Looking down on luggage loading, Painting the ship, Leaving the dock
Views of Southampton Harbor from the shp
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Holiday Inn Express with its hard pillows, hard bed, no air conditioning, but awesome towels—created a good hotel overall. It also provided a good free breakfast in the form of the traditional English breakfast. We packed our stuff and attached the proper luggage tags--alas no last minute upgrade so we are still in 4136, inside without a window. Since we were ready at 9:00, and not scheduled to board the QM2 until 3:00 we went for a walk. We turned the other way from the previous walk and found very little in that direction either. In the distrance from the hill where we stopped we could see a car dealership and a gas station but everything else was private homes. The two walks confirmed our suspicions that the Hotel was indeed in the middle of nowhere. It’s a good thing they had a restaurant—otherwise we would have gone hungry.
We got back from the walk and took our luggage downstairs. The cab we arranged for the previous evening, was already there, and he loaded our bags as I checked out. We apologized for the number of bags. He assured us that we didn’t have very many at all. He told us about a couple that had enough bags to fill the entire boot and half of the back seat. The wife had taken 16 pairs of shoes. The cruise they were taking was less than a week long, but they wanted to be prepared for anything.
We had a marvelous driver and our ride was most entertaining with again stories about traveling –ours and his, including his trip to India, and by about 11:30 we were at the pier in the shadow of the QM2. We told the Cunard people that we were way early because we had to leave our hotel and really had no place to go with all our luggage in tow, so they directed us to the waiting lounge. We received our boarding group assignment and sat down for what we expected would be a long wait. Within the hour our letter “D” had been called, and we had our card and were heading through security.
We boarded the ship and headed for our stateroom 4136. It was a little smaller than our first room and distinctly warmer. Our bags arrived at the same time we did and were all there, and we simply set things down and headed up to deck 7 for some lunch. Great lunch—roast beef and trimmings. We then headed to our cabin to unpack. We met our room steward and asked if he could do something about the warmth of the room. After stowing our gear we went up on deck for a beautiful afternoon. We watched Southampton harbor, read our books, and took a few pictures until 4:00 when we reported to Area “jai” for our safety drill. Then back on deck for our departure from the pier. A pleasant trip down the estuary, but dinner called. At 6:00 we were in our seats with one other pair from New Jersey sharing our table. Much later, 6:30 or 6:40 the third couple from Florida showed up. The staggered dinner kind of messed things up and rather than get up before everyone was finished, we missed the opening show in the theater. But dinner was as wonderful as we remembered. Menu selections in a separate blog.
We went upstairs to check out the deck, but it was cold and windy so we came back inside. We tried the casino, but there were a number of big time gamblers—a machine right next to us won $410.00, but he had risked a great deal of money. We played until our dollar ran out. We returned to our cabin which was mercifully much cooler and worked on the blog for a while before we retired for the evening, too tired and full to drink our complementary bottle of Champagne.
Time: clock fell back one hour
7,820 steps plus shuffle of queing as we boarded.
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