It happens that we have good friends who live in Rancho Palos Verdes, just south of Los Angeles. It also happens that many years ago we had close friends who lived in the same suburb, which is not far from Catalina Island and even closer to the Queen Mary, which you'd think would be an attraction to people who write about ships.
We didn't visit our friends — the recent ones and the long-ago ones — often, but often enough that we should have seen both Catalina and and the Queen Mary, the Cunard ship that's spending her retirement as a working hotel and tourist attraction. (We did once tour the Queen Mary, but in those days we had little interest in cruising.)
What this has to do with cruising is that both are an ideal segue for passengers sailing in or out of San Pedro, aka Long Beach, aka Los Angeles.
The island is said to be a beautiful spot to escape the craziness that southern California can be. There are ferries that will take you there every day, and if you happen to visit on your birthday, it's a free ride on the Catalina Express. Cruise ships, especially Carnival, sometimes make Catalina Island one of the ports, on the way to or from Ensenada (Mexico) or Hawaii.
It sits 22 miles off the coast but looks much closer. It has a city, Avalon, and if you forget for a minute how close you are to North America, they say you could think you're in the Mediterranean. Think Portofino.
The Queen Mary is floating history. Built to be one of Cunard's two super shuttles between Southampton and New York — the Queen Elizabeth was the other — prior to World War II, 
she wound up transporting soldiers to and from the fields of battle. She went back to being a cruise ship after the war and until jet planes starting ferrying people across the Atlantic in hours instead of days.
It wasn't long after that when Cunard, losing money on all its ships, sold the Queen Mary and she made her 1,000th and last ocean crossing to get to Long Beach. You think there's no romance among ships. Six years ago, the Queen Mary 2 (still sailing profitably for Cunard) was in neighboring waters and saluted her predecessor with two new horns and one on loan from Queen Mary. The old gal — she turns 75 in December — responded with her one working air horn.
Today, Catalina and Queen Mary are both tourist attractions that, were they in Europe, would surely be available to cruise passengers as shore excursions. Yet they so readily accessible to North Americans who don't go out of their way for a visit.
Just ask us.
Celebrity Infinity
15 nights
December 7, 2012
Fort Lauderdale, Cartagena, Colon, Panama Canal, Manta (Ecuador), Lima (Chile), Arica, La Serena, Santiago
Inside: $899
Cost per day: $59
www.celebritycruises.com