahead of that, and that will be nice after three hectics days in LA.

We ate in The Restaurant tonight - Viking's sit-down dining venue other than the two specialty venues, Chef's Table and Manfredi's. It was a good, although slow-paced dinner.  We both had osso buco (veal shank).

One of the things that's great about a cruise is that you get to meet all sorts of people.  Before dinner, we enjoyed a conversation with folks at the Explorer's Bar.  On the way to dinner, we met some more nice folks and talked for a while.  At dinner, we were seated near two other couples and enjoyed additional spirited conversation.  That's a great thing.

Since dinner stretched long, we finished up right about at the beginning of the Captain's welcome toast in the Star Theater.  Cruise Director Aaron lead off the show.

Captain Olav came out and introduced himself.  He seems to be fun and should help make this an enjoyable cruise.  He expressed the sentiment that went something like, "There are fishing boats, yachts, and other ships, but the most important are the friendships you form on a world cruise."

All the senior officers got a chance to introduce themselves and their role.

As did all the enrichment speakers.

We are looking forward to a great cruise.  The world cruise is finally underway.

When we got back to our room, our long-awaited jackets were waiting for us along with a hat, world cruise pin, and card wallet.  We were excited.  I looked at the jackets.  One small jacket for Arlona - OK - that looks right.  Once large for me - uh...I ordered an XXL - it is two sizes too small.  One more little failure that continues to diminish the luster of the cruise.  So, since I counted on that as my jacket for the cruise, I now have no jacket.  I called the Explorer's Desk and they said they will try to sort it out tomorrow.  Fingers crossed...

They did announce that the hot tubs are finally being filled, three weeks into the cruise, so that is a positive note.