Live from the Queen Elizabeth--Nov 21 to Dec 5 Med Cruise

Live from the Queen Elizabeth—Mediterranean Cruise

Embarkation Day

We took a rather convoluted route to get to Civitavecchia, flying from Seattle to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Dubai, and Dubai to Rome. Why, you might ask. First, we really do enjoy Dubai, but even more important to us, we wanted to fly in first class on an Emirates A-380. If you are a plane junkie, you will understand, if not, I can‘t explain it. In any event, Dubai was wonderful and the A-380 was amazing as we had private suites and showers on board, along with a bar. It was great fun. We typically fly business internationally, but decided to treat ourselves this time.

Emirates provides free limo service to its business and first class passengers, so we were met by a driver at FCO who drove us in a Mercedes down to Civitavecchia. We were a little disturbed when we got there because he wanted to charge us overage for excessive mileage. We were allowed 70 km and had previously checked at the hotel and knew that the distance from the airport to our hotel was only 64 km. We had also started our ski tracker at the airport and knew we had only traveled 64 km when we arrived at our hotel. I hate that kind of stuff so I refused to pay the overage. The driver got on the phone to his dispatcher who at first tried to convince me that we had traveled over 70 km, but then backed down when she realized I had done my homework and apologized. The driver was so embarrassed that he escaped before we could even tip him. Service people should not try to rip off tourists. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

We had stayed once again at the Roses Hotel Mediterraneo. It wasn’t anything fancy but it was clean and serviceable and the location is perfect. We walked up to Todos the night before boarding and bought some wine for the cruise and stopped for a real Italian dinner on the way back. This morning we ate, packed up and walked down toward the port at about 11:30 a.m. We didn’t know when they would let us board, but we didn’t have anything else to do. It appears they have changed the location of the shuttle bus pick up so we just kept walking until a bus came by and we flagged it down. It took us to shuttle bus central where we switched to a Queen Elizabeth bus. After we checked our bags, we sat down and waited for boarding to begin. A guy came by and gave everybody a number, ours was #2, so it was called very quickly once boarding began so we were through check-in and on the ship by about noon. Easy Peasy.

We are, however, very disappointed in our cabin as our neighbors can look straight into our bed from their balcony. Yuk! We hate it. We are real balcony freaks and feel uncomfortable using the balcony with people staring at us. We have asked to change cabins but they didn’t sound too hopeful. This is the first time in over 40 cruises that we have had a cabin that was a real disappointment. They will let us know in the morning if there is anything they can do. If not, I am afraid our neighbors will just have to endure our normal balcony activities which include laying our out laundry to dry and hanging out in our pajamas drinking coffee, taking photo, etc. I suspect that they might be even more uncomfortable with the situation that we are, but what the heck were they thinking when they designed these cabins?

By the time we had unpacked our carry-on bags, our big bag had arrived so we totally unpacked before heading up for lunch in the Lido where we ate with a delightful couple from England. Not surprisingly there are lots and lots of people from England. Surprisingly, there are huge groups of people from Japan travelling together. It appears that our Japanese shipmates all want to eat together because instead of being given a table for ten, which we requested, we were given a table for only four which is way too risky for us. One of our greatest joys on a cruise is meeting lots of new people so a table for four just won’t cut it. They moved us to a table for six, but there was only one other couple at the table. They were totally delightful, but we still want a larger table—maybe we can take them with us. ;) I had a rocket salad and cod for dinner at it was excellent. I am not a particularly big eater and am going to try to lose weight on this cruise by being very low carb. Although I love foods high in carbs, specifically potatoes and pasta, I am on a roll and don’t suspect I will have any problems. One nice thing about dieting on a cruise is that there are always lots of healthy choices available and somebody else has already done all of the work.

We are still dealing with jet lag so after dinner we just went home and went to bed. We can deal with the room and getting a larger table in the morning.

As a person living in Australia where flying to get anywhere in the world unless its NZ or South Pacific is a long plane ride, I hate flying via Dubai. That flight from Australia is a killer even in A380, its 16 plus hours :eek: I go for the shortest possible time now as why waste time on connections or leave days and mainly cause I travel cattle. Cause business fares are expensive from Australia.

