kmerlin14

17 hours ago, Blackduck59 said:

 

It was a Royal Caribbean cruise, I can't remember the ship but I think it has since ended up on a scrapping beach. The foreign port was St. Pierre and Miquelon (French territory). I don't think that itinerary is available anymore. It included Saguenay and Newfoundland and not much in "Maritimes". We liked that itinerary but of course I think it has been withdrawn.

too bad because it sounded great. I can drive most places in the Maritimes so I'd be more interested in the ports it did go to. Right now I'm still too nervous to go to a US port to board.

On 4/24/2021 at 11:31 AM, nanwel said:

I have cruised the east coast from Boston to Montreal on Holland America - will not happen in 2021 due to Covid

There are ships that do only Canada, but cannot remember the name of the line..

 

I'd be interested in knowing which line does only Canada if you can remember. 

On 4/20/2021 at 12:27 PM, oatbagg1 said:

We're (hopefully sailing in May 2022 around the British Isles. The cruise goes counter clockwise. I assume the best side balcony would be Port side.

Curious to know if you've seen a roll call for this voyage. because I think we are booked on it as well.

If you are looking for an economical option in the Ritz Carleton and Fairmont Royal York area, you might want to look at the Strathcona hotel. It is across the street from the Ritz Carelon where the shuttle from Billy Bishop airport (porter) drops people off and just up the street from Union station where both the trains and the Up express from Pearson airport arrive. You can walk to the theatres, waterfront and many other attractions. You are also on the subway network so you can easily reach most destinations. The deluxe rooms are fairly decent, the standard room not as much. Union station is connected to the PATH which links a number of buildings and shopping centres together so that you don't have to go outside. The Aquarium is on the PATH and it also connects to the convention centre, Queen's Quay or close to it. But you will have to go up and down stairs and escalators, so it is not the best way to transport  a lot of luggage. I stayed at the Strathcona just before the pandemic hit, so hopefully the hotel is still in business. One King West is another fun downtown hotel that is nicer that the Strathcona. It was an old bank and you can go visit the old vault in the basement. The downtown hotels would be convenient for the harbour and sightseeing.

Thank you for all your useful information John Bull. Our cruise disembarks on June 4 in the middle of the celebrations, so I've been worried about the traffic from Southampton to the airport and trying to figure out if Gatwick or Heathrow would be easier. Since we have no idea what kind of flights they will have by then, I'd planned to book an airport hotel just in case and then cancel it if we can get home that day. I know it is a big celebration, but I think huge crowds might be a little daunting after all this social isolation. Pre-cruise, we'd planned to go straight to Southampton May 20-24 and explore that part of the country and leave London for another trip. Hopefully, I can make those reservations as soon as things open up.

2 hours ago, david,Mississauga said:

 

 

I agree that for a variety of reasons it is unlikely to take place. I am booked on one segment of that four-segment trip, i.e. ex-Québec on 8 Oct.  Our deposit was made with a FCD so we have no money tied up. That FCD expires the day after the QM2 is supposed to depart, so if the voyage is cancelled I hope they will extend the validity of FCDs than cannot be used. (I am aware that FCDs purchased in Canadian $ are refundable but I would rather have the FCD.)

I didn't realize that david. We transferred ours to a 2022 cruise but I can't help wondering if it might be better to cash them in instead if we can. I'm worried about my husband's travel anxiety after spending so much time avoiding people and crowds.

Hmm. I should have checked here before I bothered my travel agent. I was concerned because we had rebooked and I've never been able to access the cruise we rebooked, so I was worried I'd paid travel insurance on a cruise I only thought I'd booked. However, I was able to let her know that her auto reply was still wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.

