Q. Eliz Q326N - Eastern Med Review 10/2013

[rhkennerly]

dropped a few lines over here @ CC cruise Review:

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=244944

 

Great trip, overall.

 

Rick

[Keith1010]

Rick, thanks for sharing this.

 

Keith

[rhkennerly]

btw, here's a link to all our pix Collection: Cunard Queen Elizabeth Mediterranean Cruise http://ow.ly/rpL40

 

venice, dubrovnik, corfu, athens, ephesus, rhodes, santorini, sicily, amalfi, positano, pompeii, rome. Queen Elizabeth.

 

 

dropped a few lines over here @ CC cruise Review:

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=244944

 

Great trip, overall.

 

Rick

[Jules 1970]

Yeah, I firstly look at the ports of call, but my traveling companion likes Cunard Experience.

Love the Lido, great variety of Food :)

Also your Photos are Good too :)

[rhkennerly]

maybe I'm not discerning enough, but Cunard didn't seem noticeably more "posh" than Celebrity, Royal Caribbean, or Princess. Certainly, Celebrity puts much more effort into the interiors of the Millennium and Solstice class ships than Cunard did in the QE.

 

Really, the ship doesn't matter much on an itinerary like the Med. The ship transports you while you sleep and feeds you when you're awake. There's not much time for anything else, except queuing up for the laundry on days at sea or on days you weren't ashore all day and reapplying the plasters on your feet.

 

I thought there would be some interesting lectures from the Oxford or Cambridge crowd on antiquities or history or something, like you find on the QM TAs. Thought that was a Cunard hallmark.

 

Frankly, I would have been just as comfortable and more mentally stimulated bunking in on a semester at sea. http://www.semesteratsea.org/our-ship/

 

But "She, who must be obeyed," is big on the Cunard Experience. I think she was more let down by the QE than I was.

[candhu18]

My wife and I have just returned from a cruise on the QE. I have added a few observations. Your photographs have brought back excellent memories, many thanks for that. Unlike yourself we enjoyed the MDR. Having sailed on the Eclipse a couple of months ago, I found the QE dinners much better, we never went to the Lido for evening meal. Our waiters were also excellent and entertaining unlike our Eclipse experience. The Eclipse is undoubtedly a beautiful ship and tends to look even nicer when on the drinks package. The Eclipse also had the better entertainment package thanks to its cruise director Sue Denning. Again unlike yourself I thoroughly enjoyed the 4 lectures by Mike Harvey. The Queens Room is beautiful and a major asset not found on other cruise lines, we even had a go at the dancing classes led by Eugene and Daria. The scones at afternoon tea were to die for, far ahead of Celebrity's offerings. Personally I preferred the aspect ratio of our stateroom on the QE. The Eclipse is narrower and longer with a smaller balcony. The Eclipse's shower room is better, however I didn't have any problems with the shower curtain on the QE. Again many thanks for the excellent photographs.

Edited December 3, 2013 by candhu18

[Oahucruiser]

Great photos and nice review of our favorite Cunard ship! Thanks!

[Whitemarsh]

btw, here's a link to all our pix Collection: Cunard Queen Elizabeth Mediterranean Cruise http://ow.ly/rpL40

 

venice, dubrovnik, corfu, athens, ephesus, rhodes, santorini, sicily, amalfi, positano, pompeii, rome. Queen Elizabeth.

 

Loved the photos of the ship, thanks for sharing them.

[rhkennerly]

Yeah, I firstly look at the ports of call, but my traveling companion likes Cunard Experience.

Love the Lido, great variety of Food :)

Also your Photos are Good too :)

Again unlike yourself I thoroughly enjoyed the 4 lectures by Mike Harvey. The Queens Room is beautiful and a major asset not found on other cruise lines, we even had a go at the dancing classes led by Eugene and Daria.

 

Harvey was okay, think I made two sessions. I was just expecting a more academic set of lectures on Cunard geared toward the itinerary.

 

Of course I feel it important to point out (before we go too much further down this commenting rathole) I started and ended my review with "excellent". The rest is just nitpicking (although the SwissAir and Venice luggage items should be, if not warnings, at least something to consider for future travelers as well as a note to the line).

 

And as I said, we picked the cruise by time and ports, not the ship. If this were one of those lazy Caribbean trips where we lolled around the ship all day and seldom disembark (once you've seen one scruffy little Caribbean island, you've seen them all. We used to be stationed in Puerto Rico and grabbed several last minute "fills" out of San Juan.), I'd probably lobby for one of the X boats myself.

[rhkennerly]

Loved the photos of the ship, thanks for sharing them.

 

Glad you enjoyed the pix.

 

I try to systematically photo document all the ships we sail on. It was a bit harder on this trip because we were ashore more and on days at sea the ship was pretty crowded and I was dead tired.

 

All the past cruises are all on the site under "sets." Since Flickr gives you 1TB of storage, I'm kind of archiving our collections there in case of fire here at the house.

Edited December 4, 2013 by rhkennerly

[Scrapnana]

Wonderful photos of QE! Thanks for posting them.

[rhkennerly]

BTW: I had a new camera with GPS. So this is my first attempt at mapping the pix.

 

Here's a Google map of Venice, Italy, with our pix in it mapped to the correct location. The pix were over several days.

 

The pix along the bottom was from the ship as the QE was departing.

 

http://ow.ly/rsciu

 

I'm doing the of the stops now.

[Jules 1970]

Again unlike yourself I thoroughly enjoyed the 4 lectures by Mike Harvey.

 

Yes, like yourself I enjoy the Enrichment programs presented by Cunard. Unfortunately I didn't get to see Mike (The Hypnotist) Harvey.

But on one occasion I attended a lecture given by Lord Bob (Photo below)

 

 

 

[rhkennerly]

don't get the reference. chautauqua society?