Voyage on Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2003

The Queen Elizabeth 2 is the way luxury travel should be. It takes a leisurely 6 days to cross the Atlantic from New York to Southhamption, England. The ship is 963 feet long and has 12 decks. It is a floating hotel with dozens of major oil paintings and other works of art. It requires several days of exploration to figure out the whole ship. It is like a small city with 1726 passengers, a crew of 996 and a full array of shops and stores including Harrad's, barber shops, beauty shops, doctors, a library, a movie theater, a casino, bars, restaurants, etc. The food is fantastic. Everything is pre-paid so you can eat as much as you want at every meal. I developed a taste for smoked salmon for breakfast. There were some delicious things to be eaten for the first time. There is an example of a menu below. I'm sure everyone gained weight on this cruise!

There are a wide variety of activities to keep you occupied day and night besides the wonderful meals. There is a 2 hour tour of the ship that covers the history of Samuel Cunard, the founder. There are old fashioned wooden puzzles and shuffleboard. You can walk the deck (5 U shaped laps is a mile). Golf practice in nets and basketball outside. There is swimming inside or outside. There are exercise classes. There are dancing classes, sewing classes, acting classes, speakers on a variety of subjects like weather forecasting, the Concorde and Mozart. I was taken by a quote from that lecture: "When the angels played music for God, they played Bach, but when they played music for themselves, they played Mozart."

During the day, there were also trivial pursit games. I was on a team with a group (Gary Horsfield, his wife Dorothy, and 2 others) from the north of England and although we didn't win, we were serious contenders every single day. Check out Gary's website to see the impact of American influence on the world and to have some fun! Don't forget to sign his guestbook. On the last day, I was in the main event of these quizes called "I Will Survive". There were 8 teams of 4 each and we were all on stage in the grand lounge. After 6 teams were eliminated the people on the remaining 2 teams, including mine, had to compete against each other. I was very pleased to finish #3 and if you must know, except for one bizzare question on Egyptian ants(!!) I probably would have won.

Speaking of the grand lounge, every night there was live entertainment. Most nights it was the Broadway Bound group, 10 very talented people in their 20s, who sang, danced and acted. One night it was Kristin Spencer who was just fantastic as a soloist on the cello and the electric cello. Another night there was a comedian and one night Ann Hampton Callaway of "Swing" fame and daughter of John Callaway of TV interview fame. Entertainment, like meals, was included in the basic price of the cruise.

I had a great time. I took a lot of video footage, but not too many still photos. So thanks to Simone Bigolin of Italy for sharing 2 of his photos.