June17th 2018
The Journey Begins

I had to purchase new luggage for the vacation, my old battered suitcase didn’t look like it would survive one more trip. So armed with my brand new suitcase, off we set for the UK.

We flew on American Airlines to Dallas. The flight attendant took a liking to Ruth, and we ended up being given several small bottles of wine by the end of the flight.

From Dallas we flew on British Airways to London. I was thrilled to be on BA again as I was able to show off my BOAC bag, and vintage BOAC VC 10 scarf. Somehow the flight attendant gave me several little bottles of wine on this flight too. Never before have I arrived at Heathrow Airport with a bag full of small bottles of wine. All very strange.

Although it took us over an hour to get through immigration in Terminal 5, our driver from Smiths was patiently waiting for us, and he whisked us off to Southampton in record time.

We arrived at the Queen Elizabeth ll Terminal at noon, and despite the fact that there seemed to be hundreds of people milling around and waiting to board, things were extremely fast and efficient, and we were in our cabin by 12:20, almost record time.

I have really enjoyed my 2 recent voyages on Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth, but I must say that nothing beats the feeling of entering the Grand Lobby of Queen Mary 2. With the usual magnificent display of flowers, and the string quartet playing in the background, it always makes me tearful, as I am sooooooo excited to be there. I want to hold on to that feeling forever!

I took Ruth on a tour of the ship and then we unpacked, went to the Guest Emergency Drill (where yet again people put on their life vests as soon as they arrived, despite requests from staff not to do so), and got ready for the sail away. It looked like it might be quite cool on deck so we bundled up and headed out. They always say that in inclement weather they will hold the sail away party at the Pavilion Pool rather than the Lido Pool. Well the weather certainly was inclement, so we went to the Pavilion Pool, and sure enough there was the band Topaz playing upbeat Caribbean music. This didn’t feel right so we braved the outside and went up to Deck 14. We were very nearly blown overboard, and it was raining, but we were determined to tough it out, and watch us sail up (or is it down?) the Solent and out to sea, with good traditional British music blasting away out on deck.

Then Captain Wells made the announcement that our departure was delayed as we were waiting for an ambulance to take a passenger to the hospital. Not a good start to their vacation.

So we stood out in the freezing cold on a British Summer’s day watching the P&O ship Ventura sail by. It brought back memories of October 2008 when we were at the sail away party on QE2 and Ventura sailed by. I thought she was absolutely HUGE. Now from deck 14 on QM2, she didn’t look that big at all. Here is the photo from that day. No photo from today alas – operator error.

Next we watched an NCL ship go by, and finally it was our turn. I went down to the Pavilion Pool, where the Caribbean Music extravaganza was still in full swing, although there was hardly anyone there, to get our flags to wave as we sailed away. There were no flags!!!!!!! I asked the entertainment staff where the flags were, and was told there were no flags for this sail away. When I expressed my disbelief (and displeasure) I was told that there were plenty of other sail aways on this trip. Next my hopes of hearing Jerusalem were also dashed, there was no music on the outside decks, and not even a decent blast from our whistles, although luckily we had whistled at other passing ships, so I was not totally devastated. Not a world class sail away by any stretch of the imagination.

By this time it was wetter, colder, and foggier than ever and we couldn’t even see England’s green and pleasant land through the fog, so we abandoned the sail away and headed down to the Purser’s Desk.

Ruth is addicted to the New York Times Sunday crossword. We had been unable to lay our hands on a copy of the newspaper all day, and now we were embarking on our last hope. There was quite a crowd at the desk, all of them seemed to be very unhappy with their cabins and were angrily requesting to move. Assuming that’s why we were there, the woman next to me embarked on a long tale of woe about how her cabin looked tired and used, and she had a bad feel about it. I never did elicited a specific problem with it, but she was clearly very angry and distressed. She asked me what was wrong with our cabin. I told her that we were just there for a copy of today’s New York Times. She seemed disappointed.

Then it was our turn. The receptionist was waiting for us to start on our list of complaints. So when Ruth asked if they could download a copy of the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, he was only too eager to oblige, and Ruth was one happy person!

We are seated on the upper level of Deck 3 of the Britannia dining room, by a window, for dinner. It is a table for 4, but it was just the 2 of us tonight. Our waiters were very obliging, and our meal was great. We were both too tired to go to the show after dinner (it was String Idols who I have seen before and really enjoyed) so we went to the Commodore Club for a nightcap. The room was fairly full, but we were able to find a table by a window. We sat listening to Andrew Cavendish-Grey on the piano. It was so wonderfully relaxing that we both were in danger of dozing off, and as we lose an hours sleep overnight, we decided to call it a night and headed down to the cabin.

With all the wind and stormy weather I was hoping for some rocking of the ship tonight. But no such luck. Although the waves look big, there is no movement at all. No getting rocked to sleep tonight alas.