"Live from" Queen Elizabeth to the Mediterannean! My First Cunard Experience

[lovely_serenity]

I adore all the wonderful information you share! I'm leaving on QE 12/13/13. I can't wait to see you meal pictures too! Thanks for you excellent reporting!

 

Aw, thanks! (: Oo, that's awesome! I hope you have a great time! & thanks for reading! ^^

 

Yes, it was Fantastic loved every minute of it :)

Canadian Slang ; Scarfed = UK. Slang : Scoffed

 

That's fantastic (: & haha I didn't know that!

 

HI all!

 

lovely_ serenity ~ loved your last review & looking forward to reading this one too!:D I'll be going back to the Alaska one as I prepare for my 2nd AK cruise in August. Glad you liked my "home" airport.;)

 

~ Jo ~ :)

 

Thanks Jo! (: haha thanks for reading my last one too! Oo! Have lots of fun! & haha I did!

 

Looking forward to hearing about your trip. I've been longing to do cruises to both Alaska and Europe, so your reports help me satisfy curiosities. Keep up the good work :)

 

Thank youu! (: I'll do my best! I'm working on it right now! I just passed the biggest school work obstacle, so I get to take a breather now!

 

Sarah,

 

I am impressed with not only how fast you packed but that you were able to get it all in that tiny case!

 

Looking forward to the future installments.

 

Kathi

 

Kathi,

 

Lol :D, thank you! So were my parents haha. I'm working on it~

 

Sarah (-:

 

We will be going through Toronto this next Thursday...our US Thanksgiving and will probably eat at Tim Hortons now that I know it's there. We vacationed n Canada a few years ago and liked Tim's as a better alternative to fast fried food.

 

Oo cool, where are you headed to? & of course! If ever in Canada, Tim Horton's is a must! Get a Honey Cruller donut and a chicken salad sandwich combo plus soup c: that's what I always get!

[lovely_serenity]

Yes, if you must eat in YYZ, I recommend Tim Hortons. As airport terminals go, the new T1 isn't bad.

 

Me too! I second that! && I agree, it is quite pretty!

 

HI all!

 

ORCRUISER ~ have you tried our Swiss Chalet? There's one in both terminals now.

 

lovely_serenity ~ patiently awaiting your next posting but school should come first.:D

 

Have a nice day!

 

~ Jo ~ :)

 

Swiss Chalet's pretty good too (: & yup! On its way now! I just finished the majority of my work and I get a break now! Thanks for being so understanding everyone c:

 

Sarah,

 

Your HAL Alaska report was delightful - full of interesting and amusing insights - and , of course , food !

 

Enjoy the Cunard experience and the interesting itinerary.

 

I, too, am looking forward to your observations on this one.

 

Rob

 

Thank you Rob! ^^ I'm working on it!

 

Lovely serenity - I am looking forward to your report after you have caught up with schoolwork. I was on the same cruise and also have a few photographs, but very few of the excellent food on board the QE. Looking forward to a photographic record of some of the excellent cuisine. I have nearly completed reading your excellent Volendam report of your trip to Alaska. Keep up the excellent work when time permits.

 

Thanks for being so understanding (: I'm working on it right now! Oo, cool! How'd you enjoy it? Thank you for reading my other report! I hope you enjoy it! It's on its way right now!

 

Thank you for your time and effort in making these reviews. I much enjoyed the one you did about your Alaska Trip on the HAL Rotterdam.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my reports! (: I'm glad you enjoyed it! (p.s. *volendam :P)

 

Yes, that is me. I was standing next to a guy I had not met before and we got chatting. He was a golf rep and waiting to take two passengers golfing. There were two others a few feet away, but that is definitely me. My husband was out of view. I am thrilled to see this as I wanted to see the ship as we board her in January , but more so I had promised Sarah a wave.

 

As I moved away from the fence the other two people took my place as you can see from below. I am wearing Queen Victoria hat as I picked up the wrong one:D

The other ship in the foreground is the Regent Seven Seas Voyager.

 

Thank you for the photo Candhu 18 Kind of you to post it. I hope you all enjoyed Cyprus.

 

Haha that's awesome! && c: hehe thanks for keeping your promise! ^^~

I remember being parked next to Regent! The ship actually provided a shuttle that took us 10 minutes into the city centre!

