The noontime change to advance the clocks has been quite
effective and we really like it. But staying up so late for the Mike Doyle show
took its toll and we didn’t get up and get going until after 8am. The outside
temperatures are down to around 60 degrees and it was somewhat windy on one
side of the ship for our walk. We still managed to do about 40 minutes walking
(Bob had to bug out to get planetarium show tickets at 9am), but we were able
to get our walk in.
Breakfast was in the dining room again. It’s surprising how
crowded the dining room is for both breakfast and lunch. We ae so used to
Crystal where the number of people using the dining room for breakfast and
lunch is very minimal. That could be because this ship has roughly 3 times the
passengers or maybe the trough on Crystal is so good in terms of food quality
and dining enjoyment (Crystal makes a good use of partitions and table
arrangements to make it not feel like a giant cafeteria). The QM2 has many
rooms for eating, but many of them are fairly large making it feel more
cafeteria-like.
We were running late after breakfast and so headed to Illuminations
to hear Captain Jonathan Holloway’s second talk. This was titled “Submarine
Rescue.” He talked about how he was the Naval attaché to Russia in 2002 and how
he helped arrange the rescue of a Russian mini-sub that became entangled in
some nets off the coast of Kamchatka. It was a fascinating story. That was
followed in the Royal Court Theatre with John McCarthy’s second talk on his
captivity story in Lebanon.
We returned to our stateroom at noon to turn our clocks
forward for the third time an hour. iPhones allow you to manually set the time
zone, but they do it by location, We were having a very hard time finding some
location that it knew of that was in this time zone. Julie eventually came on
the solution and so we changed it from Nuuk Greenland to Cape Verde. As we were
getting ready for the rest of the day, the Captain came on for his noon update.
The coolest factoid that he told us was that we are passing over the
mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a mountain range under the sea. This range is the
longest on earth at over 10,000 miles long and over 1,000 miles wide. We are
now over 1,900 nm from NYC and about 1,100 from Southampton.
Lunch was in the Kings Court. Julie has been hoping to get
some sticky toffee pudding, but has yet to see it. Today, Bob found some apple
cinnamon pudding and we both loved it.
The planetarium show was fast approaching, so we got in line
early (about 20 minutes early) and got to see the 22 minute show “Stars over
the Atlantic.” It was quite excellent and a true planetarium type of show.
This evening, they decided to flip flop the times for the
evening shows, so those of us on late seating had the first show at 7pm. It was
an encore performance by violinist Katerina Rossa where she played a whole new
set of music. In addition, the royal court players of singers and dancers did
about 15 minutes of singing and dancing with lots of feathers. We really like
this time format much better. Generally,
we are early diners, but only traditional late seating was available on this
cruise as we booked late. We struggle to
get our daytime meal timing right with dinner at 8:30 pm as well as to stay up
so late for the evening’s featured show which up until tonight begins at 10:30
pm.
Before dinner, we wandered by all of the bars on decks 2, 3,
and 7. They all had live music and were incredibly crowded. We did stop in the
Queens room to see what sequence dancing is (the dancers got in a big circle
and essentially danced around the circle with everyone doing roughly the same
dance steps). It was odd and interesting. It reminded us of line dancing except
in a circle.
Julie by a model of the ship.
Dinner was again in the Britannia dining room. Julie had
Prawn and Salmon Cake and Mixed Greens for appetizer and salad course. For her
entrée she had Shrimp with Lime Coconut Rice. Her dessert was Caramelized Pear
Tart. Julie joked that the cake looked a whole lot like a can of cat food, but
it was tasty if a bit weird. The Shrimp had Red Chili Oil and Toasted Garlic on
it and was excellent. She also loved the tart.
Bob had Potted Salt Beef for his appetizer and Savoy
Cabbage, Carrot, and Apple for his salad. He thought that the both were
excellent. He also had the shrimp entrée and for dessert tried the Riccotta
Lemon Curd Crème Brulee. He agreed that the shrimp was fantastic and the crème
brulee was different but very tasty.
After dinner, we wandered back to the Queens room to hear
the band Purple Haze play music through the decades. Then it was back to the
room for bed.
Today we walked 11,251 steps and 5.15 miles.
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