LONG BEACH, Calif.
As my husband, our nephew and I made our approach to the Queen Mary Hotel in Long Beach, it occurred to me what an odd setting this was for a luxury hotel. We were passing through a hard-core industrial area that was none too fragrant.
Then again, when you book a stateroom on a giant former ocean liner that calls itself “one of the most haunted locations on the West Coast,” you can expect something a little out of the ordinary.
Once we had parked in the lot next to the ship and taken the elevator to the A deck to check in, though, the ship’s neighbors faded away. From that moment — when we heard the sound of jazz singer Billie Holiday singing “These Foolish Things” over the sound system — until we checked out 20 hours later, we basked in a palpable sense of the past. As we checked in and then made our way toward our stateroom, Holiday’s haunting voice followed us.
“A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces
“An airline ticket to romantic places
“And still my heart has wings
“These foolish things
“Remind me of you.”
Arrival in the carpeted corridor that led to our stateroom brought an awe-inspiring sight: The wood-paneled walls, with a waist-high bar stretching along both sides (to steady unbalanced passengers), seemed to stretch into infinity. Here and there short, narrow corridors opened up off the main one, with signs indicating the room numbers; this is where the staterooms were tucked away.
My husband and I, in Long Beach to visit his sister and her family, had booked a one-night stay in a deluxe, outside stateroom. (Our nephew came along for the afternoon.) That meant we would have a view of the harbor, and we were not disappointed. The room was on the ship’s starboard side (right, to us landlubbers), and our portholes looked out across Long Beach Harbor toward a glittering skyline, a marina and the Aquarium of the Pacific.
The room itself was generously sized — roughly 23 by 14 feet, including the bathroom — lined with the same warm wood paneling found throughout the ship, and decorated and furnished in art deco style. We had a king-size bed, and there was a large dresser, a good-size closet, two charming bed stands with two drawers and a cabinet each, and a smaller stand with a clock radio on it.
Quaint touches that evoked the past included two desks that opened out from cabinets in the wall; a toilet flushing mechanism that consisted of a round pedal coming straight out of the wall; and four bathtub handles labeled “Hot salt,” “Hot fresh,” “Cold fresh,” “Cold salt.” (Alas, the salt handles didn’t work.)
On the modern side, there was a small refrigerator, a flat-screen TV with a gaming keyboard, and a coffee maker. Unfortunately, if you needed to plug your laptop computer into the outlet nearest one of the desks, you had to unplug the refrigerator or the TV. And the bathroom was tiny. So the room was comfortable and interesting, but it would not pass for luxury in today’s world.
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