I’ve been putting off writing my account of our crossing of the Atlantic aboard Queen Mary 2 as I’m not convinced it will be terribly interesting. The greatest pleasure of the crossing was the fact that we did very little for seven days, so my blog post would be something along the following lines. Day… Continue reading
Whenever people talk about travel, there’s always a danger of sounding smug. In my post yesterday, I casually tossed off the names places I could visit and on reflection it makes me sound quite blasé about travelling. But I’m not. As I sit here in my hotel room in Washington D.C. (at 6 a.m., I might add, because I can’t sleep) I appreciate how privileged I am to be able to take long vacations, a luxury not afforded to all. And it is a luxury that I don’t take for granted, or believe I’m entitled to, or one that makes me any better than anyone else. Just luckier. Because of that, I take a great deal of pleasure in my trips and relish the sites I see and the food I eat along the way and like to share my pleasure and joy. Some may interpret this as crowing when in fact it’s awe and amazement at the wonderful things I get to experience and see and eat.
For example, sailing on the Queen Mary is something I never thought I would do. It seems something that is done by people much older and much richer than I. But it was affordable, and the crossing was booked. It was one of those summer plans which seemed impossible to envisage. We booked it about eight months before departure, and had a few other trips to be excited about first: Christmas in Thailand; Chinese New Year break in California; and a student exchange trip to New York. These were all fabulous and memorable trips in themselves, of course, but the biggie had to be crossing the mighty Atlantic in an ocean liner. A trip on the Queen Mary is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Well, for us, probably. For some on board it seems a regular occurrence.
After spending one night aboard Queen Mary 2, my first impressions were good ones. It seems like a lovely way to sleep: the slight rocking of the ocean and the gentle thrum of the engines are both quite comforting. Our bodies were still on China time, however, so by 4am I was awake. But that ended up being a good thing as I was able to enjoy the sunrise over the ocean, which was quite an experience. The sky was a little cloudy but there were plenty of blue bits and the sea was, thankfully, calm.
The embarkation process was a lot smoother than I had anticipated. No queuing was involved and my sister was able to drive straight into the shed where a porter took our luggage. We were checked in immediately and in no time at all we were in our cabin. Whilst it’s compact, it’s not quite as small as I had thought and there’s plenty of storage space. We unpacked, drank the bottle of champagne that awaited us and went for a wander around.
The ship itself is as one would imagine, and you feel as if you are in a hotel, of course. Lots of art deco features echoing the golden era of transatlantic crossings. After some lunch in the buffet style Kings Court – some reasonable roast beef with Yorkshire puddings – we continued our explorations whilst waiting for our emergency drill before departure. At the whistle, we duly returned to our cabins, collected our life vests as instructed, and made our way to our muster point. Bear in mind that at this point, we are still moored. On an ocean liner undertaking a transatlantic crossing, thoughts of the Titanic are never far away so it was good to know that we did all have our own life jackets. The front of the ship – or bow in boat parlance (in which I’m obviously not fluent) – the very front, was not accessible thereby limiting the opportunities for the Jack and Rose pose.
We finally pulled away from the dock at Southampton but it was hardly the departures of old. There were no streamers, no waving crowds. Just three people in orange jackets, one of whom was responsible for removing the ropes from the quay. They did wave very enthusiastically though. There was, however, quite a party atmosphere on the boat, with a band playing on the rear pool terrace and lots of champagne being drunk. There was an air of excitement. I did find the rendition of Rod Stewart’s “We Are Sailing” someone cheesy, though, it has to be said.
And we were off!
It’s one of the big decisions that international teachers have to face each year: where to go for the summer.
If, like me, your partner is a teaching partner, that’s at least one of the decisions made as you will probably go together. But what if, also like me, you and your partner come from different countries? Visiting family and friends at ‘home’ then becomes problematic – particularly if you don’t really have a home any more because you have been overseas for so long. With an aging mother, I feel I should visit as much as I can – which is not hard as my mother (who would be horrified at the epithet “an aging mother”) – is fun to be with. But as much as I love her, as does my husband, spending seven weeks with her is not feasible. Visiting my husband’s and my family and friends in Australia would mean spending seven weeks in winter, not summer. We have done that in the past, but prefer to go to Australia for Christmas to enjoy the summer; particularly now we are in a city that is wet and cold in winter.
And we then find ourselves completely spoilt for choice. Yes, I know, first world problems. Possibilities this year included Delhi, Jaipur, and the Golden Triangle, and seeing the Taj Mahal. We then toyed with the idea of northern Australia, in particular the Kimberleys in Western Australia, where neither of us have been, and Darwin. These areas are best visited in the southern hemisphere winter. We chatted, we explored, we got excited. But we didn’t come to a decision.
We have often discussed taking a cruise, something I think everyone should experience once in their life, if possible. I have always fancied taking a Baltic cruise, particularly one which takes in St. Petersburg so that I can tick another thing off the bucket list: a visit to the Hermitage museum. Many of the cruises we looked at, however, were exactly what I don’t want in a cruise: a few hours in port only, and a boat which holds twice the population of the town in which we lived before leaving Australia. Finally we settled on a crossing, not a cruise, and managed to tick something off my husband’s bucket list in the process.
So, on June 14, the day after we flew into the UK from China at the start of our holiday, we embarked Queen Mary 2 to commence our transatlantic crossing from Southampton to New York.
And that was just the beginning of the adventure.
