D&N

Many of their dresses are on SHEIN sites. Often cheaper and once you create an account you should find discount vouchers. We rarely buy without at least 20% off.

We're just back from a lovely meal at our local Chinese, 7 mins walk from our home. It was about 5C outside but felt more like -5C! Shivered all the way home to join Carmel and her heater. As usual meal was amazing value, 3 really tasty courses, 2 bottles of a very good house Rosé and a litre of San Pellegrino for 99€.

Just to complete the trio, and an excuse for a cat picture. The EverPretty dress arrived yesterday. It's a perfect length for my wife's dancing heels. It's an opaque fabric and the skirt section is unlined. We'll need to test it out dancing around the living room to check whether any static is generated and if it needs a lining. We brought Tina out to model it. We lost her to a feline coronavirus in March 2014, which prompted the adoption of Carmel and her sister. Her colouring suits blue.

An update for anyone interested in Carmel ...... She's doing very well. Has had quite a good appetite for several months and got back to a normal weight around Christmas. We're now going to gradually try weaning her off the mind bending gel that gets rubbed in her ears. Hopefully her brain will remain trained to be hungry and eat, but we'll monitor her weight as we do so to make sure. We're a bit scared that continuing at current dosage might make her obese, although we can of course refuse to give her food if eating too much. This was her 12 days ago.

The red dress turned up today and the purple last Saturday. The overlay on the red dress is 3 layers of soft net without a hem. We will carefully trim them to the level of the under lay (which is hemmed) and that will make it safe to dance in. My wife finds it difficult to make "heel turns" in heels of over 3". The purple will be a candidate for a smart night on our next QM2 crossing, but will probably get used going to restaurants here. We got our cyber girls to model them for us....

We found these to be very useful: They hold my napkin to my tie/shirt as a bib if I'm eating a sauce dish while wearing a light Tux or shirt. We use them with our bungee cord washing line on the balcony, and when we realised my wife's gown was too long for her dance heels they held the hem up several inches. They travelled around with us every evening.

We've not been drinking them so often in the last few years. On Arcadia they refused to mix as requested and I spoke to the Food & Beverage Manager (or whatever his title was), who claimed he would instruct bars to serve as we requested. I don't recall it making things any easier. On QM2 I by chance came across a uniformed chap as I was queuing for the "Jubilee Street Party". His badge stated something like Hotel Services Director. I mentioned it to him and he wasn't at all helpful, stating that it was how Carnival Corp dictated they be served and that staff were held accountable for the quantities used. We just have Prosecco or Aperol Spritz instead. The 'correct' way of making them just tastes like contaminated champagne, cava or prosecco. I don't understand why anyone would use decent sparkling wine for mixing anyway. As I said, in most mainstream restaurants on the Cote d'Azur they use more crème de cassis. The content is a dark Ribena colour. But it's not something important to us so I won't be complaining about it.

Yes. Price of drink/bottle of wine etc plus 15% service charge less 20%. So a bottle of wine listed as: $68 was charged at $62.56. We took the package for 14 nights and wouldn't do so again. Purely from a cost point of view, there is no doubt that we saved money. But we normally drink wine with our meals, and the choice of wines available to us by the glass just wasn't wide enough, hence why I know how the 20% thing is calculated. There wasn't anything on the wine by glass list that would cope with a good meat dish, or a decent white Burgundy for fish and white meats. We were fine for lunch wines, aperitifs, wine that we drink supplemented by water while dancing every night and nightcaps, but the lack of choice of dinner wines was too much for us. We had Illy coffees, Tea Forté, Godiva Hot Chocolates and water with lunch, dinner and throughout our dance evenings. We were ok with being able to take a glass of dessert wine with or instead of a dessert. But the dinner wine issue was the killer. A couple at a table near us were also on package but they had different wine tastes and drank beer as well. They seemed quite happy with it.

Nora's last night dress was below knee Cornelli style from Phase Eight. It would look great on sizes above and below it's label. It can be crushed in a bag and come out perfect. She has another that we felt was a bit wedding'ish for Cunard. I think we've only ever paid sale prices for their stuff. Next Direct are another good source, with lots of different labels that may not be in their shops.

Should have mentioned "Chesca". I believe they only deliver to UK & Ireland. They do from UK size 12 to 24. My wife has 2 x 16s, both worn last June on QM2. First bought full price in John Lewis' Oxford St and the other in their online sale. Their styles are very forgiving but although she would probably be ok with their 12s now, the 16s don't look really big. There are services available that will provide a relay address in UK or many other countries then forward to you, charging for the shipping and customs fees.

