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Over The Water And Back Again—A Transatlantic Trip
By Snookums, edited by Filbert, photos by Filbert

Part 10-- below (or at the "read more").

May 20 (Tuesday, Day 24, At Sea) –

Even with the time change we slept in until around 9:30 AM.  We ordered coffee and a fruit plate and Snookums finally showered in order to do a load of wash.  Then we went to lunch at the buffet.  The buffet is separated into four distinct areas that are actually pretty far away from each other.  It’s a weird layout since you have to walk quite far to get items from the four different stations.  There is an Asian station, the grill station, the Italian station and the carving station.  Today we both ate from the Asian station and enjoyed red curry with beef and vegetables.

Ship's library

For people that haven’t sailed on Cunard before, here are the scheduled events for part of today:

11:00 – Skin Care Ingredients: Separating Hype from Reality (Canyon Ranch Day Spa)
11:00 – Amber Lecture (Jewelry Shop)
11:00 – Darts Competition (Golden Lion Pub)
11:00 – Silly Bowling (Poolside)
11:15 – Book Signing (Library)
11:15 – Salsa Dance Class (Ballroom)
11:30 – Queen Elizabeth 2 from 1969 to 2008 Lecture (Planetarium)
11:45 – Quiz Time (Golden Lion Pub)
Noon – Eight Bells to mark the exact time of midday (Grand Lobby)
12:15 – Jazz Pub Lunch (Golden Lion Pub)
12:15 – Interest Corner: Pet Lovers (Champagne Bar)
12:15 – Masonic Brethren Gathering (Boardroom)
12:30 – Tango Dance Class (Ballroom)
1:00 – Planetarium Film (Planetarium)
2:00 – $1,150 Snowball Jacket Bingo (Ballroom)
2:00 – Duplicate Bridge Session (Atlantic Room)
2:00 – Power Pump Fitness Class (Fitness Center)
2:00 – Watercolour Class (Chelsea Room)

This afternoon we did some serious sea watching.  Filbert put on a jacket and his shortwave radio earphones and set up on the balcony.  When he would see something, he would motion and Snookums would get up from reading on the bed and join him.  We saw several pods of dolphins.  We also saw a whale that blew through its spout several times and we saw its back once, but didn’t see its fluke.  Filbert also saw a big turtle. 

This afternoon we sailed within two miles of where the Titanic went down.  It took the same route that we did (Liverpool to New York) and managed to hit an iceberg in mid-April.  On our cruise we haven’t seen any icebergs!

Tonight is the last formal night and is the Ascot Ball.  We got all dressed up and had a nice dinner in the sit-down restaurant.  Our table mates talked about going to Ascot (in England) for the races and how the women all wear hats or fascinators (a headband with feathers in it).  The wife of the loudmouth man had her fascinator on.  We went to the Ascot Ball after dinner and saw many women wearing hats and fascinators and some men had top hats. We didn’t stay long, though, since there weren’t any available seats.

We went to the casino and decided to play the “pusher machine”.  This is the machine that we first got hooked on while on Holland America’s Prinsendam (and also introduced Snookums’s sister to on Holland America’s Noordam in December, 2007).  It has a bunch of quarters in it that are teetering on the edge and some metal pushers that keep going back and forth to push the quarters.  The idea is that you put in your quarter and it’s just enough to cause the pusher to push other quarters down the chute and into your pocket.  We spent about 1 hour there and lost $20 so we felt we got our money’s worth.  Another lady had just stumbled on it that day and she played until she was out of money (but we think she only had $20 or so).  She just kept on laughing and saying “They have to fall”.  We know better, but we still play it!

The loooong hallway

We decided to check out the buffet area for the “all night snacks” and ended up having a few little things.  Our dining mates told us that lots of people would be there and there were.  Most of the nights we went back to our stateroom after dinner (around 10:30 PM) and promptly fell asleep so we missed out on the nighttime ship activities until tonight.

May 21 (Wednesday, Day 25, At Sea) –

Worst seas of the trip

We had breakfast in the main dining room and then went to the internet center on the third deck in the very front of the ship.  The ship was in four to seven foot swells which was the roughest water we had experienced yet.  (Four to seven foot swells aren’t very rough.)  Then we went up to the 12th deck to the Commodore Club which is also at the very front of the ship.  Then Snookums proclaimed she needed to go back to the stateroom since she was feeling seasick.  She took a Dramamine and was basically sleepy the rest of the day. 

Rigged for cool weather

The seas calmed down around 2 PM which meant that Filbert could do his last sea watching of the cruise.  It was colder so he put on more layers.  He saw one more dolphin (not a pod of dolphins, but a single dolphin) and that was it.  Snookums continued to sleep and read.

Flowers in the atrium

We had an interesting discussion at dinner about American and British terms.  Snookums commented that the television kept saying “Be sure to retard your clock one hour tonight” and she hadn’t heard “retard” for “turn back” but figured it was just British.  Well, the British hadn’t heard that term either and assumed it was American.  None of us could figure out where the term came from and realized that basically every passenger on board the ship figured it was the “other kind” of English! 

We got back to the room around 10 PM and decided we had better pack.  It was actually easier packing from this cruise compared to the Royal Caribbean one since our stateroom was much smaller and we didn’t have room to spread our stuff around.  We packed up and put our bags outside our room by 11:30 PM, turned our clock back for the last time and went to sleep.

We were going to tip our stewardess (Maureen from Pretoria, South Africa) extra except that the last two nights she never left us ice and didn’t take away dirty room service dishes.  If she would have done her job the whole trip, she would have received a nice little bonus.  Instead, she got the normal tip.

May 22 (Thursday, Day 26, Disembarkation at Brooklyn Port) –

We were supposed to disembark by deck number and since we were peons on the lowest deck, we were scheduled to be called last at 10:45 AM.  We were enjoying our wait in the buffet dining area with a great view of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan and were having discussions with British guests regarding the U. S. election.  The British seem to know as much about U.S. politics as most Americans do.  Around 9:30 AM there was an announcement that any remaining U.S. citizens could leave so we left, immediately found our luggage and had no line at Immigration and Customs. 

Lady Liberty

Farewell to QM

We got in line for a cab and although there were only four groups of people in front of us, it took about 45 minutes for us to get a cab.  (There was an announcement that played over and over saying that the cab line was on the right and on weekday mornings it might take awhile – and it did!)  We spent five hours at La Guardia waiting for our planned AirTran Airways flight and ultimately arrived at our house at 11 PM (as planned) after flying via Atlanta with a 3-hour layover.  It was a long day but we came back to an intact house so that was good!

Things to note about Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas:

• U.S.A. Times (4-page newspaper) is not delivered to the cabin
• WiFi is only available in certain public spaces
• No afternoon tea time (i.e. no high tea)
• No self-serve laundry facilities
• Only non-dairy creamer is available at the all-day coffee stations
• Room service takes forever
• The rock climbing wall is pretty neat
• The ice show is pretty neat
• The cabin attendant was fairly competent, but most other ship's staff were pretty apathetic and unhelpful
• The lunch buffet was basically the same every single day, and not very noteworthy
• Dinner cuisine was laughably boring, unimaginative, and uninspired
• Dinner service was similarly laughably incompetent
• Balcony cabins had a decent sea view

Things to note about Cunard’s Queen Mary 2:

• U.S.A. Times is delivered daily
• WiFi is only available in certain public spaces
• Afternoon tea is splendid
• Self-serve laundry facilities are the nicest we’ve seen
• Heavy cream is available
• Room service is VERY prompt
• The sea view from "sheltered balcony" staterooms is pretty poor, unless you like standing to watch the sea

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Sunset and good sailing