Los Angeles to Dubai is 16 hours and 35 minutes. I will admit that it wouldn't be much fun in coach, but we are lucky to have saved up lots and lots of miles while we worked, so we could enjoy a little luxury in our old age.

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Live from the Queen Elizabeth—Mediterranean Cruise

Embarkation Day

 

 

 

...We are, however, very disappointed in our cabin as our neighbors can look straight into our bed from their balcony. Yuk! We hate it... .

Yikes, that is horrible! Are there no curtains/drapes in your cabin?:eek:

Live from the Queen Elizabeth—Mediterranean Cruise

Embarkation Day

 

Service people should not try to rip off tourists.

Well, they do it all over the world, but in bella Italia they are especially good at it. More important is the cruise itself.

I am trying to figure out about your cabin...would you mind telling me the number please? I'd like to check it out on the deck plans so we will know where not to be.

It was good that you did your homework with the distance from the airport to your hotel!

Can you tell me what time you had on your E-ticket? There is another thread saying that they will be strictly enforcing the boarding times soon.

Hope you get your table for 10.

Looking forward to hearing more of your cruise! Enjoy!

Sounds like you must be close to one of those "corner" extra-large balconies. I really thought I wanted one but when I got on the ship and realized you could see into others' balconies and staterooms and your balcony was not private, I was glad I hadn't chosen one.

Hope you get everything sorted.

Yes, we are in 5053. No update on any changes.

So you are in a room next to a corner balcony. I had wondered if such a cabin balcony as yours would be overlooked.

Did you sail past a volcano today?

Thanks for the heads up about those rooms next to the balcony with a hump! That would be sad to have either of those rooms (hump or next to) I think. We had never considered the cons of being on the hump or next to it so glad you let us know.

Loved the vulcano!

Live from the Queen Elizabeth—Mediterranean Cruise

First Sea Day

There are a couple of things I forgot to mention yesterday. First of all we love this ship. It still doesn’t provide enough storage, but a little better than the Queen Victoria.

Second, our steward, Arthur is wonderful. I think he is one of our best ever.

Third, we have so many plugs in our cabin. We have 4 US outlets, one UK and one European. Woo Hoo. I have never seen so many electrical outlets on a ship.

Fourth, we love the new big flat screen TV in our cabin.

We still have no resolution on changing our cabin. They did find a table for ten but it had a family with two children, two single women and only on other couple. We also learned that our current table does have another couple assigned, so we will check it out tonight and see how it goes. Well we actually won’t have dinner with them tonight as we were invited to eat with the Senior Officers, but we have no idea why. More on that later.

DH got up very early and did a stretch class and an abs class, followed by a fencing lesson which he said was a serious workout. I just had some breakfast and tried to work out our account balance. They still owe us $100 and we had to file a research request. It seems like we are always missing a little bit of OBC in the beginning but it all works out in the end.

We had our Meet & Greet at 1:00 p.m. in the Garden Room and I think people were confused about the time, as it was changed at the last minute. We had a small group, but had a good exchange. The Future Cruise agents and the Social Director also showed up and gave us some additional good information.

We have early dining and didn’t want to abandon our dinner mates so we went down and had some wine with them while they ate. We left early and went to the Captain’s cocktail party, which was really very nice. We had an opportunity to talk with several of the officers. When the party ended we went to our late dinner with the Food and Beverage Manager and Customer Service Manager and two other couples. It was very pleasant and they provided both white and red wine.

Both DH and I are trying to lose weight on this cruise. I am doing low carb and am finding it very easy to follow on the ship. It is actually easier on the ship than it is at home since there are so many good choices available, all prepared and just ready to eat. DH is just eating less than normal and working out a lot. He really doesn’t have much to lose so he doesn’t have to be as serious as I do.

Not a very exciting day, but very pleasant and restful. I think we are still suffering from a little bit of jet lag.

Live from the Queen Elizabeth—Mediterranean Cruise

Day 3 Corfu

We love Corfu and did a DIY tour. The ship supplied a shuttle from the dock into the old city for a cost of $7.00, round trip.

