Tuesday, 19th September 2023

As newbies to cruises, this was likely to be the day when we’d get a better idea of whether it was for us or not. The Queen Mary 2 was still somewhere in the English Channel and would be very slowly heading towards the North Sea and then Hamburg, so we had nowhere to go that didn’t involve an unscheduled Channel swim! It was now over to Cunard to keep us entertained, fed and watered, ahead of the evening’s gala dinner. We were off to a latish start anyway, due to the dance floor efforts (and the cocktails) the night before. Lynne opted out of breakfast, but I’m far more of a lark than a night owl so I joined J and J in the restaurant for breakfast. It was incredibly busy, so we had to share a table, which provided some good conversation. It also provided an introduction to the tastiest Bircher muesli I’ve ever encountered. Suitably fortified, we had a look at the daily programme to see what was available. There were two Cunard Insight events in the morning, but the first one sounded a tad too strenuous for a 10am slot. We decided we’d aim for 11:00 and a talk on what life was like back on the original QM and the Queen Elizabeth, delivered by Maureen Ryan, who had been employed back then as an assistant purser, and then as a “social directress”. She had some interesting stories, and some terrific photos, but I have to say I have heard better speakers. She tended to lose her thread, and “um” and “er” a lot.

A side trip for coffee followed, with a sit down in Sir Samuels, where you can get a coffee or tea with a piece of patisserie included. Which is just as well because the coffees are not cheap.  Not wanting too much, because we were planning on going for afternoon tea at 3pm, I ordered the pistachio and white chocolate macaron, which turned out to be huge! Good, but huge.

On the way back to Illuminations for the second talk of the day that we wanted to attend, I got side-tracked by the wine cabinets outside the Tasting Room, which wasn’t open during our time on board. As I was contemplating where I might find a crowbar to jemmy the lock, a man stopped to inform me that he thought Mouton-Rothschild was the best wine there (which I thought was a bit rich given that there was a bottle of Petrus next to it, and several Cheval Blancs on another shelf) and then further went on to insist that “Saint Emilion is also a good wine.” That was the point at which I had to work very hard to not resort to eye-rolling or even sarcasm. Fortunately, Lynne dragged me away before I could suggest that it’s best to shut up when you don’t know what you’re talking about…

The second talk of the day was by the director of the art gallery, who wanted to talk about street art. Titled “From Banksy to Mr. Brainwash” this was both informative and fun, and meant we had a great start to the afternoon. J and J suggested we should also have done the 10:00 am session, so we planned to attend the same speaker’s talk on the Thursday, assuming the timing worked out. However, our main plan for the afternoon was afternoon tea in the Queens Room. It had to be done at least once. The suggestion was we meet up in there in advance of the advertised 3:30 start time to make sure we got a table, because it’s first come, first served and is apparently always very popular. First, though, we took a stroll on deck 7 and were nearly blown back indoors!

And from there Lynne and I made our way to the Queens Room at around 2:45 only to find it was already half full. We snagged a suitable table and waited for J and J to join us. I suspect that, with it being just a short trip for many, it was always going to be ridiculously busy. Certainly someone in charge must have thought so because a little after 3:15, with barely a table left, the waiting staff paraded out of the kitchen, white-gloved and bearing tea pots, to a steady round of applause from those of us lucky enough to be seated. Teacups were promptly filled and rounds of dainty sandwiches offered. Conscious that we still had dinner to come, we tried to be relatively restrained, but it was all very tempting. Especially the baby prawn rolls, tiny little brioche buns stuffed with prawns in mayo. Gorgeous. John couldn’t seem to help himself! I was doing OK until the scones, which were so good I simply had to have a second one to go with the glass of champagne we’d succumbed to by then.

Sufficiently replete with tea, cakes, scones, sandwiches and champagne, and unable to get into the planetarium session, we decided it might be time for a bit of a lie down to enable the digestive system to recover.  After all, we needed to dress for the gala evening, which meant a full make up job, a shower in the small but well-equipped bathroom, and full evening dress for the first time in around a decade. 8 months of care over what I ate and a programme of running and swimming meant my dress still fitted and was comfortable, but it was a bit of a shock to the system. Of course, for the sum of $79 (plus a 15% service charge) you could have booked into the day spa and had them do the job for you. We didn’t. You can also hire mens’ formal attire on board. John didn’t need to.

Duly scrubbed up, suited and booted, we met up in the Carinthia lounge for a pre-dinner port flight. The drinks were great, the service somewhat sluggish, and a request for peanuts and crisps had absolutely no effect on the waiter. We concluded that Cunard were either putting staff members they wanted to get rid of in there, or those who were so new they didn’t know what they were doing yet (or some combination of both that rendered them deeply ineffectual).

We eventually headed in for dinner, enjoying seeing so many people who had made a real effort to dress to impress. There were photographers all over the place for those who were so inclined, but we persuaded one of our fellow passengers to take a couple of pictures for us. We scrub up reasonably well, I think.

Dinner was still pretty much the same standard as the night before and we realised we would once more miss out on the theatre shows because of the timing. This was fine. Post-dinner the plan was to have a sensibly early night because we would be arriving in Hamburg in the morning, and we had plans for the day. These plans included pre-booked tickets for Miniatur-Wunderland after our disappointment at not being able to get in the last time we’d tried back in 2019. Then we’d been frustrated because we hadn’t booked in advance. So, letting common sense come into play for a change, we finished dinner and ambled back to our stateroom, and thence to sleep, the ship feeling very steady as we went.