4 hours ago, Ukulele girl said:

I am almost daring to book an Alaska 15 night cruise for July 2022 on QE. I am looking at deck 6 balcony cabin 6035. I would like to have the bed on the right hand wall as you look into the room. My husband gets up early and as I sleep on the left he would be nearer the bathroom and door so disturb me less if I was on the balcony side. Is there anyway of knowing which side the bed is on in different cabins? Help would be great. (Then all I have to do is pluck up the courage to actually book!),

If it is any help, we were in 5067 and the beds were on the left wall as you look at the balcony, with the person sleeping on the left hand side closest to the washroom. That agrees with the floor plan on shipmate.  6035 has the same configuration on the shipmate floor plan, so it most likely would have the same bed configuration if it is correct for that deck. Is there any chance you could just switch sides for that trip if you want to be on the balcony side?

4 hours ago, david,Mississauga said:

The three Canada voyages were showing on Cunard's site Friday afternoon. I was checking the one we are booked on (M134) and it disappeared as I had it on the screen. The three are now gone and a search by cruise number shows it is an invalid  number.

 

I have not been notified that it has been cancelled. Until a a few months ago the New York - Québec - New York voyage was being sold as one 14-day trip as well as two seven-day trips. Cunard said the 14-day trip was removed from the booking site because of the U.S. restriction on cruises over seven days, but they said  it wasn't cancelled.  Perhaps Cunard is waiting to see if there will be a change to the rules.

 

Holland America is still selling the Alaska cruises for this year, but all but one of the east coast Canada cruises has been removed from their site.

Cunard was a little late cancelling our October 2020 cruise after the ban last time, so I'm sure it will come. We ended up cancelling before they did because they had extended the cruise ship ban and our payment was due. They put our FCD back into the pool and we were able to use it to rebook another cruise for May 2022 which seemed far enough away that it would be safe, but now I'm not so sure.

20 hours ago, sfred said:

 

Proper spelling noted and corrected - thanks!  🙂  Cunard needs to fix it also - they had it wrong in our itinerary, and also used Nb rather than NB.

 

 

It's one of those tricky things that you only seem to learn after you move here. But it does help to tell the two Atlantic Canadian ports apart. 

And I've just realized that you would have been one of the places in Saint John that  I've be curious about, but could never visit. And that's the big white vendors tent. Can you remember at all what it was like. Type of vendors and where there seemed to be much engagement from the cruise ship passengers. Or would it have been so long ago that everything is a blur.

43 minutes ago, sfred said:

 

The buildings in the background look like St. John, NB Canada (your home port?).  If so, thanks for this contribution.  I have been looking in my files for a St John photo from our QM2 port call there on 3 July 2018, but I haven't found any.  We had a nice day in the city, stopping at a Tim Hortons for morning coffee and wifi, and then wandering the streets with lunch and a pint at a pub on Princess Street. 

I will give it to you since you added the province as long as you correct the spelling. It is indeed Saint John, NB. The New Brunswick port is always spelled out, as opposed to St. John's, NF.

Glad you enjoyed your visit when you got here. We had the cruise up the eastern seaboard booked for Oct 2020, but obviously we didn't get to do it. Saint John is close to us, but we can't visit it right now because we aren't supposed to leave our healthcare zones if we can help it.

But when the world gets fixed and the cruise ships come back there will be a new place to visit because they completed the Fundy Trail parkway last summer and it is absolutely stunning. I think everyone in New Brunswick went for a visit.

1 hour ago, ExArkie said:

Is that going to be the new illustration for formal/Gala Night attire on Cunard's Web site?

 

It would certainly let you social distance on the dance floor, wouldn't it.

If this is allowed, it would give us another port. It's a picture of a port with a book with a picture of a ship in a port in it and the picture of the book with the picture of the ship in the port in it.

Yes

48 minutes ago, bluemarble said:

3 minutes ago, sfred said:

 

I think that's Icy Strait Point as well. What sealed to deal for me was seeing that platform with the four legs showing alongside the ship between the trees toward the right of the photo. Along with the forest so close to the shoreline, that's a rather unique feature I found in photos of the Icy Strait Point pier.

and bluemarblesaid

I think that's Icy Strait Point as well. What sealed to deal for me was seeing that platform with the four legs showing alongside the ship between the trees toward the right of the photo. Along with the forest so close to the shoreline, that's a rather unique feature I found in photos of the Icy Strait Point pier.

