July 9^th, 2026

At Sea

Our last sea day. Actually, our last day.

We went through dense fog last night, so I went to sleep listening to the mournful sounds of the foghorn. Feeling very envious for the folks in the Queens Grill suites at the front of the ship, they must hear it loud and clear. All night. What a treat.

I spent the morning in the Commodore Club, imagining that this was the start of a world voyage, and I have many sea days ahead. And you know where you will find me.

Workwise it was a very productive morning, and I was totally in my happy place. Thank goodness the potato chips are available again.

However, after lunch reality set in, and I had to leave my perfect seat in the Commodore Club and embark on packing and sorting out our stateroom.

It has only been 7 days, and we haven’t actually bought anything, but by some bad luck our 2 suitcases were verging on being overweight. I have no idea how that happened.

Then it was time to dress for dinner, and, you guessed it, meet up in the Commodore Club.

I am still not really au fait with this anytime dining idea. People have been complaining about waiting hours for a table. And long queues to get into the dining room. It just hasn’t worked for us, and I think we will be back to late seating on our next voyage. One less thing to plan for.

So we decided that we simply didn’t want to face the crowds waiting for tables in the dining room. However, I don’t really enjoy the Kinds Court at the best of times, and when you are dressed for dinner, it was not filling me with enthusiasm.

Then Kim reminded us about the Chef’s Galley. In all my years traveling on Mary I have only been there a few times at lunch time when I have had the urge to eat a burger (it doesn’t happen very often).

But apparently in the evenings it turns into a pasta and pizza restaurant, where you can sit at a table with a tablecloth and be served your meal. No getting confused at the buffet.

It turned out to be a good choice, and I had an excellent spaghetti bolognese. You could have a Caesar salad as a starter, so it was actually a great meal, and we were about the only people there, so it was very quiet. This was a good find for the days when it won’t work out in the dining room.

Then it was time to say goodnight to our friends. This is always such a sad part of a cruise, but hopefully we will see them again in the not-too-distant future.

There was no escaping it, the hour had come to go to sleep on that Cunard mattress again, no foghorn, and I couldn’t even hear the waves.