D&N

Just over 5 months.

Introducing Ursel, who has been with us since Saturday afternoon. She's still a bit frightened by all the town noises. She was raised at over 1000 metres altitude in countryside. She is exploring extensively when not catching up on her beauty sleep. She's trying desperately to get Carmel to like her. The relationship is progressing but I think it may take another couple of days yet. We have no travel plans. The case is surplus to our needs and awaits being moved to the cave.

Good point, but what a waste of a crossing! 🤣 edit: But if that's the case there are other threads discussing "Luggage Forward"? They might be able to get someone at home to have a case collected to be delivered to ship at Southampton.

Thank you for reminding me. That's another thing I used internet for. Downloading daily paper to phone on PressReader. I need to remember for internet threads.

I don't recall the former but my parents, dad was a Methodist minister, listened to Round the Horne each week. There was an occasional groan from them, I obviously didn't get the jokes or I'd probably remember some. They must have considered it amusing or wouldn't have listened.

Last time I wore; black, blue, silver, and red & gold teddy bears. Next time I might be trying to match my wife's outfit each night. We'll decide once we see them on.

Not sure what you mean by early summer? Technically summer starts on June 21st. You don't specify where you are going in Europe or where you plan to eat in the evenings. We went to dinner at a beach side restaurant at Théoule-sur-Mer on June 17th. I wore a dark lightweight wool suit, and my wife a skirt and top. Leaving home at 5.30pm for the almost 2 hour trip I carried the jacket and wore it for the slightly shorter trip home. With the addition of a tie for me our outfits would have been fine for any evening on QM2. We're going to a small Chef-Patron restaurant locally next Sunday for lunch and my wife will be wearing the dress she wore to Black & White night when we were on QM2. The forecast is strong sunshine 31C feeling like 40C. I'll probably wear linen trousers and open neck shirt. Yes you can dress down to eat out in Europe but it's not compulsory. Faced with your situation we would pack our lightest formal wear, selecting items that could be worn on the land trip as well. I might consider taking cheap tee-shirts with me for day wear, picking up more on the trip at budget outlets like Primark or C&A and putting the dirty ones I'd finished with in the hotel room bin. Sneakers can be worn for onboard day wear and the land trip. Consider buying a pair of gents black dance shoes. You don't need to dance in them but all the floors on QM2 are usually dry. Dance shoes have a soft pliable sole and are very light, and could be worn every night on board. Effectively I would ask myself the reverse question. What's the minimum I can get away with for the land trip? We ended up doing a round trip last year but originally planned (scuppered by covid) to sail west, have a week in NY and then sail east. Our plan was our gym sneakers for onboard would be daywear in NY and we'd have a few tee-shirts and light chinos and jeggings that might not get worn on QM2. And just because I like to brighten things up, here we are after the meal at Théoule. The background isn't in great focus (it's not supposed to be), but I think you can see that the other diners weren't really dressed down either.

I'm surprised how much availability there is on that. If I really wanted to be on a sailing and have full choice of cabins I would be booking on release date. In Britannia Balcony, which seems to have the OBC you quote, I'd want deck 8 forward, and I only see 3 cabins available in that section. I prefer forward to aft, and to be as high up as possible. The midships cabins have a supplement that I would rather spend on wine. You'll probably get other opinions but I wouldn't take the risk unless you're happy to have a reduced choice.

I've thought that may be the key for a while. I asked for a breakdown of what we had and was told it wasn't available. You would think for accounting purposes it must be kept somewhere. But as long as nobody gets more than 15 drinks within price and measure limits per day it's not likely to be questioned. Many staff note or memorise card details. There's probably scope to be creative with unused entitlements.

When I was young it was the Home Service and the Light Program. I think The Clitheroe Kid was Sunday afternoons. I was expected to keep quiet during Alistair Cooke's Letter From America. Radio 4 was apparently launched in 1967. In more recent times she was bedridden and we would visit and she would be moaning about cricket and being expected to listen to programs on FM or DAB. But her wanting to listen to radio wasn't a bad thing as we didn't really share the same opinions on anything so it saved us getting into arguments.

Not a sport I follow. My mother hated it. She wasn't remotely interested in participating in sports or structured exercise. But the real issue was that when there was a test on, the BBC would replace all her beloved Radio 4 programs with cricket!

We'll see how they look when I try them with tux and alongside my wife's red gown, which won't be before October as they're being delivered to friends to bring over with them. When I looked up the MCC tie, which I hadn't seen before, I realised that I might also be mistaken for a patriotic German or Belgian as well! 😀 They are certainly a bit garish but I think they are closest to theme that I've come across, and the supplier does have lots of more understated products.

