exlondoner

The tower would be spectacularly beautiful even if it didn’t lean. Even in Venice as here, where there are zillions of tourists, if you take two turnings away from St. Marks Square down an unpromising ally, you can find yourself in a pleasant campo, devoid of tourists but with a nice cafe to sit outside. It is one of the strange things about Italy.

I have never attempted to use the coffee machine in the room. I think I did boil the kettle once or twice, but really not often.

All true. At its most basic, if someone is going to spend tedious time on the phone to Cunard to sort things, I should much prefer it was a TA, who is paid for it it, than I, who is not.

Even with all the crowds, Pisa is a lovely place to visit. I don’t do spiral staircases and am not good with heights, so we have a series of pictures of me sitting at the bottom of various edifices, taken by my husband from the top. Pisa is one of the earlier ones, taken before it was slightly straightened.

And the middle of the ship is much quieter in bad weather than the stern which tends to rattle.

I should think a Cunard audience might find it hilarious, all the time enjoying the schadenfreude.

I see in the papers today, that the supermarket Sainsbury’s is going to start selling pineapples without crowns. This will make it much harder to tell which way up they are. Don’t know how this might affect things for some of your fellow passengers.

Hmmm. They read on Cunard. A friend of mine is just about to have his first book published, on life as a Concorde pilot. Then you get invited on Cunard to talk about it. Perhaps that would be the way to go, be an invited author.

That would be a super trip. For us too long to be away from home in the winter. I should spend my time worrying the pipes had frozen up or something. Perhaps you could make a fortune before then by publishing a best selling guide, called something like, ‘How to cruise’, based on your experiences.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6390345.stm 2007, and he was only 70. It was Carnival too.

Sorry. It was a while ago.

It had happy consequences for later visitors, who were left alone, just in case…

Is that brunch or lunch? I’ve lost track.

He did need consular assistance after that, mind you, as he was arrested.

I don’t know about that. Do you remember the elderly American a few years ago on a minibus trip in some rather violent South American country, who, when they were attacked by some muggers, was able to recall the training he had had in the Marine Corps sixty years before and strangle one of them with his bare hands?

Well, if nothing else, this proves your memory is far better than mine. 😀

This is from memory so may be slightly wrong but still. Another strange thing was the old leather information booklets in the cabins. Near the back was information for distressed nationals abroad. First was for the US, which took up two sides of paper. UK and other nationalities followed with two sides between them. Was it simply that US nationals were regarded as being more in need of assistance? I’m not sure what happens in the post-Covid booklets.

On my one Christmas voyage, on QV, I learnt that Qs 1+2 had full sized Christmas trees. I imagine you might not have been able to inventory those.

Exactly, British from a US perspective, slightly theme parkish.

It’s much more popular among the young. However, they were thwarted last night here by heavy rain, so any plans to go house to house terrorising people fell into abeyance. Next, we have Guy Fawkes Night, in a way worse, because it is noisy, and animals get scared.

Cunard, you remember, is a vaguely ‘British’ line, and Hallowe’en, thankfully, is not nearly such a big deal here, especially among the oldies who make up so many passengers. Really not a thing.

That’s rather what I thought.

Morning. Let me get this clear: breakfast, brunch, then lunch? I was just reading a review of your ship complaining how small the portions are. 😀

According to Google in 2021, the top three producers were Canada, Russia, and Ukraine. Oh dear.

Snaxty?