We've used SHEIN for nearly 3 years. My wife has 3 Ever-Pretty dresses (awaiting 4th). All are well made and did fit when bought. We've been delighted or pleased with most stuff. A green pleated jump suit you'll find in an old thread of mine is stunning! One garment was as photo but the fabric was horrid, straight to bin. 2 items were wrong, size or item different from bag label. Both times return label promptly provided and refunded when La Poste scanned as I handed it over. Our issue is that some items ordered before my wife dropped 2/3 dress sizes over the last 2 years to a healthy weight is now a bit big. She has some larger relatives, so we give hardly or unworn stuff away. Deliveries from China take between 6 and 14 days to France. We get 25-30% off if we place an order over €105. You do need to take care. They give the model's sizes and you can compare them with the garment size. If there's customer feedback with photos we compare colours taken in their snaps and how the garment sits on real people. The latest Ever-Pretty dress was seen on their own site but detective work found it on SHEIN much cheaper with discount. The red one will be her first BABYONLINE D.R.E.S.S. the model claims to be 1cm taller and her dress 5cm shorter than our order. Hoping the outer layer can be easily trimmed if too long for dancing, otherwise we have alteration services nearby. Both Ever-Pretty and BABYONLINE D.R.E.S.S. do bespoke sizes on their own sites and we have a gorgeous grey gown from JJ's House, which are another specialist dress site. Can be quite expensive though unless it's a reduced line.

We sailed on Arcadia 14 nights eastbound Panama Canal Transit over New Year 2005/2006. We sailed on QM2 14 nights B2B Trans Atlantic on May 29th last year. We enjoyed both trips, although we'll only repeat one. And P&O's charter flights from Glasgow to Acapulco and return from Barbados were awful. On Arcadia the food was generally ok, but many dishes were a bit bland. I don't mean something that could be cured with salt & pepper. We don't use salt for cooking or add it afterwards. Over the fortnight we were offered 14 different descriptions of potato dishes. The waiters were even trying to get us to take potatoes and 2 x veg with curries and pasta dishes. Our summary of it was that the food was too British for our tastes. We wouldn't travel on P&O again unless they had an itinerary that we couldn't resist. Since we only want to travel B2B Trans Atlantic on a liner that's unlikely to arise. As we expected QM2's cuisine was far more to our taste, more like the French home cooking we're used to, with a bit of cordon bleu as well. The worst dish was their Dauphinoise, which wasn't a patch on our home produced version where we use a UHT cream recommended by one of the ladies in our local hypermarket. Dancing was better on QM2, with live music each night in Queens Room and all but 1 night in G32. We're not 'floor snobs' so we were fine with The Globe on Arcadia but I think there was only an odd night with live music and it was unavailable at least one night for a movie or some other show. Kir Royale was hopeless on both. Restaurants here serve about 30% creme de cassis topped up with champagne. Carnival Corp seem to work to an 'international standard' with much less creme de cassis.

We've had that quite a bit recently for outdoor temperatures. We need several extra layers to cope. My cat would leave home if we allowed that sort of temperature indoors!

Unless you have an qualms about origin, you could try SHEIN. The attached have been ordered this week, the red and blue are to replace dresses recently given away due to being several sizes too big. They'll probably appear on QM2 in a couple of years.

@NE John Have you tried Googling "Q3 Royal Suite on QM2"? That brought up some YouTube videos for me. One practical comment was that the cabin is directly under the fog horn, so that might be louder than in other locations. I wouldn't be bothered by being forward. Stena briefly used a ferry that we liked on their Harwich - Hook of Holland route, which we used regularly in the 1990s. It had some larger forward facing cabins, which were on a par with those on cruise ships. I would however prefer midships near a stairwell to save time moving around the ship.

You're probably right. That forum briefly discusses his retiral and mentions him assuming command after an accident in Fort Lauderdale but doesn't specify a period when he was master.

