It’s five o’clock on a Friday. Your last meeting just ended and the next one looms two long, empty days ahead. You’ve traveled to L.A. dozens of times before. You’ve been there and done that over and over again.
So what to do? You could spend the weekend in your hotel room watching movies and ordering food from room service. You could walk around town hoping to see a movie star, or do something where the odds were a bit more in your favor, like walking on a golf course waiting to get hit by lightning.
Or you could do something this town built an industry on–make believe. You could make believe you were in Europe.
With a rental car, careful timing and a dollop of imagination, you could weave together three Los Angeles-area experiences that create the illusion of a 48-hour trip to Europe.
Let’s start by getting there on the Queen Mary.
When the great liner was retired from service in 1964, the city of Long Beach purchased the ship, towed it to permanent harbor in Southern California and transformed it into a luxury hotel and tourist attraction. Some 33 years later, the ship sits like a glorious anachronism against the backdrop of the glittering glass skyscrapers of downtown Long Beach.
There is no gangplank, but once you ride the outdoor elevator to “A” deck where the reception desk is situated, you walk into a world frozen in time.
This, the largest passenger liner in tonnage ever built, was launched in Clydebank, Scotland, in 1934. It was christened by Queen Mary with 28 words, which turned out to be the only words ever broadcast by the shy queen with her husband, George V, for 26 eventful years, followed by 17 years as Queen Mother after George’s death.
When the ship first slipped into the River Clyde, the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe were well away from the horrors of the first World War and still five years from the start of the second. Although Adolf Hitler’s power was rising in Germany, few saw what was coming. Some of the pain of the Great Depression was easing.
The ship’s sailing life spanned an age of jazz, big bands and Art Deco, of movie stars becoming legends and gangsters looking for new sources of income in the wake of Prohibition’s repeal. When it was built, England still had its vast empire, and her imperial grandeur oozes from the painstakingly preserved cabins, ballrooms, lounges, dining halls and bars.
History and the ghosts of those who traveled on the Queen Mary lurk everywhere as you wander the vast decks and the wood-paneled corridors that stretch endlessly on.
If your imagination is not up to the task, there are reminders everywhere.
The cabin used by Winston Churchill when he journeyed to America is clearly labeled with a plaque, as is the one where Dwight Eisenhower slept as he returned triumphant from World War II. There are vintage photographs of movie stars who voyaged on the great ship and displays of place settings used in different classes and circumstances. There is a child’s tray, fitted with a protective lip and hollows to hold cups and plates steady during rough seas, and a glass display case holding the kosher dishes reserved for Jewish passengers who required them.
There is also a guided tour of the ship that includes stops on the bridge and wheelhouse, the radio room and a display of how the ship was refitted to carry troops during World War II.
And for a price you can tuck in for the night in one of the cabins, lie back, ignore CNN on the television in the corner and conjure the memory of all those people who traveled in the grand style of that era.
While some of the cabins have been redecorated, many of the staterooms have been preserved with original fittings and some period furniture. There are wooden writing desks that pull out of the wall and have places to secure a pen and paper. The musky smell of the wooden cabinets can muster images of the clothes that once hung there. Two extra shower faucets, no longer functioning, offer hot or cold sea water.
Rates for your Friday night stay in one of the Queen Mary’s cabins start as low as $75 a night (single or double occupancy), but you will be well down in the bowels without a porthole. Deluxe staterooms, the cabins with the original fittings, range from $110 to $130. To sleep where royals once laid their heads will cost you between $145 and $170. Top-of-the-line parlor suites cost between $300 and $500.
There are three restaurants and a spectacular Art Deco bar.
The Queen Mary offers a number of special package rates, and the one that fits the European weekend is the Queen Mary Catalina Getaway. Priced at $245 (single or double), it includes a double deluxe stateroom and two round-trip crossings to Catalina Island, though not, of course, on the Queen Mary itself.
The boat trip to Catalina, 26 miles west of Long Beach, takes about one hour and if purchased separately costs $36 for an adult round trip. Children 2 through 11 cost $27 and seniors pay $32.50. Children under 2 cost $2.
If you are in the mood, or in a hurry and have money to spare, helicopter trips to Catalina leave from Long Beach and nearby San Pedro. The round-trip fare for anyone older than 2 is $121.
But the boat is much the better way to go. Most days, especially in spring and summer when the ferries are pursued by schools of dolphin, abundant off the coast of Southern California. Sometimes you will see only a few, but on some lucky days there will be thousands of the people-friendly mammals leaping from the water as they chase the boats for miles.
Approaching Avalon, Catalina’s only town, is like pulling into a small fishing port in France, Italy or Spain. Viewed from the deck of the ferry, the cluster of buildings that crowds the harbor and climbs up the steep hills beyond could be almost anywhere in the Mediterranean.