The first thing we did was go in search of a Catholic Church. We lucked out and found it just as the homily ended. Since I don’t think there is any liturgical requirement that one listens to a homily in a language that they don’t understand, we decided being there for the entire consecration was good enough. The choir was totally amazing and sound resounded throughout this relatively small cathedral. They served communion by intinction. There were three priests, one holding the host and two holding the wine. The main celebrant would dip the host into the wine and then serve it on the tongue only. Between the priests and the recipients there were two altar who held a cloth stretch at about waist level, in the event of any accidental drips. I have never before received communion in this fashion so it was an interesting and unique experience for me.

After Mass we wandered around, looking for a store that sold thread. I had bought a lovely gown in Dubai that I wanted to hem and wear on formal night, but I didn’t have the right color thread. We asked a merchant who was extremely helpful and pointed us in the right direction. Happily the store was open and he had exactly the right color. Yeah! Unhappily, I forgot to get pins so that will have to be my mission in Kotor tomorrow.

We had lunch in the colonnade which was very crowded with both locals enjoying their Sunday afternoon and passengers from the ship. We both had wine and I had a Greek salad, while DH enjoyed hummus and pita that was served with onions and peppers.

Beyond that we just wandered out to the palace and then through the narrow winding streets enjoying the shops and the people. We bought a beautiful olive dish as a gift for our cousin who will be giving us a ride from Vela Luca back to Corcula town next week.

During the day, we decided to sign up for the Ultimate Ship’s Tour which will take place on the 26th, our next sea day, s when we got back we filled out the paperwork. We have never done this before, but, since we had a lot of OBC we decided this would be a good way to use it. Have any of you done this? What do you think?

I was just too tired to go to dinner, so DH went alone while I napped. When he returned he was good enough to accompany me up to the buffet where I ordered a pizza but only ate the toppings. I specifically asked for less sauce and more cheese, which made it almost as good as Princes pizza. While I was eating the Food and Beverage Officer with whom we had eaten the night before, came over to chat. I asked her why we had been selected to have dinner with the officers the previous night, and she said it was just luck and DH replied, “Very good luck”.

As we were leaving the Lido, we stopped and chatted with three of the ship’s musicians, the orchestra leader, the piano player and the singer. They were fabulous company and we ended up talking with them for about an hour and a half before we finally went up to bed. Our daughter is a singer, song writer, performance artist, so we had a lot to talk about.

Still no word on changing our cabin or finding our missing $100 OBC. They explained that there was nothing they could do over the weekend as headquarters was closed down. Maybe we will hear something tomorrow.

Enjoying your blogs PunkiC, thank you. We did the ship tour on QV 2 years ago and it was the best money we've spent. It was 4 hours of a fascinating insight into all that happens to run the ship. All of the crew that spoke to us spoke passionately about their departments. We were given aprons, food, drink and pin badges! We went onto the bridge which was fantastic. The whole tour was brilliant.

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Thoroughly enjoying all that you write about your time on our favorite ship and your ports. Thank you for taking the time to share with all of us. Enjoy every day and keep getting thinner and thinner. (-:

Queen Elizabeth Mediterranean Cruise

Day 4 Kotor

Kotor is located in Montenegro, a brand new country for us. Interestingly my husband’s ancestors moved from Kotor to Korula in 1775 so visiting this medieval walled town was especially fascinating for us. The walled city is beautifully preserved and a real treat. If you so desire, you can walk up to the old Church, over 1100 steps and then continue up the mountain to the old fort, both of which are contained within the ever climbing wall. We contented ourselves with walking the old city and walking that portion of the wall that was near sea level. The buildings within the wall are amazing and it was hard for us not to imagine ancestors eating in the same restaurants or worshipping in the same churches. DH really wants to come back and tackle the wall.

By contrast, there is an extremely modern, huge, restaurant right outside the wall where we had a glass of wine and enjoyed the free internet. Nine years ago, when we first started cruising, I can remember how hard it was to find an internet café. Now free internet is available for the price of a beer, glass of wine or even a cup of coffee even in seemingly remote areas. It was interesting that at the visitors’ booth outside the walled city, they were giving away free glasses of Rakia. Such a thing would never happen in the USA. DH bought a bottle of Rakia at the farmer’s market outside the walls to take to his cousins in Vela Luka where we will visit next week.

