N and N's Grand Adventure: Aboard the QM2 Day 2

Pictures: From the stern Walking up the gangplank (wrong picture, can't delete it), the Illluminations theatre

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Commodore's Log Date:

10:21 AM 59 degrees Barometer: Steady Partly Cloudy

Clocks adjusted one hour 23.1 knots Sea: Slight 1.5 to 4 feet

Miles from NY: 888.5 to Southampton 2329.2

This morning we went to the Brittannia Room for the formal breakfast—I’ts just like dinner except with breakfast foods. We dined with 2 couples: one an American/English couple who live in Lake Tahoe California who were going to England to visit his family. The other a German couple returning home from visiting the U.S. She spoke for both of them as he did not speak English.

After a little walk on deck we went to a lecture on English Architecture---it was awful. The speaker hemmed and hawed. He made a case that Gothic, clearly a continental style from the late Middle Ages, was the English characteristic national architecture of the 19^th century. We thought the concept was a force fit. Actually, Nancy thought Cunard should get its money back from him.

We had lunch quite light and went to a planetarium show---also off the mark. Lots of images and narration that didn’t seem to match, very hard to follow. We took a brief tour of the upper works from the observation windows near the bow to the kennel near the funnel. We returned to our room where Neil took a two hour nap---a good thing as it turned out.

Then dressed for dinner and back to the Britannia for dinner---the food comes a little later in a differnt blog. We had a delightful slow dinner once again; a little sad we are by ourselves but wonderful none the less.

After dinner we went to the theater for a harp soloist. Shirley Dominguez was not your average harpist. Much of the music was popular, a tango, Zorba the Greek, and ABBA. We sat in the third row left wonderful. After the show we stopped in the Chart Room for a drink and jazz, then on to the Black and White Ball. It was interesting with many older couples really enjoying music from the Big Band era and dancing up a storm--some excellent dancers. From there we went further aft to G32, and club room named for the Queen Mary 2’s project number before she was officially named/commissioned. We stopped for a bit then had another drink and stayed for the whole set---a very nice band with old rock and roll and some reagge. We got back to the stateroom at 12:15 to be greeted with the news to set clocks ahead for tomorrow. We were out late for us---but again what fun.