At Sea

July 12^th, 2025

The first thing we had to do this morning is go to the Britannia Dining room with our passports so we could be seen by the UK immigration people. There was no queue and other than commenting that I travel a lot (I do need to get a new passport soon, this one is running out of unused pages) and asking how long we will stay in the UK (2 days) the immigration officer didn’t ask about our UK ETA or stamp our passports. All very quick and efficient.

We went to the Commodore Club and lo and behold, there was no more fog! The sun was making an admirable attempt to brighten our day. Being out of the fog should mean that we can speed up a bit and decrease our delay in to Southampton.

We were settling in to our usual chairs when the morning peace was shattered by the crew emergency drill announcements, which seemed to go on forever. On top of which, because it was a crew emergency drill, there were no staff at the bar, leading to a room full of disgruntled occupants unable to tolerate the delay in getting their morning coffee. Mind you, there was one additional occupant anxiously waiting for her Coke and crisps.

Captain Hashmi had told me yesterday that he would sound the Queen Mary whistle at noon today. I was concerned that with all that was going on with the drill, this may have slipped my mind. I braved the wind and went out on deck, just in case I could hear it.

Noon arrived, and so did the blast of the Queen Mary whistle. Yay! This was sooooo exciting. I returned to our stateroom to write a thank you letter to the captain.

On my way back to the stateroom I checked on our position

There are 6 venues on board where you can have lunch, 7 if you include the extra charge room service. There’s the Kings Court, Britannia dining room, Carinthia Lounge, Verandah restaurant, Golden Lion and Sir Samuels. So you can have lunch in a different place every day of your 6 sea days. I like a bit of variety.

Today it was Sir Samuels.

They have a good selection of open face sandwiches.

When I meet with Brian’s school friends they often tell me that he used to bring potato sandwiches to school. Being a potato lover I do like this idea, and felt quite envious as I was at boarding school and had to tolerate heaped helpings of stodgy food for years.

When we were trying to decide which sandwiches to order Brian pointed out a particular sandwich to me, At first I didn’t know why this one was so special. Then it dawned on me. It was a potato sandwich! I don’t think I have seen one before. If it’s good enough for QM2 it is certainly good enough for a primary school boy.

The sandwiches were great, and it was nice to be away from the hustle and bustle of the other venues.

There was another piano recital this afternoon. Iwan Llewellyn Jones is such a great pianist, and I love his low key personality. I had hoped he would play more Welsh music, but I can’t complain as the other pieces he played were wonderful and his performance was a real treat. Not counting Iwan, there are 5 other solo pianists on board. I don’t think any other ship could match that!

Later in the afternoon we went to the planetarium show. The current show is “Worlds Beyond Earth”. Brian didn’t think it was that great, but I really enjoyed it, and only slept for a short while. Usually once I settle into my seat I sleep through the whole show. The good news is that the seats are now all functional! How many years did we have to endure broken seats?

Just as I was settling in to watching the show the announcement dings went off. This is never good in the middle of the day. It wasn’t a test, there was a fire in the engine control room. All I could think about was being in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was not the best place to have an engine room fire. There wouldn’t be a Carpathia to come to our rescue for miles around us. It would certainly delay our arrival in Southampton, and I was looking forward to seeing family on Wednesday.

As it turned out a few minutes later captain Hashmi announced that all was well. Thank goodness. Emergency over.

I know people who have those QM2 dings as their cell phone ring tone. I used to think that was a cool idea. But all too often in the past years those tones have meant trouble. No way to I want that for my ring tone.

Before I bought my new phone, I used to have the QE2 whistle as my ring tone. Now that’s something worthwhile. I do need to download it again.

After the planetarium show it was time for tea. Somehow we had not managed to get to tea so far this voyage, but today was the day. I was worried that we wouldn’t get a seat, especially when I saw people having tea in the Champagne Bar as we walked by on our way to the Queens Room. The need for an overflow venue was troublesome.

I needed have worried, the Maitre d’ escorted us to a table where we joined a lovely couple from Florida and had a great time. My only complaint was that the Queens Room musicians were playing, and the music was very loud, making conversation a challenge. Give me a harp at tea any day.

As we were leaving the Queens Room they were setting up a table with a huge ice sculpture and loads of shrimp. It looked like a party was going to happen, and we hadn’t been invited.

So far on this back to back cruise there has only been one world club party, no captain’s welcome on board party and no senior officers’ party. So what could this be? Also, the loads of shrimp? We only got a few soggy canapes at the World Club party.

Well it turns out that it was a party welcoming all of the first time guests to Cunard. While that is a lovely gesture, I did feel a bit miffed. Without a party I have no idea how many guests are on board, where we all come from, how many cats, how many dogs, are there any other animals on board? All information I would love to know.

But it was not to be. We returned to our stateroom to get ready to meet friends for drinks in the Champagne Bar.

I am not a big social media sort of person, but I do enjoy several of the cruise related groups, and living vicariously through others travels. One I particularly enjoy is Koko, who is seeing the world. Koko’s human and I have several mutual friends, so it was lovely to get together and chat about past and future travel.

I have actually met so many really lovely people though these groups. I feel very blessed.

We were having such a good time chatting that we were almost late for our dinner reservation in the Verandah.

After being rather disappointed by Sir Samuels in Queen Anne, I was hoping that standards hadn’t slipped in the Verandah. They had not. We had a wonderful meal, and reminded ourselves that we must come here more than once on our next cruise.

The meal was delicious, and the service excellent. The only issue was we didn’t finish until 10:30, so we really didn’t want to walk into the show that late, especially taking into account how long it takes to walk from the restaurant to the Theater.

It has been another wonderful, fun filled day on board. I just wish that this crossing wasn’t going by so quickly. It has been so busy I feel like I need a holiday.