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Monday 10 October (1 day to go) It rained in the early morning but it stopped a little after 7am. The rest of the day was sunny. We went to visit a couple of colleges and then did a bit of shopping before lunch at the Covered Market. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the Ashmolean Museum in the afternoon. Dinner was at The Royal Oak. A slightly later night but trying not to fall asleep as I’m entering this. The excitement for tomorrow is building.

See you onboard! 🥂🎶

Sunday 9th of October. (2 days to go) Landed at Heathrow at about 6:15am. The airbridge took longer than usual to connect and it was a long trek to the UK Border where there was about a 10 minute wait to get through the autogates. There was no wait at the manned counters but one brave soul who ducked under the queue dividers to join the manned counter line was sternly ordered to return to the longer line for the auto gates. it was all a bit ironic as about 1 in 3 people failed to go through automatically and had to be processed by a human being anyway. Our bags were already waiting for us when we got to the baggage reclaim carousel and we were out past customs at Terminal 2 by a little after 7:15. Our taxi was booked for 7:30 but at 7:20 our driver called to say he was at the carpark. It was a pleasant drive to Oxford past fields of sheep. We were far too early to get into our hotel rooms so we left our luggage and went to breakfast and we were early enough for 11am Mass. We got our rooms after lunch and then went to explore the shops that were open on Sunday. (Not all were.) We had a tiny rest and then headed out to Christchurch Cathedral for Sunday Evensong. It was a beautiful and nostalgic service. Dinner back at the hotel was a M&S sandwich bought earlier. About to crash after a very long day and complete with jet lag.

sorry for the confusion! i thought i saw your name on the roll call so made the assumption. 😬

oh yes! saw you in our roll call. You are most welcome to post your observations under this topic too. Hope to see you onboard. 😊

Thank you so much! I will definitely be taking lots of photos! Will be happy to submit once I figure out how to. 😅

Thanks so much! And thank you for your daily updates on your cruise. They really helped me prepare for this cruise.

sorry to hear about your cancellation. i usually photograph all my meals. 😅

i really hope they manage to restock the bears. his friends will be waiting back home.

As Host Hattie ends her notes from the Mediterranean I thought I’d take up the baton and post about my 12 days onboard Queen Victoria. The cruise only starts on Tuesday 11 October, but as our little group has to journey all the way from Singapore, our travel starts tomorrow night with a flight to Heathrow and we will spend 2 days in Oxford before embarking Queen Victoria. We were on Queen Victoria to Iceland in 2018 and then Queen Elizabeth to Alaska in 2019. We were looking forward to calling on St Petersburg back on Queen Victoria but just after final payment the world of cruising started to make headlines. By the time we were supposed to board we couldn’t even visit our friends next door, let alone foreign lands. When we booked 17 months ago, we had no inkling that Russia would mount a “special operation”. The reason we didn’t book the Baltic again was because we didn’t think travel would be “back to normal” in May, October seemed a safer bet. Even so, we weren’t sure if we would actually make it. It’s beginning to look more likely now so let’s hope for an uneventful three days. Keeping my fingers crossed until we step onboard. Once we are I’d be overjoyed enough to answer any questions about life onboard that you may have.