Did I previously mention that there are hundreds of Japanese on the cruise, as well as hundreds of Germans? Many of the announcements are made in English, German and Japanese.

The weather thus far has been cool, but sunny, making for very pleasant touring conditions. We have been very lucky. The last time we were on a Mediterranean cruise the temperatures were so high that it made touring very uncomfortable. We really prefer the cool weather.

This morning I did quite a bit of hand laundry and put it out on the deck to dry as we had morning sun. Before any of you start freaking out over drying laundry on the deck, I have checked pretty carefully while on the cruise, even asked couple of officers, and there is no rule against drying your hand laundry on the deck. Praise God for that as I love the smell of clothes dried in the sun. It is so much easier to hand was a few things every morning than to deal with the self-service laundry on board and it saves dramatically on packing space.

We still have no update on our cabin move or missing OBC, but have been assured that we should hear something tomorrow. We have been assigned to a table for ten for the next half of the cruise.

The QE had four maiden ports in Japan on this year's World Voyage. In each of these, large groups of Japanese were brought on board and given tours. We were told later at the World Voyage Dinner that there had been many Japanese bookings as a result.

Queen Elizabeth Mediterranean Cruise

Day 4 Dubrovnik

Today was clear and mostly sunny so I did quite a lot of hand laundry, knowing it would all dry beautifully once the sun got around to our side of the boat. I love knowing that everything is clean, which is much easier to accomplish on the ship than it will be when we switch to hotels in Rome and Paris. Of course, toward the end of a trip, it is less important as we get closer and closer to going home—perish the thought. Not that I don’t thoroughly love our home, but travel is our passion, at least one of the top five. ;)

Dubrovnik feels like a much more affluent city than Kotor. If you have never been there and are a history buff, I would highly recommend going. It is a beautifully preserved example of an ancient walled city. My hip was giving me fits today so I found a restaurant with wine and wifi where I parked myself while DH walked the wall, very fast. He was so proud of himself for taking only 38 minutes all the way around, including taking tons of pictures. If I had gone, it would have been much slower. Other than that I didn’t have any problems walking all over the city. We were just concerned about all of the steps and rough surfaces on the wall. I can look at all of his pictures.

DH had an aunt who was a Dominican nun from Korcula. After she returned from serving 50 years as a missionary in South America, she returned to Dubrovnik and lived in the convent, where they made wine. She, of course, has passed now and they no longer make wine but we visited the site which is mostly a museum these days.

There was a shuttle from the pier into Old Town with a charge of $7.00 US each way. For some reason which I don’t thoroughly understand we aren’t being charged for shuttles. I guess it is because we booked on a Cunard Fare, but I am not entirely sure what that means either. Whatever it is, it is a good thing. After paying our gratuities, extra internet time, buying a bottle of wine almost every night and paying for our Ultimate Ships Tours, we will still have about $182 US left, but I am sure we will find a way to go through it all. ;)

It has been amazingly easy to stick with my low carb diet and I am feeling slimmer. Of course the real test will be when we get home and I get on the scales. I had to have oil and vinegar dressing on my salad at dinner because the other choices, thousand island and some other sugary sounding thing, wouldn’t work on my diet. The sea bass was quite good and I tried a little bit of cream of celeriac soup. I didn’t eat a lot because is suspected that it had been thickened with flour.

My missing $100.00 on board credit finally showed up and I spoke to the Customer Services Director who assured that she would find us a new cabin for the next half of the cruise which starts in Venice. As near as I can tell, about half of the people are disembarking in Venice, including the Japanese and German crowds. That is a good thing as it is a bit frustrating to have such a huge portion of the passengers who don’t speak English.

Tonight, we finally made it to the dance floor, much to DH’s joyful relief. Maybe I am recovering from my jet lag. First we watched a series of sequence dances, which we would very much like to learn, and then danced to some recorded music followed by live music from the big band. We spoke to some of the most accomplished Sequence Dancers and they agreed to help us learn a couple of the dances if we show up a half an hours before Sequence Dance sessions. Happily they will also be staying on next week. I sure wish they had Sequence Dance lessons on the ships.

Happy to read that you are having a good cruise.

Best wishes for a happy Thanksgiving.