 

I almost posted earlier "Okay, this is Alaska", but no hint was really necessary. 😉

You are both right. I was pretty sure you would have figured out it was Alaska, so I didn't give a hint. And bluemarble saw things in the photo that I didn't even know were there.  Did you go on the little trail sfred? It wasn't very long (about 5 minutes), but it was so lovely in there. It looked like they were trying to expand it, so hopefully they have done so. 

Here's one of my favourite port pictures because it was just magical and peaceful in the place where I took it. I posted a picture from the other direction as well but the camera doesn't capture the wonderful light there.

2 hours ago, sfred said:

The visible clues of palm trees and a beach, with a cruise pier slightly offshore, suggest a Caribbean location.  But I can't identify a match to any of the islands I think QE has been to.  Another rabbit hole for me, I'm afraid.

She did spend some time in Australia. Could it be a port from there? I don't have a lot of cruise port experience so it's hard for me to play. But this picture doesn't seem as commercialized as the only  Caribbean ports that I've been to. I have another port photo that I'm waiting to put up when this one has been solved.

3 hours ago, sfred said:

And here's the last newly-found Cunard port photo that was hiding in one of my archive disks.  This is also a port we have not seen before.  My last two contributions should narrow the likely geographic area quite considerably.  Cruise ships dock further up the coast to the north, well out of view of this photo, and passengers take shuttle buses into the town.

 

Is it Sitka? My photos are all from a different angle and I can't enlarge yours to look for certain details. If it is, I loved wandering around that port.

I found a copy of Halifax Warden of the North and I'm wondering if the reason it is hard to find the Cunard office location is because they didn't have a continuous operation in Halifax. According to Raddall, Samuel Cunard returned to the city in 1839, and the Unicorn arrived in 1840. In 1849, Halifax became the starting point of the pony express when Europa dropped it's first mail packet there. There was also a Cunard wharf around that time. But , by either 1867 or 1874 (not quite clear), Cunard was considered too big to call in Halifax there was more or less a hiatus until the first world war broke out and the Mauretania fled into the port. The ship's arrival database from the Pier 21 site (which is not quite complete) has the Ausonia arriving in 1926. It also states that the Cunard line stopped calling at the port in 1967, but the book is copyright in 1971, so it is a tad out of date there.

1 hour ago, sfred said:

 

Thanks @kmerlin14.  I think Oakland Lodge should definitely be included in our list of historic "Cunard Buildings".  Some extracts from the URL you gave:

 

Oakland Lodge is a two storey Gothic Revival style house located on Robie Street in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The house is all that remains of the large Cunard estate known as Oaklands. The impressive iron gates mark the beginning of a carriage drive that once wound between a boulevard of trees toward a large mansion house.

 

Oakland Lodge is valued for its association with the Cunard family, the original estate Oaklands, and with its architect. Originally the estate was owned by William Taylor, a Loyalist and former Boston merchant. The property passed in 1815 to Richard Tremaine,  In 1861 Tremaine's heirs sold the property to William Cunard, the second son of Sir Samuel Cunard, the founder of the famous shipping line. The main house was destroyed ca. 1900 by fire during the building of the railway cutting. Oakland Lodge is the only remaining structure of the estate. It was built as the gate keeper’s or porter’s residence.

 

 

As you mention, there is also the Cunard statue by the cruise terminal, and the Cunard Centre event venue.  I'm still in search of any historical Halifax building that would have provided ticketing, provisioning, and administration for Cunard's operations in Halifax.  Probably it has fallen to the wrecking ball in some redevelopment, but one can hope there is some remnant.

 

Privateers Wharf and the historic properties might have been too early for Cunard. A lot of ships including Cunard's came through Pier 21 which has now been turned into a museum so they may have had ticketing offices there. There were also a lot of buildings wiped out during the Halifax explosion.

1 hour ago, sfred said:

 

No worries - I had discounted Halifax mostly due to my error in thinking that QM2 must have been moored at the cruise pier in the photo.

