Thread: Question about San Pedro

I am currently looking at a cruise on the Diamond Princess that goes from Vancouver to Los Angeles on Sept 16th 06, I am taking my family of four and we are looking at taking the Amtrak back to Vancouver, My question is how far is it to the Union Station in Los Angeles from the San Pedro port?

And if we were to spend a day or 2 after the cruise in the are where would you recomend?

Thanks
Rick

Lets see... Union Station in Los Angeles from Port of Los Angeles in the Long Beach/San Pedro area is about 30-35 miles. Going through the heart of downtown Los Angeles, traffic will be a problem. My best guess is that a cab will cost you upwards of $50+

Spending a few days post cruise... hm... depends on your budget. If I could afford it, I would look into something in West LA, in the Venice, Santa Monica, Marina Del Rey area...

I believe that Princess uses Long Beach, not San Pedro. Be sure to check.

In the end, it doesnt really matter. The long beach pier and the san pedro pier are separated by 5-10 minutes.

Well I guess it does matter in order to make sure that if you reserved a car, hired a driver, got a taxi, etc when you docked in LA and had them come to the correct pier.

Thanks evryone for the info, You are coreect in that it does not matter what peir it is as we will only be disembarking there. My main question was how far the train station was from that area.

Rick

Carnival uses LB. Princess uses San Pedro (the World Cruise Center).

We took Amtrak from Oxnard to Seattle in the summer of '04. You may want to note that most of the time, Amtrak can be very late. Our trip was scheduled for 36 hrs each way and turned out to be 40 hrs going north and coming back south. So be sure to add padding if you need to be back by a specific time.

As for hotels...Venice can be entertaining but a bit on the scary side (a former boss had lived there in the 80s/early 90s and said there was a gang problem). MDR on the ritzy side, but nice. You can go to the marina for lunch and look at the boats.

Princess will come in at San Pedro. Only Carnvial uses the pier in Long Beach (they built it for themselves.) The train station from San Pedro is - as the crow flies, less than 20 miles. However, Alisa is right, the traffic can be a real bear. If you need to stay in a hotel near Union Station in LA, most of the major hotels are downtown and it's a short cab ride to LAUS from there. The Sheraton just took over the old Hyatt hotel, there the Omni, the Biltmore, the Westin Bonaventure, the Wilshire Grand and if you don't mind modern, trendy and inexpensive - the Standard.

But again, I'm with Alisa...If I had a couple days to spend post cruise, I'd hang by the ocean and look into Long Beach, (which is still very close to San Pedro) or Santa Monica, with my personal preference being Long Beach. (I think there's more to do and it's hotels are more numeroud and cheaper than Santa Monica!)

Also - if worse came to worse - you could take the Blue Line (light rail) directly from Long Beach right into downtown where you transfer to the Red Line which is three stops away from Union Station in LA. It's about a 20-30 minute ride and should cost about $2.50. It runs every few minutes. It's a commuter rail, but it's fast, efficient and safe. Used to ride it every day to get to downtown for work.

Thanks for all the info, I am pretty sure our post cruise stay is going to be Carlsbad as my kids want to hit Legoland so bad. And the train from Oceanside works perfectly. Is there an easy way to get from LongBeach to Carlsbad? I am looking at renting a car but if I don't need to that would be great.

Rick

renting a car would be the most economical way to get down there and probably the easiest as well!