It was quite a long walk until we could finally join the Queen Mary 2 on her 183rd transatlantic crossing. Not being aware of a shuttle and not wanting to spend the money for a taxi we ended up dragging our luggage along the pier whilst looking at smarter passengers sitting in their shuttles.
After the check-in you step into a stunning artificial bubble of happiness. The 1200 crewmembers do everything to make the life of the 2600 passenger easier. Whatever you ask for, they are doing their best to provide it. Therefore you have all the time to relax and enjoy life on 14 different decks of sports facilities, shops, bars, lounges, 5 pools and no fewer than 10 restaurants. There is even a cinema, a casino and a theatre.
Every evening you get the program for the next day. The average passenger is 65+, white, American, English or German. Accordingly the program is designed.
You can start with a power deck walk at 8AM and finish with a ballroom dance in the disco. In between there are trivia’s, movies, shows, sports competitions, casino tournaments as well as lectures and classes. Very cool is that they invite for every cruise guest speakers covering a variety of topics. Since especially Sonam (see last blog) loves tours and lectures we visited a few of them. On our cruise we had among others a BBC journalist sharing news insights, a lieutenant general referring about the challenges and wars in the Middle East and a former diplomat lecturing about international relations.
Eating and drinking is a major topic on the ship. It is included in the price and if you want you can eat around the clock. Not only room service is available all the time, but there is also a buffet. Once the late night snack time is over at 4AM they start offering breakfast. Since we are both food lovers, it was a perfect match and we organized our day pretty much around the meals. Breakfast in the restaurant, either a little snack or a two-course menu for lunch, teatime with sandwiches and scones before ending the day with an excellent four-course menu. We tried to make up all this eating with sport but actually never succeeded.
The first days were cloudy and windy and we started to believe that this is the usual weather for a crossing and all the catalogue pictures were made at Caribbean cruises. The waves were slight to rough, on one day even up to 4 meters, which forced us to stay in bed. All the talks that big ships do not vary or need at least monster waves to start are NOT true. They do vary nearly all the time and so you end up walking like a drunken sailor along the hallways – good for all the drunk people as nobody can tell the varies’ origin. After those first days the sun started suddenly to shine and the sea got very quite. The catalogue pictures were not photoshopped! It is unbelievable how quite the Atlantic can be. It was calmer than the lake of Zürich.
Having good weather and a flat sea is not only good for getting tanned it also great to spot animals. No matter how amazing the facilities, the food, the people and the services are; nothing can compare with the feeling when you see dolphins and whales near your ship. Sonam turned into an addicted whale spotter and promised that these were certainly not the last whales seen on our trip.
The last day was also the most remarkable one. The entrance to New York made us realize, after nearly forgetting it, how big the ship actually is. All the other vessels and tankers seem suddenly very tiny. Standing on the deck like the early immigrants we saw the skyline coming closer, spotted the State of Liberty and got excited to explore the big apple.
We had a great time on QM2. We will not hop on the next cruise line in the next months but for sure another time.
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