Cheers,

Salacia

Los Angeles to Dubai is 16 hours and 35 minutes. I will admit that it wouldn't be much fun in coach, but we are lucky to have saved up lots and lots of miles while we worked, so we could enjoy a little luxury in our old age.

Good for you, I can tell coach on the 380 is not fun at all... maybe better on the upper deck. We did a non stop on Air France 380 San Francisco to Paris, could not wait to get off the plane. Next time would pay extra for better coach seats, can't afford anything more. The 380 in coach is like a greyhound bus... actually I think the old greyhound buses were more comfortable. Bring back the old 747s...

. As near as I can tell, about half of the people are disembarking in Venice, including the Japanese and German crowds. .

Who will of course be replaced by more Chinese, Japanese, and Germans.

It really is time everyone spoke English.

David.

Queen Elizabeth Mediterranean Cruise

Day 5 at Sea--Ultimate Ship’s Tour

I took full advantage of the sea day morning and allowed myself to relax in bed until almost 9:00 a.m. Since DH had gotten up at 6:00 a.m. and gone to the gym for over an hour before he went to his fencing class, I felt guilty and finally got up so I could go down and take pictures of him in his fencing gear. After taking a bunch of pictures, I felt really hungry and decided to go op and eat in the buffet. I usually eat a big breakfast, a moderate lunch and a tiny dinner, so I am often most hungry in the morning.

As I had suspected, DH who had been quite lukewarm about the idea of the ship’s tour, just loved it.

We started back stage which was really interesting as they had the screen down, showing a movie while we were on the stage. I especially liked the make-up room and the costume room. We then visited the anchor room where DH, and old sailor and commercial fisherman, was fascinated by the huge ropes. I may not remember everything as the tour was three and a half hours long, but I believe our next stop was the fire department. The fire officer was a real cutie and very serious about preventing fires, which one must be on a ship. This was followed by a tour of the medical clinic, one half of which is for passengers and the other half of which is for crew. I thought it was interesting that many of the long-term crew members use the ship’s doctors as their regular GP.

DH and many of the men thought the Engine Room was the most fascinating part of the tour. It resembled the Bridge on Star Trek and is the nerve center of the entire ship. I was interested in the panel that controls the pool temperatures. ;) We then went through the Verandah dining room into the Verandah kitchen were we saw their fancier than usual Wedgewood china and on to the Britannia kitchen. Our tour was later than usual so they were already in the process of preparing for dinner which made it a lot more interesting. They had also already begun creating the elaborately decorated gingerbread houses and cakes for Christmas. The cake were really Styrofoam so there I no issue with them getting stale before Christmas.

We then had to go up to the bridge so we could catch the views while it was still light. The views are just amazing and I think that if I had it all to do over again, I would like to be a cruise ship captain. The senior bridge officers have their cabins adjacent to the bridge. Everyone had the opportunity to sit in the Captain’s chair, wear the Captain’s hat and have their picture taken with the Captain. We had DH sit in the chair while the Captain stood on one side and stood on the other, giving DH the illusion that he was in charge of two very powerful women. ;)

After the bridge tour we visited the bakery, the butcher shop, and the storage rooms, with our last stop being the incinerator room. We ended our tour in the Commodore Club where they provided free drinks and appetizers and gave us all tour pins and Cunard aprons. All in all it was money very well spent.

The complexity of running and providing for a ship of this size is mind boggling. It is like two complete and vastly different villages—one for the passengers above, and one for the crew below. What we see on board from day to day I just the tip of the iceberg. Everyone should try to take this tour at some point in time.

We barely made it back in time to get into our formal wear and make it to dinner. We took our complimentary bottle of champagne to dinner. I don’t like any champagne, even the Dom we get when we fly first class, so I just stuck with wine but the rest of the table seemed to enjoy it.

After dinner we went to the Captain’s cocktail party and had a pleasant time chatting with the Dr. and Chief Electrical Engineer. When the party was over we went up to our cabin, donned our masks and went back down to dance. They had parade of masks, but no contest, which was somewhat disappointing as I feel I would have won. I have an elaborate gold beaded capelet that I wear with an even more elaborate gold mask and usually win the contests. Oh well, we had fun dancing until my legs requested that I put them to bed. Busy, busy afternoon and evening.

Tomorrow is Venice.

