D&N

In service at least. I think there's a few more moored around the world. But are they afloat or resting on the bottom? 😂

The main engines fitted to QM2 are 4 x Wärtsilä Vasa 46C. I found what appears to be a rather large manual for that engine online. It includes manufacturers data on emissions and a diagram that shows a NOx Analyser built into the exhaust system, so they probably know what is being spewed out most of the time. Like many cars, it probably complied with all standards when built but as they change it might be difficult to modify. The auxiliary engines are GE LM2500s and probably emit less as I think they run on LNG rather than heavy oil.

I wasn't clear as to whether the QE itineraries covered it properly. Do they actually sail through the Strait of Georgia, between Vancouver Island and the mainland? For us It's immaterial anyway. We were thinking of doing Banff-Vancouver on Rocky Mountaineer, then QE round trip including Victoria in 2025. We didn't do Rockies or Victoria when on Princess in 1998. However I've decided I can see all of those things on YouTube videos without doing the long haul flights, and we'll probably just do a round trip on QM2 again. I've since seen a video of Gold Leaf service and it looks like I would turn my nose up at the wine the waiter was serving!

It's actually fine here. The coastal Alpes-Maritimes are surrounded by the sea, the Southern Alpes, hills of The Mercantour and The Esterel. Other than the unusual situation of a red hot wind coming from the west over the plains of the Var, the temperatures are reasonably moderate. As long as you have air conditioning to fall back on when it gets too hot it's not a problem. I would never live in Scotland again. I couldn't face a mild winter, let alone one with snow and ice. The problem in New York was not the weather. It was how busy the tourist areas were with idiots trying to outdo each other in posing for the most outrageous selfies. Plus the difficulty in finding palatable wine, and surprisingly the dearth of decent coffee. For me there's no place that's a good swap for where we live at any time of year. We think I might just about be ready for another 2 weeks on Queen Mary 2 in 2025, but even there after 2 weeks I'm just desperate to get home.

Direct flights Nice to JFK are usually only with Delta who use Terminal 4. Although JFK info suggests "Returning ESTA" is a class that can use the faster gates, I saw no sign of that on the list. Other Nationalities, VISAs, ESTA were all signed to keep to right of 3 lanes and channelled into the main queuing area. Perhaps going to New York early July wasn't the best time. Times Square was like Blackpool on steroids, and stinking of all the junk food trucks. I absolutely hated it. Although our hotel was a couple of blocks away, we needed to pass through the area to get to many restaurants that interested us. We did enjoy all the sight-seeing though.

If he had just boarded in Hamburg; That is common in Germany. Some sauna/spa suites prohibit any clothing beyond the entrance area where they provide lockers.

Can't say I'm that much of a purist. The size in relation to number of dancers is the important thing for me. After all a rectangular floor ceases to be such when you scatter 20 couples around it. You just have to go in a direction that permits you to dance and if no clear line exists, select other steps. The corners of the Queens Room floor either side of the orchestra are perfect for checks and spin turns etc. We won't be on Queen Anne anyway. I'd rather not leave our home vicinity in first place and it would take an ocean liner to tempt me!

On the 1st point, I can't say we agree. We flew there for 6 days at end of June. 4 days would have been quite enough! On future round trips we'll go for lunch to take up the minimum time off ship required by immigration. On the 2nd, it does. On 1st July this year it headed for Bar Harbor, Boston & Halifax for 7 days. Our original plans for 2020, and then 2021, were to make use of that time to visit New York. On the final re-booking we decided to split them up to save one potential cancellation affecting other plans. No sign of any on June 30th this year. Non US Citizens/Canadian visitors all had to be face to face with an agent and have photo taken. First timers had prints taken as well.

@gfs1ram Did you get any benefit from priority boarding? We had either not noticed it applied to Club or forgotten, but when joining a short queue that split to where a mass of folk were in snaking queues for Britannia on right, the notice stating Britannia Club (amongst others) priority to left was most welcome.

Here, the emergency services are warning to prepare for floods. Long dry spells are often followed by torrential rain and the ground is too hard to absorb it quickly. They point out it's best to check there's nothing in basements that might get damaged. We're on slightly higher ground anyway, away from main water courses, and anything substantial has always flowed past us. Hopefully those in low lying campsites and homes will prepare.