It's not the sort of wine I would buy by the bottle, perfectly acceptable for refreshment (along with a much greater volume of water) when we're up dancing for 3 or 4 hours. VIVINO feedback only rates the 2015 & 2016 vintages due to lack of comments on the others, but the 2015 edges it: https://www.vivino.com/FR/fr/la-croix-bordeaux-vermentino-sauvignon-blanc/w/1948567?year=2015 But if you prefer it young and fresh I would check what vintage they are serving before ordering.

They're effectively wines that are sold here as non vintage. We buy similar in 3L & 5L boxes. They are surprisingly robust and will be drinkable for many years provided they are stored properly. We certainly had all the Cunard wines last year but I can't remember the vintages that were served. I don't think they were particularly recent. The one I can confirm is the Grenache/Syrah/Mourvèdre; a friend had arranged a cabin gift of one, which we brought home since we were on drinks package. It was the 2017 vintage in June 2022 and shows 2018 in that list. They are all effectively glugging wines, fine for refreshment. Edit: You can't copy/paste because the PDF is secured.

We're having a few days "canicule" (heatwave) just now, where temperatures never drop below 20C at any time of day. Indoors isn't too bad as there is a breeze off the sea. My wife returned from her walk and informed that a small cruise ship was anchored off Antibes. Marine Traffic are showing EUROPA 2 there today. Transponder programming must be mixed up between the ship and a tender. It appears to have been in the marina part of Port Vauban and may have mounted the quay at the customs post 🤣 I'm sure some of you, such as @bluemarble may find the past track mildly amusing.

Do you have some examples of what you mean?

Not sure the latest one is there or not. There was an update last August to the one I photographed: https://www.cunard.com/content/dam/cunard/my-voyage/pdfs/qm/qm_wine_list_aug_2022a.pdf

I did think about keeping this to myself, however since the supplier was good enough to re-order an out of stock pattern of tie at my request, and also agreed to order bow ties and pocket squares in the same pattern, it's only fair that I make their availability known to others that might be interested. It's a UK company called TIESPLANET.COM https://www.tiesplanet.com/ I have spoken to the folk there a couple of times and had order delivered to a Scottish address before a wedding we attended in April. The products were of decent quality for the price. I only requested pre-tied bow ties, there are no self tie versions of this pattern. I believe they've recently stopped delivery to Europe due to Royal Mail problems but deliver to USA, Australia and New Zealand as well as UK. Here are links to the sample pics:

There is merit in booking everything through Cunard from the UK as the whole lot should be covered by ABTA. However the prices I've seen Cunard quote for New York were not close to being competitive. I agree with "lissie". Look for deals that require no upfront payment and can be cancelled without fee 24 or 48 hours before stay on booking.com or similar. Your risk is then limited to the period after you start to travel.

And today's sunrise. My usual view; I thought the sky looked particularly interesting this morning.

This was a sunset in Bay of Biscay, on Sunday July 7th or 14th 1996 from Langan's Brasserie on P&O Ferries Pride of Bilbao. Excuse the quality, it's a scan of a not very good 35mm print.

I did say, what we buy here. Hypermarkets and many supermarkets have instore bakeries that produce scores of different breads. Some of the small independent artisan bakeries are wonderful. One of our favourites has this list: https://www.facebook.com/368459773652819/photos/pb.100063476623209.-2207520000./923589248139866/?type=3&locale=fr_FR And we particularly like their "Sportif": https://www.facebook.com/368459773652819/photos/pb.100063476623209.-2207520000./715295478969245/?type=3&locale=fr_FR

We're in the minority camp that prefer smaller servings. We rarely plate more than 300 grams for our main course and we don't want meat or fish to account for more than half of that. We also have bread, fruit and ice cream with that, plus cheese a few days a week. We generally found the servings to be about right, and all our meat, fish and poultry was of decent quality and cooked to our liking. We did make it quite clear to waiters that we didn't want huge servings and would order something else if we were still hungry The dauphinoise potatoes were the biggest disappointment, dry and industrial. What we make here is swimming in cream. Needless to say we don't make it often, perhaps Cunard's is the healthy version! The bread rolls are also a bit boring compared to the variety of breads we buy here.

Firstly a Gala Evening simply requires a dinner suit or lounge suit including a suitable shirt and tie, and shoes. You could wear a white dinner jacket to any of them. I'm not sure how authentic it would be if you wanted to follow a Roaring 20s theme, or whether participants at a Venetian Ball would have worn one. Personally I think black has a more formal look to it, although I did see a couple of guys wearing very smart slate grey dinner suits. I tend to wear my cream dinner jacket on nights that are not officially gala nights. We usually dress beyond the minimum advised code on non gala nights.

Have a great voyage! Best to run an Ookla speed test early in the voyage and check it mentions "Starlink" under detailed result. If it says "Equinix" it's probably not been changed although the hardware was seen being installed. A test run on the recent Med cruise after the installation was still showing Equinix.