 

Well, I said I would be there, so I hoped you were having fun and the weather was great for your day. Thanks for the review I am enthralled Keep up the good work. Did you get to see one of these? It is a Cyprus donkey!Maggie xx

 

Yup! I had lots of fun! We even went to the beach! It was SO pretty =^^= I actually didn't see any donkeys LOL, though I did see one in Santorini!

[ORCRUISER]

Aw, thanks! (: Oo, that's awesome! I hope you have a great time! & thanks for reading! ^^

 

 

 

That's fantastic (: & haha I didn't know that!

 

 

 

Thanks Jo! (: haha thanks for reading my last one too! Oo! Have lots of fun! & haha I did!

 

 

 

Thank youu! (: I'll do my best! I'm working on it right now! I just passed the biggest school work obstacle, so I get to take a breather now!

 

 

 

Kathi,

 

Lol :D, thank you! So were my parents haha. I'm working on it~

 

Sarah (-:

 

 

 

Oo cool, where are you headed to? & of course! If ever in Canada, Tim Horton's is a must! Get a Honey Cruller donut and a chicken salad sandwich combo plus soup c: that's what I always get!

 

It seems a little strange but we are going through Toronto on our way to Santiago, Chile and a cruise around the horn to Rio de Janiero.

[Keith1010]

Sarah, hi again.

 

Am enjoying your write-ups and photos.

 

Question. What model camera do you use? Great photos and of course great narrative.

 

Keith

[lovely_serenity]

We spent a few hours there since we were worried there wouldn't be any good seating after we exited the secure area and went to go to Terminal 3 for our international flight to Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport (Rome).

 

Eventually, Mom & Dad said that we should start heading to the other Terminal. There were still about 8 hours to kill until it was time for our flight. Nonetheless, they thought it’d be a better idea to settle ourselves closer to the Alitalia check in point. We headed out of the “No turning back” door and starting making our way out of the building.

 

 

We passed over an overhead bridge-like area that overlooked the carousels and luggage pick-up:

 

 

I thought the area looked pretty nice! C:

 

As we came up a set of escalators, I saw a man in the corner behind a sign (dressed like an employee of a plane, a pilot maybe), doing some sort of ritual. He appeared to be thanking a God for letting his flight land safe as he would hail a little in thanks, and then kiss the ground. o_o Interesting.

 

As we kept walking, we passed by these cute little bike-things that police/security would use inside the terminal! I hadn’t seen one before so I just had to take a picture of it.

 

 

Well we kept going and walked through the upper departures terminal:

 

 

We were told that we needed to take some sort of shuttle to get to Terminal 1. We later learnt afterwards that we only needed to take the shuttle because their train was broken. They fixed it by the time we got back, so we were a little confused upon return.

 

We went out this exit:

 

 

To catch the shuttle:

 

 

We were still not completely recovered from the flight yet though. Throughout the whole trip, this was the most difficult flight to endure. It was the hardest on my stomach ):

[lovely_serenity]

We emerged through the double doors and were faced with the beautiful weather of Toronto. Look left:

 

 

And then look right! C:

 

 

We got on board and took a longer-than-I-thought ride to Terminal 3. We were actually a little disappointed by the older terminal as soon as we arrived since it looked a lot older and tinier than Terminal 1. It was already apparent from the outside appearance that it looked a lot more rickety and old.

 

 

Here was my first view of the airport. The inside looked nicer than the outside at least. ^^”

 

My dad told me to take a few more pictures of our surroundings, just in case we had to return here to take the shuttle back to Terminal 1. (Which, in turn didn’t happen >_>)

 

 

 

 

Just in case any of you need assistance, there’s the information’s desk to the right of the last photo, by the door. Bright blue!

[lovely_serenity]

As we walked through the terminal, we got more and more worried, as we didn’t see any seating area. This would be a concern for us since we still had about 7.5 hours to kill. We noticed this area:

 

 

We went through here in search of food and seating. This area actually brought my hopes up, making me think that perhaps this terminal wasn’t that small. We walked and walked, and eventually came out, back in the same hallway we started at. The only difference was that we were a little bit farther away from where we started -_- . The only upside was that we found the place with the train that connected to Terminal 1:

 

 

 

We turned right and lo and behold! Seats! We kind of walked past it because they looked all old, and went through to the check in area to nicer window seats.

 

 

 

This place actually made for pretty nice photos!