I've never been uncomfortable when wearing a shirt and tie, even at the start of my transport career when I drove buses. Some colleagues would have liked to whip off their ties and unbutton shirts to waist as soon as the sun came out! I mentioned last year that when planning for our QM2 trip we took photos of us wearing lots of outfits to select what looked best. I then combined pics to see how outfits would look as a couple. It soon became clear that I would have been embarrassed to be photographed beside any of my wife's 14 outfits in anything less than a suit with tie. I did take less formal clothes for daytime wear. I consider that I look really scruffy in some of those photos. Next time I will actually save space and weight in our packing by dressing up more. I will take gym wear (for the gym) and swimwear. Otherwise, I won't be taking shorts or chinos, no T-shirts or polo shirts, red deck shoes and blue derbies will be left behind. In hindsight I think 3 x dinner suits and 3 x lounge suits was more than I needed, so next time it will be 2 + 2, shoes will be 2 pairs black leather, gym trainers and pool flip-flops. I think I'll still allow myself some short sleeved shirts for daytime, and the other trousers will be lightweight wool that could substitute for those in the suits. We're looking at glitzing up my wife's outfits a bit more so my savings may be used there. Although I can't see us needing to go over the 58kg we took last year. Of course, that is our choice and others can do what they want as far as we're concerned. We quite enjoy privately discussing how awful some folk look in their ripped jeans etc! 🤣🤣

I'm not familiar with these coasters, but I found a forum called "theqe2story". It mentions many past Commodores that captained QE2, perhaps some of these might jog memories: It doesn't include whether any of them were knighted. Commodore William Eldon Warwick Commodore J Burton-Hall Commodore Christopher Rynd Commodore Bernard Warner Commodore William Warwick Commodore T D Ridley Commodore Christopher Wells? ** There may be more mentioned on that forum. ** The posts on Christopher Wells suggest he was only promoted to Commodore on his retiral, so might not have justified a coaster.

Glad to hear that. "Staysure Expat" were about the only company we could find offering the specific cover we needed, given our geographic location. I did worry about some of the negative feedback regarding their claims handlers, although thankfully we had no need to make any claims. Nice to hear that someone has had a positive experience with a claim.

Going by the OP's name they are UK based. Depending on the complexity of the booking they plan to make they may or may not benefit from using a TA rather than booking direct. In our case, living in France, Cunard UK may not have taken our booking and referred us to their French representatives or a French TA. Standards of service in France are generally abysmal and it's very hard to find agents prepared to speak to you in English. You might think that's to be expected, but business French and the ability to argue contractual matters in the language are not something generally taught to foreigners. Therefore in our case having a specialist UK based travel agent was absolutely essential and proved to be so in practice. Everyone's circumstances are different, but although you might not benefit from massive discounts, being represented by an established specialist agent should give some peace of mind.

We used an agent recommended by a friend who cruised at least six times a year until falling victim to ill health. The agent shows no sign of losing any of her blonde locks. We only travelled on one B2B TA that she booked, but due to the pandemic it was the 5th sailing she booked for us, and we ended up with almost 40% more value than originally paid. She spent 6 months fighting with Cunard over a miscalculation of FCC they had made. Eventually she resolved the matter in our favour. We didn't need to do anything. We won't be going to anyone else for our next booking.

I was shocked whilst on a 6 night trip to Manhattan this July that it was so difficult to find a decent "Americano". Here on the French Riviera, in Italy and hundreds of small independent London cafes I can be assured of a quality Americano poured from a traditional commercial Italian machine. Most places I tried in New York were using automatic machines and seemed more interested in how big their cups were and how fast they could serve it. It has to be pretty good to measure up against what comes out of these two!

I installed an app called "Photo Compressor and Resizer" on my Android phone, which made it much quicker to upload our QM2 photos to CC, Facebook and WhatsApp groups. Don't know if it's available for iPhone, if not there must be some equivalent.

I thought I had posted a photo from our Christmas card last year, but don't see it in my "activity". This was the front page of the card we sent to most friends & family this year. Carmel & Hazel posed for the base photos last April, although Carmel wouldn't face the camera and her head came from a photo taken during the summer. We received the cards from the printers about a week before Hazel died. Be assured they come to no harm in their photoshoots. Any twisting of limbs to fit their equipment is done digitally.

Although I enjoy cruising, I wouldn't describe myself as a cruiser. Most of our boring days on QM2 followed this schedule: 06:00 to Midnight: Sunrise/ship/seascape photos, online banking, newspapers, social media. Walk down 10 floors to breakfast. Walk up 10 floors to cabin. Walk down 5 floors to gym. 40 mins cardio & 30 mins muscular. Walk up 5 floors to cabin, shower/wash gym wear. Walk down 9 floors to coffee. Walk up 9 floors to cabin. Walk down 10 floors to lunch. Photo opportunities. Walk up 10 floors to cabin. Short power-nap. Walk down 9 floors to coffee. Walk up 9 floors to cabin. Dress for evening. Walk down 9 floors. Photo opportunities & aperitifs. Walk down 1 floor to dinner. Walk up 1 floor to dancing Queens Room then dancing G32, digestifs. Walk up 9 floors to cabin. I find it hard to describe that as calm repetition. I was glad to get home for a rest!