And there lies my problem! Depending on the complexity, it might take me the full 3 minutes to memorise the sequence. Whereas with freestyle I simply need to do whatever comes into my head that gets us in and out of corners and between other dancers, without coming into contact with anyone. I found White City Waltz on Youtube, and White Heather as well. They weren't danced at any general dancing evenings in West Central Scotland that we attended when we lived there, but may have been at specialist sequence groups.

Twice we found ourselves alone for first dance of night. Hopefully because others wanted to watch, rather than us scaring them off. First time might have had something to do with my wife's "very" little black dress! 😂 There were lots of good dancers onboard and we weren't taking up much space and doing fairly basic steps. But I'm always watching; If I see folk approaching the floor I dance well clear of where they might want to start. We don't do much sequence, and I'm not familiar with "White Waltz". We probably wouldn't have attended the morning practice. But with only 6 couples on the floor we usually join in watching those either side of us to learn as it goes along. There must have been plenty of space on the floor. One Gala Night, the floor was full; A German male couple joined the floor. They were impeccably dressed in slate grey tux suits and adopted a competition hold as they started to dance. I saw them set off and quickly decided that we would stay well clear of them on safety grounds. They left a trail of open mouthed folk all around the dance floor. Their posture and steps were superb but unfortunately they had zero floor-craft. Talking to them later it transpired they'd done some competition dancing in Germany and it seems to be acceptable to collide with other couples on the floor in that setting. We did actually watch a local competition in a town we visited many years ago and wondered why those crashing were not being marked down. Thankfully on QM2 they were the exception to the rule. Like @ballroom-cruisers we were lucky enough in our early years that our teacher ran evenings where those in their 2nd season (they had 3 intakes per year), were encouraged to join in and more experienced dancers were not allowed to intimidate you

Our experience was that clothing magically un-shrunk due to covid!

I've no idea what it is like on Divina. In this area MSC and Costa compete on 7 night Western Mediterranean cruises from Genoa/Savonna. Most reports are of constant announcements in 6 or 7 languages and of a fairly low end experience. A few years ago, we could have bought off season 7 night trips for €350 each! We always felt we would enjoy staying at home much more. I imagine we would feel overdressed on one of those cruises wearing what we wear to a beach restaurant at home. Queen Mary 2 is a real Ocean Liner and part of the experience is to feel how little movement there is in heavy seas. I'm not a big fan of leaving my home environment at all, but we are considering doing another 14 night round trip crossing in a few years time. Our advice would be embrace the elegance of the surroundings and dress to the nines as often as you can.

Orange juice at breakfast in the MDR was fine for us. We had two glasses each every morning as their glasses are about half the size we use at home. No need for a package to include that. Unless your wife drinks an awful lot of soda, it sounds like you would be considering the Hot Drink option at $10/day each. On that basis I think you need to have 3 each per day to benefit. We only take coffee/tea twice per day at 11 am and 4 pm, so took Illy Coffees and Tea Forte in The Chart Room. That would be a bit short of $20/day so would not have been good value. I don't know if premium coffees/teas are offered in MDR as we don't take them with meals so that may also affect your decision.

https://www.staysure.com/ We have used Staysure Expat, who cover: "Brits living in France, Spain or Portugal". Not sure if that poses a problem for a Swedish Citizen? They use a Spanish Underwriter. Their cover at least matches what Holiday Extras and other UK insurers offer. Travel insurance offered by AXA, Allianz and others in EU doesn't give anything near the medical cover. And their annual including cruise cover policy was good value for money. We have not needed to make a claim, so can't vouch for how easy/hard their claims handlers are to deal with.

