At Sea

May 12^th, 2024

Mother’s Day

We woke up to the sound of the foghorn. Yes, we were in a thick fog bank. The sound continued all morning as we slowly edged our way through the murky gloom.

As we sat down to lunch the fog was still with us.

However as I ate my delicious Caesars salad, we saw the fog lifting gradually, and by the time Brian drank his coffee we could see patches of blue sky. There was a great improvement in visibility, but I did miss the sound of the mournful foghorn.

Brian thought that he had planned the perfect Mother’s Day gift for me. He expected to purchase a maritime book for me from the onboard bookshop. I can never have too many books on ships and liners.

The problem was that he was unable to find the onboard book store. I had celebrated my birthday on QE2 many years ago, and Brian had no problem buying several super books for me, but he was out of luck on Queen Anne. The book store seems to have gone the way of the sundry store. Hopefully they will see the error of their ways, and both will return some day.

There has been much discussion about the lifts on the ship. There are 3 banks of lifts, each with 4 lifts. The question is, is this adequate for 2,600 passengers? It may be, except the staff also need to use them to transport tables and room service trolleys, and at any time, one of the lifts in each bank is out of service.

The problem isn’t that they are slow moving as they seem to be going at the usual pace, and the doors close so quickly that you have to run to get into the elevator before the door closes. One passenger has declared that you need to be an Olympic sprinter in order to catch a lift, and as there are couches in the middle of the lobby another declared that you need to be an Olympic hurdler to get in before the doors close.

This is leading to overcrowded lifts, and an onset of “lift rage” among the passengers. I was in a lift that surprisingly wasn’t that full, and after a lady got off the lift on deck 9, a gentleman stood forward towards the lift, politely asking if he may join us. One of the inhabitants sternly replied “no you may not” and pushed the lift close button. People are becoming very territorial about the lifts. Even if you want to go up, if a down life arrives you take it as it will eventually go up again, further adding to the crowding. They are working at getting all of the lifts working well, and trying to solve the issue of the doors closing precipitously, so I am happy that like all of the other blips on the ship, things will be fine within the next few weeks.

So much has been taken care of thus far, and the ship has only had passengers on it for less than 2 weeks. It is actually quite impressive.

While thinking about the lifts, the ship has a great way to direct you to the nearest lift. The 3 lift banks are colour coded. The forward lifts are blue, the midships one are rust coloured,

and the aft ones are red.

In the corridors the carpets have colour coded chevrons which point to the nearest lift bank, which is very helpful.

The weather was not conducive to sundowners on the balcony. Also you really need a sun for sundowners I suppose. So our biltong and nuts were consumed indoors. It really was nasty outside.

Here we are heading to the sunny south, but there has been no evidence of that so far except for the heat in our stateroom.

When we transferred to this stateroom it was way too cold, and there was no way to heat it up. Maintenance came to correct the problem, but they only made things worse, now it was way too hot. Throughout the day it got hotter and hotter, and despite turning the fan off and opening the balcony door, it was now reaching sauna conditions.

As we headed out to dinner, the maintenance man arrived again, with a smile and reassurance that he could take care of the problem.

We went to the Japanese restaurant, Aji Wa, for dinner tonight. They have a set menu as well as the a la carte one. We chose the latter, and of course selected way too many dishes, but they all sounded great.

The photos really don’t do justice to what the dishes actually looked like, and how tasty everything was.

It was a real treat and we had a lovely evening sitting by the window filling up on delicious food. They also have an extensive sake menu, including sparkling sake. Definitely worth a visit.

When we returned to our stateroom, the maintenance man was still working hard on the heating, but he had no solution as yet. So we went to the show.

Sure enough when we returned from the show he was still there. At midnight he bade us farewell and said he would be back in the morning. We had another hot stuffy night in store for us.

Fingers crossed that he can sort things out tomorrow, otherwise we will be in search of another stateroom…..