At Sea

May 11^th, 2024

Here is the itinerary for my next 4 weeks on Queen Anne:

I was excited that we would be going through the Bay of Biscay again. I was hoping for a heavy swell so we could see how Queen Anne coped with rough seas. We were out of luck. Yet again there was a high pressure zone in the area and the seas were as calm and torquoise  as the Pacific Ocean. It was all very pretty, but a few nice big waves would have been appreciated.

There was great excitement in the Commodore Club this morning as we came across several pods of dolphins swimming alongside the ship. I always get concerned that they may get entangled in our propellers, but the experts tell me that they are far to intelligent to let that happen. It was fun to watch them jumping and splashing, swimming in our bow wave, they looked like they were having a great time.

There were also flocks of arctic terns flying by the ship. Not quite a safari drive, but it was great to see some wild life out there in the calm turquoise waters.

On the maiden voyage I had been unable to purchase a Queen Anne bear as they were all sold out within minutes of being placed in the ridiculously tiny shop. I was not prepared to get crushed in the scrum as fanatical folks grabbed them off the shelves with totally no regard for health and safety issues.

I had been reassured that there would be more bears on this voyage, but I was taking no chances, I asked that a bear be reserved for me. Indeed, they did save one for me, so I am now the proud owner of a Queen Anne bear. It has a different jumper to my QE2, QM2, QV and QE bears – but I suppose that is all part of Queen Anne being different.

Now I am totally not a bear sort of person, apart from my childhood teddy bear, these are the only bears I own. My childhood bear is in poor shape, which I suppose isn’t surprising as he is nearly 70 years old. He used to have a music box movement inside him which played the teddy bears picnic. One day I decided to take his appendix out, but having opened him up I couldn’t find his appendix, so I removed the music box instead. I carefully sewed him up, and he was none the worse for wear for my first attempt at surgery. To this day the sutures I did remain intact while the rest of him is slowly disintegrating.

Anyway, he would never be allowed to come on holiday with me. However, on the maiden voyage the ship seemed to be populated by a plethora of various sizes of bears being transported around the ship by their owners. I mean there are usually a couple of bears on any cruise, but the number was unusually high. I hope the bears and their owners all had a great voyage.

It was a black and white formal night again, and nearly everyone was all dressed up, and walking around the ship in the evening was a real treat seeing all of those beautiful black and white dresses. My white jacket continues to spread sparkles everywhere. I do love that jacket.

Brian and I had predinner drinks in the Chart Room and sat there enjoying the soft piano music,

And watching the water go by.

Brian was talked into a very fancy gin and tonic,

I decided to stick with my usual bubbly.

I do like the coasters – I expect that several will go missing each voyage.

At dinner we had black napkins

For dessert they served one of my favorites, cherries jubilee, which were excellently  prepared  by Derek.

We decided to skip the show tonight because I saw in the daily program that they were showing the Eurovision Song Contest on the big screen at the Pavilion Pool. As a teenager I was totally obsessed with the song contest.

The first winner I remember was the Italian entry in 1964, “non ho l’eta”. I loved that song.

After barefoot Sandie Shaw won with her very bouncy “Puppet on a String” I decided I didn’t need to wear shoes either.

The next year, although the Spanish song “La La La” was actually very good, I felt that Cliff Richard should have won with “Congratulations”.

Lulu’s “Boom Bang a Bang” was mocked by my parents, but I still went around the house singing it.

By the early 70s my passion for the contest had waned significantly, and then there was “Waterloo” in 1974. The best Eurovision winner ever.

Who won last year’s contest? I honestly couldn’t tell you.  My taste in music has changed, and apart from that great Icelandic movie “The Story of Fire Saga”, I hadn’t thought about the contest in years.

But tonight I got to watch the finals once more. I can’t say I actually liked any of the songs, but I enjoyed the tribute to ABBA and “Waterloo”. How can it be 50 years since ABBA won?

We had a fun time, but we never imagined that we would be sitting on a Cunard ship watching the Eurovision final on the big screen. The times they are a changing.

Yesterday our cabin was freezing cold. They fixed the problem, but now it is way too hot. Hopefully they will finally resolve the problem. It really is quite unpleasant. I think of the lucky people in our old cabin. They have no issues with temperature control.

There are rather nice circular lights on either side of the bed. As I was getting in to bed I noticed that there was a reflection of the light on the TV. It reminded me of the eclipse 