July 5^th, 2025

At Sea

If it’s a sea day, there must be Zumba. Actually no. The physical exertion and sweaty body experience have been replaced by a relaxed guided meditation session. Thinking this would be a popular switch, I got to the Queens Room early, but there was no on else there except Bobby who was in charge of the meditation.

Hmmmmm. Why is working out more popular than meditating I ask myself? Give me relaxation any day!

Two women arrived, and that was it. Just the 3 of us out of 2,691 passengers? Maybe everyone was partying too hard last night.

Anyway, Bobby gave us headsets, that brought back bad memories of the silent disco, and the 3 of us settled down to have a good relaxing time. Luckily the headsets were noise canceling ones as workmen on ladders were working on the lights and making quite a racket.

The meditation began. We were instructed to use the mantra “my life is filled with blessings, and I am grateful”. This was somewhat longer than I am used to, and I kept on forgetting it. Not a good start. Give me a one word mantra any day, I will probably remember that.

Sitting in a comfortable chair with my headset in place, the soothing sound of water gently lapping on the shore began. Things were definitely getting better. I was also getting better at thinking “my life is filled with blessings, and I am grateful” without getting the words wrong, when out of nowhere the sound of seagulls burst onto the scene. Really, seagulls? Sure enough there was a low, piercing keow, and a low cow-cow -cow. This was accompanied by a longer call consisting of higher pitched notes. I felt like I was under attack from the seagull in Finding Nemo.

All in all I can’t really say that it was a great success, but at least I didn’t have to go and take a shower and miss the 10:00 talk. Sometimes things are better than Zumba.

After meditation I walked through the art gallery and was pleased to see that they have some photos from the Sea of Glamour exhibition, a celebration of 185 years of Cunard, on display. I had submitted a photo of myself at dinner on the Queen Elizabeth in 1962, but alas it was not included in the exhibition. I imagine they had thousands of photos submitted and it was quite a challenge to go through them all.

In the gallery was a fun painting of QM2.

When I went for my morning Coke in the Commodore Club I was very chuffed that my request for crisps was honored without any pleading being necessary. Some standards are being maintained.

We had lunch in the Golden Lion. There is a new menu.

Gone is the chicken korma, but there is black pudding for those who partake of it. The ploughman’s now has a Scotch egg instead of pate, but the fish and chips seems to have been untouched. Steak and ale pie isn’t on the standard menu, but was the special today so we thought we would give it a try. It was worth it, and every bit as good as I remember. Best of all, they still have Strongbow cider. It was an excellent lunch.

One disappointing thing is that they now have a Michel Roux signature three cheese toastie. Now I am a great fan of toasted cheese sandwiches, but was a bit put off by the $7.50 charge.

From lunch we went straight to the afternoon piano recital by. He didn’t play the advertised music, but he did play some Rossini, Chopin, Ravel and Beethoven, so I was happy. He seems like a very sweet gentleman, and it was very pleasant after lunch entertainment.

One thing I really love about Cunard is the wonderful opportunities to listen to live musicians. There are so many choices, the other cruise lines seem to be moving toward recorded music in a big way, and I do miss the live performances.

On most Queen Mary 2 cruises there is a scavenger hunt where you have to identify where 10 photos of various objects on the ship were taken. It is tremendous fun. Usually we can easily identify half of the photos, but then we rush around the ship, bumping into other guests clutching the same photos in search of the more obscure objects,

In the past we have always been able to identify every photo, but today’s photos are more of a challenge, and 3 photos remain unknow, Luckily we have 48 hours to complete the task, hopefully we will have found  everything by tomorrow.

We spent the rest of the afternoon searching for the items in the photos, but by the time it was time to get ready for the Cunard World Club cocktail party we were still missing 3 items. Well there is always tomorrow.

The cocktail party was a 5:15, which if you ask me is way too early to have a party. In the past there have been 2 parties, one ofr folks on early dinner seating, and the other for those who ate later. Now they just have one party. And to accommodate everyone’s timing they have it at 5:15 which is way too early to get all dressed up.

However, we are obedient by nature, and so we were all dressed up and ready for the party by 5:15.

The party seemed to be less crowded than usual, and the sparkling wine was better, so all in all it was a good party.

We sat with one of our table mates, Enid, and it was a good opportunity to chat with her.

Captain Hashmi gave a very good speech and made a joke accusing some of us  of abandoning him in Perth back in March of 2020. Well, it was actually he who abandoned us by waking us up on the day we thought we were sailing to Reunion and ordering us all off the ship because of the COVID epidemic. I am sure I am not the only person who gets a bit anxious every time he makes an unscheduled announcement. He has thrown us off the ship once, what will he do next?

Tom Frenek was the entertainer tonight. He is a very funny man, but also a brilliant pianist. I have trouble playing the piano just sitting on the piano stool. He can play it standing on his head. It was a wonderful performance!