The illusion of southern Europe continues on shore where scores of restaurants offer Italian and French specialties, primarily seafood.
The 28-mile-long island has been privately owned since 1811 when the indigenous population was forced to resettle on the mainland. After passing as a land grant from the Spanish king, the control of the island changed hands several times before being acquired by Chicago chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. in 1919.
Wrigley, who for many years brought his Chicago Cubs to Catalina for spring training and watched them play from the windows of his mansion on the island, decided that much of his land should remain undeveloped. Through his early stewardship and later the decisions of the corporation that now controls Catalina, most of the island remains in pristine condition.
Buffalo, brought to the island by a movie crew decades ago, have proliferated and roam the grassy hillsides of the interior, which can be accessed only by golf cart, or by tour buses that leave at regular intervals from Avalon.
There are two island tours offered. The four-hour tour, which includes a stop at the Rancho Escondido, where the descendants of the fine Arabian horses Wrigley first bred on the island can be viewed, is $29.50 for adults, $14.75 for children under 12. A two-hour tour, which takes visitors to a high point on the island from which spectacular views can be enjoyed, is $17 or $8.50 for children under 12.
There is also a botanical garden that was established by Wrigley that can be visited separately, and glass-bottom boat tours leave regularly from Avalon.
Leaving early from Long Beach, a day on Catalina could also include a round of golf or a game of tennis. The golf course offers marvelous views of the ocean and the island from nearly every fairway and green. Equipment for both sports can be rented, as can fishing tackle, bikes, strollers and even horses.
The final leg of the European weekend in the Los Angeles area can’t be accomplished without resorting to a very California institution–the freeways!
Although it does not compare in scale with the wine-producing region farther north in Napa and Sonoma, there is a delightfully manageable group of vineyards clustered around Temecula in southern Riverside County.
The trip from Long Beach to Temecula will take a couple of hours, two to three depending on traffic and the time of day. If time is not a factor, Pacific Coast Highway will keep you close to the ocean most of the way, although much of the coast south through Orange County is so heavily developed as to lack all charm.
It is about 65 miles from the Long Beach area to Temecula, best reached during the final stretch of the drive by Interstate Highway 15.
Once you exit the concrete ribbons that crisscross nearly every inch of Southern California, however, your reward will be instant. Within 10 minutes of leaving the freeway, you will find yourself in the heart of the Temecula vineyards and then just a couple of minutes from a gem of a spot to rest the night.
The Loma Vista Bed and Breakfast is nestled among the vineyards and citrus groves that cover the foothills of the San Jacinto Mountains. It is small–just six rooms–and securing reservations sometimes can be difficult.
Each of the rooms is decorated differently, ranging from the cool, clean “California” decor of the Fume Blanc Room to the cherry wood furnishings of the Merlot Room. The grandest of the six rooms, called Sauvignon Blanc, features a four-poster white pine bed and a balcony overlooking the Temecula Valley.
Prices for the rooms range from $95 to $115 a night. There is a two-night minimum for the four rooms with balconies.
All of the local vineyards and their tasting rooms are within a few minutes drive of Loma Vista.
The final touch for the weekend is Sunday lunch at the Thornton Winery’s Cafe Champagne.
Set splendidly alongside the winery’s large courtyard and its imposing stone building, the Cafe Champagne offers typical California cuisine, that sometimes quirky, but usually delightful, style of cooking that blends Mediterranean, Oriental and American ingredients.
The vine-covered terrace is expansive and a far better choice than the pleasant but bland interior. When it is especially hot, as can be the case in summer and early autumn, the patio is outfitted with mist machines that shower patrons with cooling clouds of water.
Sitting on the patio and gazing out across the courtyards and the winery to the vineyards beyond, you could just as easily be sitting in southern France, Italy or Spain.
The wines, from Thornton of course, are fine. Especially good is its sparkling wine made in the methode Champagnoise. Waiters will make wine suggestions based on your lunch selection.
The entrees include mesquite-grilled Ahi tuna, Black Forest ham, potato and green onion omelet, chicken apple sausages and a caramelized onion and apple pizza.
There is also an eclectic offering of sandwiches, one of which is composed of roasted peppers, grilled eggplant and goat cheese.
Prices range from around $10 for sandwiches to about $15 for seafood entrees.
After a lunch beneath the vines, the drive back to Los Angeles should be enough to remind you where you really are–a touch of reality that might come in handy before that Monday morning meeting.
WEEKEND HOT SPOTS
– Hotel Queen Mary, reservations: 562-435-3511.
– Catalina Express (ferry reservations): 310-519-1212.
– Island Express (helicopter reservations): 310-510-2525.
– Catalina tour reservations: 310-510-2000 or 800-428-2566.
– Loma Vista Bed and Breakfast: 909-676-7047.
– Thorton Winery and the Cafe Champagne: 909-699-0099.