 

Out of curiosity, have you ever run across a "Cunard building" in your trips to Halifax?  I have to think there was one somewhere in the city, given the importance of the port to Cunard.  The only one I've found is an honorable-mention modern event space, that isn't really connected with the shipping line in the historical sense.

I'm pretty sure there is a statue and there is definitely a prominent street and they are developing a big Cunard Quay project as well as the Cunard Centre. I saw a display on it November of 2019 back when life was normal, but I haven't been back since because were in the middle of major house repairs around the time the Atlantic Bubble opened up so we had to stay close to home and the bubble has now closed again for us.

I think I found a couple more ports to post once the new one has been identified.

Would this qualify

https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=4138&pid=0

And I was going to guess Ketchikan as well for your port but other beat me to it. But is Blue Marble referring to the terrible crash that I thought took place on the 20th of May. I think the planes were flying again when we got there, but there was no way I was getting on one.

4 hours ago, bluemarble said:

 

@sfred, I'm really going to go out on a limb here, but this is what I think might be going on with @kmerlin14's QM2 photo.

 

I'm getting an excellent match to the TD Wealth building located at 1601 Lower Water Street in Halifax. Yes, we've seen Halifax several times before on this thread, but perhaps @kmerlin14 missed that since she's just started contributing to this thread.

 

There is a view directly down to the waterfront only about two blocks away from that TD Wealth building. However, the view from there is not to the cruise terminal at pier 20-22, but rather significantly to the north of the cruise terminal.

 

Now here's the additional clue that just might make this all work though. Notice how the sun appears to be shining directly onto the port side of QM2 while other parts of the photo are in shade. That could indicate it's just about sunset. And that leads to my leap of faith that what we are seeing here is QM2 sailing past the viewer at this point as she is departing Halifax in the late afternoon/early evening.

 

How did I do with that forensic photo analysis @kmerlin14? I'm off to bed now. It's way past my bedtime!

Congratulations. You did great. And sorry for repeating a port, but I could only see it mentioned in your anagrams and Cunard building posts. The shot was actually taken from the Mercantile Social restaurant. I was there for a business dinner and I felt a shadow pass by the window and someone mentioned it was the Queen Mary. So I jumped up and ran to find a place where I could get a good picture and found a wide picture window just outside the room we were in, then came back and apologized that I was excited because we had booked a cruise on her. I'd actually checked to see if she was going to be in port while I was in Halifax and figured I was just going to miss her. So either I

read the schedule wrong or they had had to adjust her schedule because of Dorion. See picture. And would it be possible to post a list of the ports that have been done. And that was a close as I got to our cruise on the Queen Mary 2.

I did a search and couldn't see that you had one from this port either. 

You are right. It is Skagway. We were there on the 14th of June. It was a nice day and lovely up at Bennett Lake, but your cruise was actually warmer. I was checking the weather in Alaska for a month before ours and often it was warmer in Alaska than it was in NB. Then, when we got to Alaska, it was slightly cooler. But we had lovely weather and a wonderful cruise. 

5 hours ago, bluemarble said:

Glad to help when I can @kmerlin14. On a totally different subject, I see you have some excellent photos in your posting history that appear to be ports we haven't seen yet in our "Where in the world?" port photo game thread. I'd like to encourage you to post some of those port photos of yours in that thread so we can add them to our list of Cunard ports seen there and keep that thread going a little longer.

didn't have time to read all 85 posts, but I did post one that I suspect wasn't covered. And it was the Heathrow airport I think we will have to aim for because some day it might actually have a flight to Halifax again and we can drive there from here. Very few planes even flying from here right now because our province is locked down.

On 1/24/2021 at 8:56 AM, ollienbertsmum said:

 

 

Oops not sure I can do that because I have not got round to getting an international driving license now needed because of Brexit.  Another couple of months like this and I will be getting excited about a bus trip to Torremolinos.  

Check with your autoleague. I was able to get an international drivers licence in Canada so that I could drive in Ireland and all I had to do was go to the CAA in Canada with my Canadian one and fill out a form and pay about twenty dollars or so. It was done over the counter.

Our province just had more cases this month than they did all last year so I don't think we're going anywhere just yet.