Due to our coming to the assistance of the little sinking sailboat folks, our arrival in Southampton was delayed, and thus there was a delay in disembarkation.

However, once we started leaving the ship, things ran quite smoothly. One new change that I like is that instead of having to wait in the lounges until your group for disembarkation is called, you can remain in your stateroom. This is a great idea for passengers, as it was always a bit of a scrum clambering over other people’s luggage to find a spot to put yourself and your luggage while you were waiting to be given the OK for your group to leave the ship.

Not such a good idea for the poor cabin stewards though. Luckily our group was called at 8:30 so we could leave Reggie alone to do his thing for the next occupants.

Once off the ship, our next task was to find our confiscated articles. We had been given instructions by several people as to where they would be, and after several attempts to locate them we got lucky, just as I was getting worried as our driver was getting anxious waiting for us.

There in a nice new Queen Mary 2 tote bag was a collection of our confiscated items. Yay, all of my cosmetics were there, so were the contact lens solutions and sunscreen. Not that we will be needing that back home in the Pacific Northwest according to our children. Yes, most of the items were there. We had been mystified why one of Brian’s formal shirts and formal black vest had been confiscated, and had thought it was an attempt to keep up dress code policies by confiscating his jeans, but all 3 items were there. They will need ironing, but they were there.

Things were looking good. Then we realized things were missing! Brian’s charger for his Apple watch had disappeared, as had our little Ziploc bag of travel meds. Normally that would have been OK as we had solved the issue of Brian’s blister, but he had had an unfortunate incident jumping over a lounger at the pool, and had sustained a gash to his leg. This was now looking quite nasty, and as there was no antibiotic skin cream on the ship, we were looking forward to getting our own returned. But it was not to be. We thought we remembered that there was a Boots at Heathrow, so this could be remedied, but it was still annoying.

But where were my novels? They were gone too. Luckily we will be staying with our children for a few days before returning home, so I can go to Powells to replace them.

So that was that. We put our remaining confiscated items back in the new, rather spiffy, bag and headed out of the terminal to greet our driver. We waved goodbye to our beautiful home for the past 2 weeks, and hit the road on our way north to Heathrow.

I felt tearful leaving our ship. Yes, things had been different this time, but you could never take away the magic of just being on Queen Victoria. We will be back 