On Board the Queen Mary 2

Sail-away
A split of champagne awaited us in our stateroom on the Queen Mary 2, along with a view of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. We toasted with the champagne and reported for our mandatory safety muster.
Then we found deck chairs — classic polished teak with blue cushions — and reclined to enjoy the sail-away from New York. The sun was shining, and we watched as the ship slipped past the Statue of Liberty, Staten Island and under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. By the time New York was behind us, and we returned to our stateroom to finish off that split of champagne, our luggage had arrived, but it was too late to unpack and dress for the first dinner seating.
So, like all good ship passengers, we headed for the buffet. We picked up salads and were ready to look at main courses when I saw the cheeseboard. That was it for me. Stilton, Emmental, Cambozola, Brie, Edam. Jarlsberg, Gouda. The steward filled a plate, added a few slices of French bread and some chutney and I had my dinner.
We strolled around the promenade deck and then retired to our stateroom, where we relaxed on the balcony, watched the stars, and retired early. We slept for nearly 10 hours.



Our first full day at sea Gary found the bridge lessons and games. He convinced me to go to the beginners’ lesson, and when that proved too basic, I stayed for the intermediate lesson — where I quickly discovered I was in over my head. But, while he played in a duplicate bridge game, I played in the social bridge game and met several people.
The captain of the ship has reminded us that we are not on a cruise, but on a “voyage” or “crossing.” We also, he tells us, are on an ocean liner, not a cruise ship.

Each day he tells us what we are passing near, through or over — the longest mountain range on earth, at places a mile in elevation, but hidden beneath the Atlantic; deep fissures also hidden beneath the Atlantic; “near” (several hundred nautical miles distant) obscure islands we have never heard of before. On Thursday he told us we were the farthest from any land mass that we would be during the entire voyage — the nearest land mass was in the Azores. On Tuesday the captain advised us that at 9 pm we would pass near — 200 meters north — the site where the Titanic lies. My first thought was why tell us that, followed immediately by questioning why we were traveling north of where the Titanic went down instead of south to avoid those icebergs. I am grateful we are traveling in August and not December — or April.
Fish
I love fish. To eat. And the breakfast buffet on the QM2 is my perfect place. (We have not been awakening early enough to go to breakfast in the dining room.)

Gary, whether home or away, must have his eggs for breakfast, but I have decided fish is the perfect breakfast. Here I eat, every morning, smoked trout, herring, herring in tomato sauce, herring in mustard sauce, smoked salmon, baked haddock, baked cod and/or kippers. A couple wedges of Camembert and a slice of freshly baked French bread, and I am set (until lunch of course because we are on a ship and there is always more food). On good days there is fish for lunch, curried fish, baked fish, smoked fish.
At dinner there is more fish — grilled sea bass (excellent even in the buffet), scallops, more smoked salmon and trout, more baked cod, baked turbot and sushi and sashimi. (I have decided it is better to eat sushi on the first two days of a sea voyage which has no port stops rather than the last two as I have not seen anyone with a line over the side catching that sushi fish.) Lobster tail on formal or “gala” evenings. This is a fish-lover’s heaven.
Of course, there are other things to eat. I sample bites of Gary’s duck or beef Wellington; I have gone to tea to sample delicate sandwiches, petit fours ands scones and I even paid extra one day for the Godiva chocolate tea — hazelnut chocolate cake (of which I ate less than half — not because it lacked flavor, but because it was too rich to eat more — but Gary got the rest in our stateroom) served with Godiva chocolate ice cream, Godiva white chocolate scone with clotted cream and lime marmalade and two Godiva truffles — which are still in the box, because, again, it was all too rich for even this chocolate lover.
Fish and chips and chicken tikka marsala in the pub are great and each night before dinner we visit a different lounge and I enjoy a glass of prosecco, while Gary has a beer or martini.
The World is Small
We have met several people on this ship. My first day at a social bridge game, I played with a woman from Florida and two people from London, Ontario, Canada, who met at the bridge table too. Another day I played with an American woman who has lived in Spain for 45 years and a couple from South Africa who now live in London.
At tea I sat with two women who met years ago on a cruise and now travel together — one from Austin, Texas, and the other from Atlanta, Georgia. They invited us to join them on an annual music cruise out of Fort Lauderdale every January.

I joined up with a couple and their teen-aged son for a pub quiz team. They are British but have been running a bed and breakfast in Vermont for the past 15 years. They are moving back to England. I asked why, and they said that their children were about to begin high school and they must attend high school in Great Britain to get British tuition prices for university — and those prices are significantly less than U.S. university costs. When I asked why they decided to make their moving trip on the QM2, they advised that between the four of them they had 26 suitcases and could not take them on a plane. “We pulled up to the port with a U-Haul!” They told me they have managed to fit all 26 pieces in their two staterooms.
On his second day of duplicate bridge, Gary joined me after the game and said, “I met someone who knows you.”
“Who knows me? How could anyone here know me?”
Well, someone here does. A retired attorney from San Bernardino who now lives in the Coachella Valley, Neil Stern — who also happens to be a top-flight duplicate bridge player and instructor.
Neil and his wife, Diane, spent a few days in New York and are sailing to Southampton, and then sailing back to New York on the return crossing. We have shared dinners and drinks together, played a bit of social bridge (games in which I very obviously have not learned anything from my classes) and have enjoyed one another’s conversation and company. Gary and Neil have teamed up for the daily duplicate bridge tournaments and have come in first place. We look forward to seeing them again — next year — in Southern California.
The Weather
I want rain. I long for rain. Partly because we see so little of it in Southern California, but partly because it would force me to attend more activities offered on this voyage.
Every day there are lectures, classes, activities. Japanese classes, bridge classes, history lectures, art lectures (Monet’s gardens, J.W. Turner, Michelangelo), tango lessons, fencing classes, classes on writing a novel, ballroom dancing lessons, music lessons, daily movies, concerts (Puccini, Mozart), performances, planetarium shows. Lecturers include David Sipress, a cartoonist for The New Yorker; Lord Astor; an historian from Cambridge, an Italian art historian, and others. There are movies every day, and then those same movies play continuously for 24 hours on the ship television stations.

But, while the mornings dawn with fog, by 8:30 am the sun is shining brightly, the sea is calm, and the temperatures are mild (it has not once dropped below 60 degrees). And those deck chairs are so inviting.
I bought scopolamine patches but have not needed a one — one day there were swells of maybe eight to 10 feet for a few hours, but other than that it is as if we have been on a lake. The only swells are those created by the wake of this ship. The captain says this has been the smoothest sailing of the entire year.
Every morning after my fish breakfast I tell myself I will go to a lecture or film or something, but then I walk on deck and the sun is warm and the ocean stretches to the horizon, so I recline in one of those lovely polished teak chairs with the blue cushion, pull out my book, and spend the morning alternately reading and napping. It seems a shame not to take advantage of the opportunity for learning and enrichment, but more of a shame not to take advantage of the sunshine, the sea and those deck chairs.
We did go to a planetarium show one afternoon, but immediately repaired to the deck chairs afterwards. We have gone to recitals in the evening by a harpist, guitarist, string quartet, pianist, and both a traditional and Dixieland jazz group. We attended two of the evening theater shows. But often, after a day in the sun, we are ready to retire early — dinner, an evening stroll on the deck or perhaps a digestivo in one of the lounges — and we are ready for reading in bed and lights out.