According to my Google Timeline we only waited 1h10m, which is much less than some of the horror stories I've read. Although it felt much longer. We were quite lucky as we joined a queue/line threading through about 8 rows of herding tapes. Several flights must have arrived behind us as we saw that had at least doubled when we were waiting in a desk queue. On reaching the head of the snaking line a member of staff directed folk to desks that had space in their short queue. Some groups seemed to take forever to get their photos and prints taken. I think there was one person ahead of us when that agent decided he was finished and told us to find another desk. Joined end of the shortest neighbouring queue, which moved at a reasonable pace. When it came our turn they only wanted photos as we'd given prints at Red Hook a few weeks earlier. The agent was most amused when she asked me to pose for my photo and I immediately broke into a huge smile. I explained that I'd been conditioned by two weeks of posing for photos on QM2 with photographers saying "happy, happy, happy" each time. Whatever happened to "Say Cheese"?

On business in Plymouth many years ago. Ate at a restaurant in the Sutton Harbour area. One of two men on another table indicated an interest in a bottle of wine on the menu, but wouldn't want the whole bottle. A chap dining alone chirped up that he too was interested in the same wine. The waiter offered to split the bill between the two tables. The chap on his own said "I don't know about that". Waiter: "Why not?" Lone diner: "He looks greedy!" After the rest of the diners had a good laugh the waiter assured that he would ensure that the wine was shared evenly and they continued to enjoy their meals and wine.

We wear masks in shops, on buses, trains & planes, lifts and anywhere that we come across large crowds. In restaurants we stay clear of others and can eat outdoors most of the year. We only use lifts if impractical to use stairs, e.g with a 100kg+ supermarket trolley. If unmasked folk join us in a lift we leave the lift and wait for the next one. We only visit my relatives in London once a year but we know that if we passed Covid to my nephew it would kill him. We don't know how many folk we pass on a daily basis that might have friends or relatives with problems that put them in the same risk bracket as my nephew.

And on The Cote d'Azur it was a bit more comfortable today. Cool enough to share a bed! I'm sure we'll see a few more scorching days, but hopefully past the worse. The real issue is not so much the days, but when it doesn't fall below 25C at night for weeks on end.

At risk of going off topic; Does anyone know what the earliest time "in transit" passengers are allowed to re-board? On 5th June we returned at approximately 2.30 pm and were able to go through security and re-board with minimum fuss. On a future trip we might prefer to return earlier. Regarding immigration when disembarking; we left the ship about 8 am and made it clear to all staff that we were day trippers. We were ushered to a newly opened desk where our passports were examined, photos & fingerprints taken. No other documentation required. On our way within 5 minutes. Those disembarking fully appeared to be in queues about 20 yards long and there were probably 8-10 desks in operation. Somewhat more civilised than our arrival at JFK on June 30th!

I would recommend "room2 Southampton Hometel", if you decide to stay in Southampton. We stayed there one night pre B2B crossing in May 2022. We were very happy with the comfort and practicality of it's rooms, the location in relation to alternative eateries, and it's general ambience. We hope to stay there again before our next B2B crossing. Many folk on this forum, and my travel agent, recommend the Harbour and it's obviously very nice. The two hotels invariably come 1st and 2nd on a popular booking site and have similar room sizes. Pricewise on the night we stayed; Harbour would have been £295 against room2 at £135. And 5 nights from 11 January are currently quoted as £1,000 against £557. Even without the price difference I personally would opt for room2. Although if not going on the QM2 I'd probably stay at Premier Inn,

Our photo's were accepted.

There are a number of UK banks that issue cards with no foreign transaction or exchange fees. The conversions are made at something like 0.005 difference from commercial rates. With refunds you might win or lose as the rate will probably be different on the date the refund is applied. We also have a multi currency account with debit card. If you can load the account with required currency when the rates are beneficial then you are not exposed to fluctuations while spending. We used that for onboard spend and a subsequent trip to New York. One minor issue at the NY hotel. Initially used that card for guarantee, which froze several hundred dollars on it. Switched to another card for guarantee then switched back when it came to final $17 payment, leaving card free for other spending.

On other threads buying a cheap Tux Suit has been suggested as being a better option than onboard hire. If one has time, consider buying a cheap dark suit in London or Southampton and dispose of it after the cruise. In 12 days you would get good value from that. Depending on how confident you were in sizes you might be able to order online for collection or arrange for delivery to a hotel in UK. You might be able to buy in Paris, but in my experience it's easier to find cheap menswear in London.