Los Angeles Maritim Museum and Korean Bell

We toured around San Pedro and the surrounding port area. We saw a sign for the Korean Bell and stopped to take a look. Wow -- what a wonderful surprise. This symbol of South Korea and the USA is perched right on a beautiful point overlooking the Pacific.

This very beautiful and ornate bell and housing was very impressive and well worth a look. Orinda was very interested in the detail and colors in the structure.

The bell is made of a special alloy including copper, tin, gold, nickel, lead and more. The bell is very large, but we could not hear it ring today.

After visiting the bell, we stopped at the LA Maritime Museum which is a small, but excellent museum depicting the maritime past of the Los Angeles area. One thing we really liked were the many wonderful ship models, pictures and handmade small boats such as this one.


Orinda was impressed with this beautiful example of the boat builder's craft. This was made out of several different woods and was wonderfully crafted.

This large (40') model was used in the Poseidon Adventure movie. Interestingly, this happens to be an exact scale model of the Queen Mary (except for the name). It was a fantastic model.


We didn't realize it at first, but after leaving the Maritime Museum, we realized that were were right next to the LA Fire Boat Station! In additional to the interesting boats docked in front, there is a very interesting display showing the history of the fireboats in the harbor. This was a great exhibit and a working fire station.


Finally, directly across the harbor is the Port of Los Angeles which is a huge facility that services container ships bringing goods to the USA. There were hundreds of these huge cranes that load and unload the containers from ships that are over 1,000' long. A most interesting thing to watch.