Post by 7thWoman on Nov 28, 2004 16:27:40 GMT -5
So I was in Long Beach a few weekends ago and found a few things to do during the daylight hours when there's no volleyball. For those of you who are heading to the Final Four, here's a few humble recommendations for how to spend your time, besides pizza with robertmotley:
1) Aquarium of the Pacific
Without a doubt, the absolute coolest thing to do in Long Beach is spend half a day at the aquarium. Try to be there at 2 PM to watch the Shark feeding (specifically the Sand Tigers). This aquarium is not as enormous as the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, and doesn't have a baby Great White, but it does have all sorts of cool things that Monterrey doesn't. For instance, shark and ray touch tanks, a sawfish, sand tiger sharks, an enormous reticulate whiptail ray and thorny ray, a lorikeet forest, 2 giant sea bass, a remora with a bite in its side (from one of the black tip reef sharks), a GPO (Giant Pacific Octopus), and a sarcastic fringehead (a funny looking little fish with an attitude). They have also had a lot of success with breeding leafy and weedy sea dragons (you wouldn't think one of these was an animal if you didn't know better). Admission is about $20, with a small discount if you're a AAA member. They have a timed entry system, so you might want to buy your ticket online to be admitted at the time of your choosing. For more info, visit the aquarium web site at:
www.aquariumofpacific.org/index.html
If you're interested, I did sort of a walk-through writeup of my visit at the request of some folks on another board I frequent. I didn't know a whole lot about this stuff when I posted it and have pasted several corrections, so be sure to read the whole thread if you care:
www.tonmo.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3338
2) Long Beach Arena
The arena is part of the convention center complex, which also encompasses "rainbow lagoon". The arena building itself has a very cool mural painted on the outside of it with all sorts of ocean life. According to the plaque on the building, it was in the 1992 Guinnes Book of World Records as the world's largest mural. I highly recommend viewing this during daylight hours if you get the chance. It didn't look like it was well lit at night. Rainbow lagoon is a nice place to walk/bike/rollerblade (assuming it's not raining). I think it could use a few park benches to make it a nice place to sit and read a book, but I guess the city of Long Beach doesn't think so. If you cross the street (Shoreline Drive) there's a pier with various food places and touristy shops. I think they call it Shoreline village. It's a good place to grab some ice cream and watch inexperienced boaters with lots of money motor too fast downwind and crunch their boats into the dock. (I can laugh at that because I've done
it several times myself.)
I think I paid $8 for parking for an Ice Dogs game. I would imagine they would charge more for a special event like the NCAA's, but I'm not in a position to know. I found the following map of the convention center/waterfront area to be very useful:
www.longbeachcc.com/maps2.htm
3)Queen Mary/Russian Cold War Sub
I didn't think going on these would be worth the asking price, but there are a lot of people who do. I think the Queen Mary is basically a floating museum, hotel, and restaraunt at this point. The Russian sub sounded interesting, but I've been on subs before, so I didn't bother with this one. You can only be so interested in a boat that never leaves the dock. They've been doing a ghosts and legends tour on the Queen Mary too. That might be fun. Oh, and don't go on the sub if you are bothered by confined spaces. Submarines are not luxury yachts.
www.queenmary.com/
4) LA Maritime Museum
If you want to see the ugliest sight in Southern California, cross over the bridge into San Pedro and look down. You will see miles and miles of rusty cargo containers and a bunch of cranes and shipping vessels. Long ago the people of Los Angeles turned an ugly marsh into an even uglier harbor for major commercial shipping. The LA Maritime Museum has a featured display glorifying the hard work of the "piledrivers" who built LA harbor, as well as the harbor's history. It's pretty interesting. Apparently there was a lot of competition between Long Beach, San Pedro, and Hermosa to be "the" major harbor for the LA area. The museum itself isn't all that spectacular, and the view you get from the "back deck" is no breathtaking thing of beauty, but admission is only $3 and there's a good bit of maritime history to be learned there. They also have a wing dedicated entirely to the US Navy, with a good bit of information about the USS Los Angeles. in fact, the bow of the ship is embedded in the concrete right outside the front door of the musuem.
www.lamaritimemuseum.org/
That's about it for my suggestions. I'm sure there's plenty of things to do if you venture out of the Long Beach waterfront area, but I didn't so I wouldn't be able to tell you about them.
One thing I should mention though, is that if you happen to head from the west side of town to the east side of town along the PCH (which is inland a bit), or from east to west along Atherton, there is a roundabout you have to go through. The roundabout has an inner circle and an outer circle. It is pretty easy to navigate it, but only if you know it is there and have studied the map so you know where you're going. The mapquest URL is a little long, but you can look it up. It's about a mile west of the Long Beach State campus.
