We arrived in Los Angeles today for a two-night stay at the Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey. We had decided to leave Chicago a day early as we didn’t want to be delayed by any winter storms in Chicago. As it turned out, we made the right decision as both O’Hare and Midway Airports were closed two hours after our plane took off due to bad snow conditions. The weather in Los Angeles however was beautiful. The picture below is the boat harbor from our hotel window.

On the evening of Jan 10, we attended a Gala Dinner at the Ritz Carlton marking the start of our 145-day World Cruise on the Seabourn Sojourn. The 2024 World Cruise will leave from Los Angeles and terminate in Piraeus (Athens), Greece on Jun 5, 2024. The Gala Dinner gave us the opportunity to meet other guests and crew members who will be accompanying us on our journey. It was a great dinner and entertainment — a really nice start to our journey. We chose this cruise as a celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary, which we observed on Dec 29, 2023.

On the morning of Jan 11, we enjoyed breakfast and then got ready to take our transport vehicle to our ship at the Los Angeles Cruise Ship terminal. We boarded our ship and were excited to be aboard. This ship was not new to us as we had previously sailed on the Seabourn Sojourn. It has a capacity of 450 passengers and 350 crew members. On this voyage, we started out with 387 passengers, 87 of which will be travelling on the entire World Cruise with us. The other passengers will be debarking in ports along the way (Honolulu, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore, etc.) and other passengers will join us along the way.