I previously enjoyed your blog though I can't remember where you were, it was just fascinating! But this is on a whole other level, because you see I have booked our first Cunard cruise for June and we will be on the QV on the same itinerary as you are now. So you see every step you take is of huge interest! I look forward to tomorrow x

Surprising that there was no contest for the best Mask ,after all this is what the evening's all about. OK not much of a prize, just another bot of the Pol Acker ;) which probably you could have done without :D

Queen Elizabeth Mediterranean Cruise

Day 6 Venice

Everybody loves Venice, don’t they? Well we sure do. Unfortunately it gets light so late now that we couldn’t really see much as we sailed in. Having much longer days is one advantage of sailing in May, but then I would miss being home working in my garden. So many trade-offs.

Since there aren’t really a lot of Americans on board, there was no recognition of Thanksgiving anywhere in our day, except on Facebook and from texts from our children and siblings. DH was just as happy as he knew they were having rack of lamb for dinner (he saw them prepping it in the butcher shop on our tour) and he likes lamb way better than turkey. 

We were not in a huge rush to get off the ship as we have previously spent time in Venice and had no particular plans. After a big breakfast, bout 10:00 a.m., we walked over to the People Mover, took it into Piazza Roma where we bought two-day vaporetto tickets and got on a #2 to the Rialto Bridge so DH could take pictures. The People Mover is 1.30 Euros per ride and the two-day vaporetto passes are 30.00 Euros per person. Then we just wandered around, loosely looking for straight pins so I can hem this beautiful gown I bought in Dubai—I want to wear it for the next formal night.

It was quite cold in Venice today, but we from the Pacific Northwest, especially skiers, know a lot about layering. I wore a light silk sweater, another light polyester jacket, a windbreaker and a leather jacket. We also wore scarves and gloves and were very glad that we had them. During the afternoon, when it warmed up a bit, I put the leather jacket into our backpack, but needed it again one the sun went down. I also need to get a knit hat. I had the perfect knit hat that I wore for years and then, sadly, lost it a couple of years ago and still haven’t found the perfect replacement.

Around noon we decided to stop for a glass of wine and a bit of cheese. They charged us a 2.50 Euro per person cover charge, plus an automatic service charge. I thought that was a bit much, but I guess it was OK considering that we used the internet for about an hour and then continued on our quest to find straight pins. During lunch it started raining which was really frustrating because I had asked DH to bring umbrellas and he said we wouldn’t need them. Grrrrrrr. We bought little umbrellas for 3.00 Euros each and continued our very convoluted walk around most of the main island and finally accidentally stumbled on the store that sold straight pins, along with some very interesting underwear. I am afraid my days for exotic underwear have passed.

We eventually ended up at the Fondamente Nova vaporetto station and rode over to Burano. Burano is an absolutely must-see destination and the prices for everything are much less than in Venice proper. All of the buildings are painted in bright colors and it is a just totally charming place where intricate lace making abounds. We found a mask and hat that DH loved and we were going to buy them on our way back. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, we spent far longer than we had intended talking with other patrons in the restaurant over our wine in the village and by the time we got back to the shop, it had closed. Getting the mask and hat home would have presented a challenge anyway. Maybe I can find them on e-bay. Be sure to include a visit to Burano the next time you come to Venice.

We didn’t get back until about 8:15 p.m. and DH was still longing for rack of lamb. We talked to the maitre’d and he said there would be no problem going in for late dinner. We sat at a table for 8 with only two other occupants. Lots of people just stay ashore for dinner when the ships overnight in Venice.

After dinner we went down to the Purser’s Desk to check on the progress of our cabin change. The clerk at the desk said, “Oh no, you are staying in your same cabin for the next voyage”. Really? In a word, communication on this ship sucks. I asked to speak with the duty manager who turned out to be even ditzzier than the clerk. I can’t imagine that he will ever be able to aspire to more than one stripe. It would seem logical to make clear notes on every customer service transaction with a passenger, but apparently that is not the case on the Queen Elizabeth.

So we are left in a situation that we are, or maybe are not, moving in the morning, but have no idea where. I would really like to know for sure so we could get packed up and be ready to move fairly early as we want to spend the whole day playing in Venice and shopping for hats.