1) Aquarium of the Pacific
Without a doubt, the absolute coolest thing to do in Long Beach is spend half a day at the aquarium. Try to be there at 2 PM to watch the Shark feeding (specifically the Sand Tigers). This aquarium is not as enormous as the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, and doesn't have a baby Great White, but it does have all sorts of cool things that Monterrey doesn't. For instance, shark and ray touch tanks, a sawfish, sand tiger sharks, an enormous reticulate whiptail ray and thorny ray, a lorikeet forest, 2 giant sea bass, a remora with a bite in its side (from one of the black tip reef sharks), a GPO (Giant Pacific Octopus), and a sarcastic fringehead (a funny looking little fish with an attitude). They have also had a lot of success with breeding leafy and weedy sea dragons (you wouldn't think one of these was an animal if you didn't know better). Admission is about $20, with a small discount if you're a AAA member. They have a timed entry system, so you might want to buy your ticket online to be admitted at the time of your choosing. For more info, visit the aquarium web site at:
www.aquariumofpacific.org/index.html
If you're interested, I did sort of a walk-through writeup of my visit at the request of some folks on another board I frequent. I didn't know a whole lot about this stuff when I posted it and have pasted several corrections, so be sure to read the whole thread if you care:
www.tonmo.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=3338
2) Long Beach Arena
The arena is part of the convention center complex, which also encompasses "rainbow lagoon". The arena building itself has a very cool mural painted on the outside of it with all sorts of ocean life. According to the plaque on the building, it was in the 1992 Guinnes Book of World Records as the world's largest mural. I highly recommend viewing this during daylight hours if you get the chance. It didn't look like it was well lit at night. Rainbow lagoon is a nice place to walk/bike/rollerblade (assuming it's not raining). I think it could use a few park benches to make it a nice place to sit and read a book, but I guess the city of Long Beach doesn't think so. If you cross the street (Shoreline Drive) there's a pier with various food places and touristy shops. I think they call it Shoreline village. It's a good place to grab some ice cream and watch inexperienced boaters with lots of money motor too fast downwind and crunch their boats into the dock. (I can laugh at that because I've done
it several times myself.)
I think I paid $8 for parking for an Ice Dogs game. I would imagine they would charge more for a special event like the NCAA's, but I'm not in a position to know. I found the following map of the convention center/waterfront area to be very useful:
www.longbeachcc.com/maps2.htm
3)Queen Mary/Russian Cold War Sub
I didn't think going on these would be worth the asking price, but there are a lot of people who do. I think the Queen Mary is basically a floating museum, hotel, and restaraunt at this point. The Russian sub sounded interesting, but I've been on subs before, so I didn't bother with this one. You can only be so interested in a boat that never leaves the dock. They've been doing a ghosts and legends tour on the Queen Mary too. That might be fun. Oh, and don't go on the sub if you are bothered by confined spaces. Submarines are not luxury yachts.
www.queenmary.com/
4) LA Maritime Museum
If you want to see the ugliest sight in Southern California, cross over the bridge into San Pedro and look down. You will see miles and miles of rusty cargo containers and a bunch of cranes and shipping vessels. Long ago the people of Los Angeles turned an ugly marsh into an even uglier harbor for major commercial shipping. The LA Maritime Museum has a featured display glorifying the hard work of the "piledrivers" who built LA harbor, as well as the harbor's history. It's pretty interesting. Apparently there was a lot of competition between Long Beach, San Pedro, and Hermosa to be "the" major harbor for the LA area. The museum itself isn't all that spectacular, and the view you get from the "back deck" is no breathtaking thing of beauty, but admission is only $3 and there's a good bit of maritime history to be learned there. They also have a wing dedicated entirely to the US Navy, with a good bit of information about the USS Los Angeles. in fact, the bow of the ship is embedded in the concrete right outside the front door of the musuem.
www.lamaritimemuseum.org/
That's about it for my suggestions. I'm sure there's plenty of things to do if you venture out of the Long Beach waterfront area, but I didn't so I wouldn't be able to tell you about them.
One thing I should mention though, is that if you happen to head from the west side of town to the east side of town along the PCH (which is inland a bit), or from east to west along Atherton, there is a roundabout you have to go through. The roundabout has an inner circle and an outer circle. It is pretty easy to navigate it, but only if you know it is there and have studied the map so you know where you're going. The mapquest URL is a little long, but you can look it up. It's about a mile west of the Long Beach State campus.
