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With QE now back in Australia/NZ waters for the summer season, I was clicking through some old trip photo files and ran across this picture. The buildings in the background might be familiar enough to identify this already-seen port.

Welcome back to Australia!!

When QE was doing the relocation from Alaska to the Mediterranean in August/September, we stopped in San Francisco and Los Angeles on the way to Panama. SF was the first US port, LA the second. We did not have to zero out in LA. On the Atlantic side, Ft. Lauderdale was the first US call after stops in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Aruba. We had to zero out in FtL.

Thanks @alibabacruisers! Your photos brough back some good memories of a QE short weekend getaway we did in December 2019 from Adelaide to Melbourne. Santa made a visit, and there were carols by the crew on the steps of the grand staircase. A very enjoyable time. Embarkation day in Adelaide was one of those ridiculously hot South Australia summer days - somewhere around 45c. We tried to have a beer outside in the shade on deck 9 aft, but it was just too hot. The next day at sea on the way to Melbourne struggled to get to 15c.

QE has returned to Singapore today, 19 November. This completes an around-the-world voyage started back on 3 April when she last departed Singapore for Japan, Alaska, Panama, trans-Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the MidEast. Thanks to @alibabacruisers, @Wonky, @SailingCableBeach, @WoorimBeachLady and everyone who has shared recent photos and descriptions. Bon voyage for QE's next segment back to Australia starting this evening, or safe travels home if you are disembarking today.

@NE John's recent contributions of Atlantic City NJ and Gloucester MA are ports 636 and 637 in the seen list, according to my count. This brings the US port total to 60, just behind the UK at 61. Still unseen Cunard ports in the US are Molokai and Kahului HI, Galveston TX, and Wilmington NC. Any travel plans to these locations for anyone?

Wow - I was looking in entirely the wrong part of the world. I fell down the rabbit hole of QE and QV's recent port calls in Europe and the Middle East, trying all sorts of places in the North Sea, Baltic, Channel, Med, Red Sea, etc. The answer is Kanazawa, Japan. The domed structure is the Ohno Karakuri Memorial Museum. http://www.ohno-karakuri.jp/eng/ A great challenge, thanks @bluemarble!!

Great sunrises! Thanks for getting up early to photograph them. Here is our final morning earlier this week with the border collie grand-dogs on the Gold Coast.

I'm still lost! It shouldn't be so hard - there's so many good clues with the dome, storage tanks, bridge, blue barges with red and white poles, breakwater, etc etc. But I got nothin'

Well, I'm afraid I admit defeat. I found some potential matches to the dome structure, but none was located in any seaport...

Does Cunard allow casual bookings by passengers of the Connexions conference rooms for an hour or two? (On QE/QV, located off the grand lobby on deck 1, on QM2 forward on deck 2) I think the WiFi might be good in these rooms, and someone needing to make a video call could do so in privacy.

Our QE San Francisco to Barcelona voyage in August had three CWC internet allotments (and diamond alternative dining credits). First was SF to Ft Lauderdale. Second Ft Lauderdale to Barcelona, and a third for the last week around the western Med finishing in Barcelona again. The voyage was all on one booking and voyage number. I was semi-expecting there would be two allotments, based on Cruise Critic reports from the previous year, so the third tranche was an unexpected bonus. How Cunard resets CWC credits is a mysterious black box. There are occasions when you'd think it should reset but doesn't, and others where it is the other way around.

Excellent that should be a good approach. My phone doesn't enable that.

Your mobile may be different, but mine cannot receive a WiFi connection (from the ship) and broadcast a WiFi hotspot at the same time. I can and often do send a WiFi hotspot from a mobile data connection (eg a local or roaming SIM when in port). And I can use a USB cable to tether a laptop or tablet from WiFi or mobile data. I should be able to Bluetooth from WiFi or mobile data but as mentioned that doesn't work for me for some reason.

Yes, all correct @Underwatr. Just a few additional items to help stretch the CWC benefit: The daily option runs 24 hours from the time of purchase. So you can do say noon one day to noon the next, and get a few hours of connection over two days at the price of one day. There will be a purchase option for multiple devices at a higher price. This refers to multiple simultaneously connected devices. You can use multiple devices at the single device rate as long as you log off one device before connecting the next. Tethering a connected mobile to a laptop also works at the single device price. Supposedly connecting another mobile or tablet via bluetooth also works, although I've never managed to get this to run successfully. My bluetooth disconnects very shortly after a connection. The per-voyage price decreases progressively over the course of a voyage as the number of days remaining decline. Using local or roaming mobile SIMs when in port is a great option, saving ship internet for sea days. If you are close enough to shore you can also sometimes get a few bars of mobile coverage if you go outside to a high deck. For me, the standard connection speed is adequate, as I only do email and web browsing.

I presume "5 November" and "this guy" are references to Guy Fawkes night. But I'm afraid I don't recognise the port.

No - the Captain/Commodore 6/12 bottle collection wine package is different from the per-day alcohol drinks package. Interesting idea, though.

This is an area of the world I've never been to either, so I'm very curious to see through your camera. I don't know if I did things correctly, but the approach I fell into on our SF to Barcelona voyage was to post sea day sunrises in the sunrise thread, and port day photos in the QE location thread. @Host Hattie may have some further suggestions. Appreciate you taking the time to share your adventures!

Wow - an extremely impressive effort, thanks @bluemarble! Yes, this is the "manual" comparison I was thinking would occupy the better part of a rainy day to download and line up the various questions in an Excel table. I was semi-confident that I could figure a way to automate the process using PowerBI's text analytics -- I use that software to run my "Where in the World" model -- although I was a little concerned that British/US spelling differences and minor syntax differences might cause some false outcomes and that the cleanup might occupy as much time as the manual approach. It does appear that there are a few duplications in the Australia questions (as a quick example, rows 245/246 asking about cots or rows 252/253 asking about airport hotel bookings), But for the most part the Australia FAQ looks like just a longer and more comprehensive set of questions. Very interesting, and thanks again!

Thanks for the recent photos, @alibabacruisers. Making the free internet allotment last for a long voyage is much more challenging with the 24-hour block structure. The technique of doing midday-to-midday purchases, so that you have the afternoon of one day and the morning of the next, helps somewhat. As does sharing logins so that two people's allotments can be used consecutively rather than simultaneously. But the challenge remains. I really wish Cunard would introduce a 2 or 4 hour pricing option for say $5. That would greatly help to extend the diamond credit for the duration of a longer voyage. I used a portion of my early morning walks on our recent QE trip to record the locations of QE's hallway access points. See post #24 and #26 of the "QM2 Guide to Wi-Fi Access Point Locations for Passenger Cabins" sticky thread. Thanks again for your reports on your journey!!

A question running through my mind is what all these additional questions in the Australia FAQ could be? Surely Cunard IT is not equal to the task of actually counting the incidences of all the questions posed in incoming customer contacts, setting some arbitrary definition of how many are needed to qualify as "frequently", and then publishing both these questions and their answers for each geography? Downloading and manually comparing the questions contained in each geo's site would be rather tedious, and require a particularly rainy day to justify the effort. I'll try to think of an automated way to compare the text.

FAQs are back on the Australia site.

Unfortunately I'm not on a Cunard ship for sunrise today... But we are on Queensland's Gold Coast this week and next, petsitting for our two border collie grand-dogs. A wonderful sunrise this morning over the Pacific.

I so miss being on QE for sunrises!! Thanks for the photos.

My thought exactly! Sunrise when below the equator.