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rsquare

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  1. Also holds true for desserts. As a diabetic, most of the desserts are off-limits for me given that they don't offer sugar-free desserts ("reduced sugar" doesn't do it for me). When I get tired of the cheese plate, I never have a problem getting a plate of berries and cream, which my glucose meter tolerates.
  2. Quite a bit of control, in my experience. I've booked a flight, through Cunard, from Newark to Paris for several days before ship departure, and then came back to London via Eurostar. And I never had any problems specifying Virgin Atlantic from EWR to LHR, back in the days when they flew that route.
  3. Thank you all, the Fuller’s pub appears to be occupying the old Flying Chariot space, a short walk from the lifts. Their breakfast menu on the website is enticing. I am greatly relieved about having a decent breakfast under my too-ample belt before setting off for Soton, my ultimate destination.
  4. Thanks for the fast response. The Queens Arms doesn't show on the official Heathrow T2 map unless it replaced Wetherspoon's Flying Chariot near the check-ins on level 5. There is a Fuller's London Pride airside after security on level 5. Or the official maps may just be out of date (I would be shocked, shocked!).
  5. If you are seated back with the peasantry, breakfast on a transatlantic flight from New York is likely to be a sticky bun and a pot of yogurt. This doesn't do it for me, so I typically stop someplace for breakfast after deplaning and collecting my luggage. I usually fly into T3 at Heathrow, and have a quite nice breakfast at Giraffe, just past the duty-free at the baggage claim exit. Now, for the first time, I am flying into T2, and it looks like my breakfast options are Caffe Nero and M&S Simply Food. The latter, as far as I know, is strictly for takeaway, with no tables and chairs. Caffe Nero seems to offer self-serve takeaway, sometimes involving warming food in microwaves, and has chairs and tables, but nothing that I've seen suggests that it offers a full English breakfast, or an omelet or other hot entrees. Two groundside arrivals lounges do me no good; United's is limited to Business and First, neither of which I am flying, and a more ecumenical one, Plaza Premium, appears to have gone out of business. There seem to be some restaurants before security on the Departures level, but I'm not sure if any of them serve breakfast, or if I can easily get to them. Can anyone confirm my beliefs about Caffe Nero and M&S Simply Food, or suggest another place where I can get a substantial breakfast at T2?
  6. Love it! Maggielou362 seems uncertain what an American means by a button-down shirt: "(open-necked business shirt ("button-down" in USA?)", Actually, I probably should have said "button-down collar," which is a collar in which the points have small buttonholes and button into the front of the shirt. Very common in the US, either with a tie or open-collar and obviates the need for starch when the shirt is laundered. Cunard, confusingly, uses the term "button down shirt" to mean any shirt that has buttons in the front going from the waist to the collar, as opposed to a pullover shirt with no buttons at all (t-shirt) or with only two or three in the collar area (polo shirt). While we're on collars, I stopped wearing wing collars with my tuxedo once I recognized that I was born without the bow-tying gene. Wing collars leave the hardware of a pre-tied bowtie embarrassingly visible.
  7. Pushpit's comment raises a question that I have had for a while about dinner jackets. I have seen gentlemen (almost invariably British when I have heard them speaking) on formal nights wearing a tuxedo jacket with ordinary black dress trousers (ie, no side stripe), a regular dress shirt (sometimes even with a button-down collar) worn with a black bowtie and no cummerbund or waistcoat. Apparently, this passes muster with Britannia's maitre d'. Is this a style of formalwear that is widely considered acceptable, or is it a hack to save packing space and sort of look like you are complying with the dress code?
  8. rsquare

    Boarding Time

    That can be done informally, which I thought about. I will have two bags and my friend will have one; I usually get four tags in the envelope with disembarkation instructions, so our bags can be together.
  9. rsquare

    Boarding Time

    I am Diamond and travelling with a Cunard newbie; we each have our own cabins (next door to each other) and separate booking references. For embarkation and disembarkation, where we will arrive together and depart together, how much does my "aura of privilege" cover my travelling companion? Can we both check in on a priority line? Can we both get early disembarkation if we are being picked up by the same car service vehicle? I am asking about what is realistically possible, which may or may not be the same as what the rules say. I understand that on board, my friend will be deprived of various wine tastings, CWC parties etc.; my concern is primarily about boarding and departing.
  10. I spent thirty years designing and managing surveys like this. Many of them were for pharmaceutical companies, and none of them went out without having been pretested on a sample of the intended respondents, in their country for international surveys, and with in-person debriefings at the end of the survey. It's the only way to learn about the things that respondents take for granted and survey developers don't - eg, pharmaceuticals in Australia have two indications, one for suitability and one for reimbursement under their health plan, prescriptions written on blue forms are treated quite differently to those written on yellow forms in Brazil, etc. My guess is that Cunard's market research contractor was the low bidder, and omitted this critical but costly step.
  11. Please reassure us that this was not something forced on you by Cunard.
  12. We are in the process of booking a transatlantic one way flight through Cunard and have just been quoted Economy, Premium Economy and Business Class fares from two different airports, using a travel agent. We asked for one airline to be excluded, and were quoted on that basis, at a savings of of several hundred dollars on business class. As to staying in Southampton, my hotel needs are fairly minimal, considering that I will be unconscious during most of the time I am at the hotel. For years now, the Holiday Inn just west of the city walls has proven more than adequate at a price closer to Room2 than to the Harbour Hotel. Rooms are quite large for a European hotel, and the HI offers a nice self-service breakfast. Although we usually walk over to the Duke of Wellington for dinner, on a few foul weather occasions we've had dinner in the hotel restaurant and been completely satisfied. Short cab ride to the ship, or even walkable if she's docked at City Cruise Terminal.
  13. PDF versions of all of the alternative dining menus are available at https://www.cunard.com/en-us/activity-types/dining/dinner-at-the-lido. They include two that I have never seen before, Frontier (Alaska theme) and Riviera (vaguely Mediterranean). The Coriander menu doesn't show the Indian wine that we had with dinner 5 years ago on the Queen Elizabeth; it was more interesting than memorable. But as others have noted, the quality of the Indian food in Coriander is first rate.
  14. The story that I heard is that QM2 sticks out too far into the Hudson, and that the US Coast Guard essentially prohibited it from using the west side piers, and indeed that's why the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal was built. The extra expense of using the Manhattan Cruise Terminal may be in the form of Coast Guard penalties. Obviously, the terminal at Red Hook has found other uses, since Bluemarble's list shows it hosting Crystal Serenity, a much smaller ship than the Mary. I'm curious as to whether QM2 has used, or could use, the Cape Liberty docking facilities in Bayonne.
  15. Arrived in southern New Jersey today, but perhaps delayed; there was no mail delivery yesterday due to Thanksgiving holiday. I never knew it was possible to get an electronic copy, and now that I know, I'll try to forget it. Reading long copy from a screen is definitely not my thing.
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