 

[lovely_serenity]

This spot I think is one of the best spots. I absolutely loved all of the shadowy photos I took of my family!

 

 

You guys probably don’t know this, but I’m kind of like the princess of the family :D. I complain all the time, I often get my way, and I can be super annoying. ^^~ Don’t get me wrong, I’m super easygoing and love to laugh & make others laugh, but this irritating nature only comes out when I’m with my family. I’m not the whiny “Daddy!! Why do you hate me!! D,:<” type of princess, I’m the “D: But whyy? Can’t we sit over there? It’s really hot here. And the sun is shining and bouncing right off the window onto us. D: And I don’t like so much sunlight. D: And my skin’s really fair and I want it stay that way. D:” *whine whine whine* (You know, typical childish whining ^^) Right after all of our luggage is set down too. Which is exactly what I did LOL. The only difference is, I just said” Do we have to sit here? It’s really hot D:” and my Dad said “Fine, it’s no big deal let’s not sit here then.” C: (love ya dad~).

 

Here they are all settled before I asked them to move haha.

 

 

I took some more pictures of the back part of the airport as they gathered their bags and went back to the rickety-ish squeaky large set of connected metal seats.

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve actually been in this kind of back part before, except on the ground, in a gold cart driving around where the planes park, and at YVR! (: It was 3 years ago on Take Your Kid to Work Day. I went with Dad to work, and he got me a special security pass that allowed me into the back where I could see where all the luggage are processed, and where the planes get offload people! It was really cool.

[lovely_serenity]

As we headed back to the first seating area we saw, I cut through the right side to check in area:

 

 

(Look closely in the background to the left, that’s the seating area we spent a lot of time at)

 

In order to take a picture of this!

 

 

Afterwards, I ran back over to join my family and put all of our stuff down. I took a picture of the area I would wind up staring at for the following 6 hours.

 

 

It was weird. It felt like the entire airport was deserted at this point. I asked my dad if it was really necessary to come this early, only to be waiting 16 hours total for our next flight. He said that it was, since the flights for the following morning suddenly got filled up. He said it was because it was important that we make this 10:30pm flight to Rome, otherwise our plans would be a little ruined. (booked hotel already etc.)

 

As Sis and I dawdled there, Mom and Dad decided to go get food for us again. They told us to keep an eye on the luggage so that nobody ran off with it or something. We sat there, twiddling our thumbs, until Sis and I noticed the birds everywhere. The whole area left of me was kind of infested by birds. We counted about 6 or more of these little birds. They were probably a family c:

 

 

It was kind of cute at first, since it gave us something to observe. (we couldn’t even people watch since there were no people -_-)

 

 

They later started to get annoying because they would shed feathers here and there as they flew above our heads. I’d also be quite a shocker as they darted back and forth, out from underneath our seats, through other people’s seats and just past my face. o_o It surprised me quite a few times. Like, literally, the birds darted extremely quickly VERY near your heads. I’d say about a foot away from my face?

 

Therefore, be warned about the birds of YYZ Terminal 1!

 

 

They sort of settled themselves all over this fusion café booth that wouldn’t open until ~6pm.

[maggiemou]

Great photos and info Sarah. Do you use an expensive camera as your shots are very clear. Well done.

[Krazy Kruizers]

Sarah

I am loving all details. And your pictures are great as usual.

[alibabacruisers]

Great blogging Sarah! Love the pictures as well. I did have to laugh at your definition of an "infestation" of birds though....to read that you said 6! ;) That airport sure was empty and clean looking. Keep up the great work!

[lovely_serenity]

It seems a little strange but we are going through Toronto on our way to Santiago, Chile and a cruise around the horn to Rio de Janiero.

 

Wow, that is odd. Where are you flying in from? I would assume that you are going to be flying in an L shape then? && Wow, that sounds amazing! Which cruise line? :)

 

Sarah, hi again.

 

Am enjoying your write-ups and photos.

 

Question. What model camera do you use? Great photos and of course great narrative.

 

Keith

 

Hi Keith!

 

Great, glad to hear (:

 

*continued below*

 

Great photos and info Sarah. Do you use an expensive camera as your shots are very clear. Well done.

 

Thank you maggiemou!

 

*continued below*

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Dear Keith & maggiemou,

 

I actually am using a Canon EOS 60D, really great camera!

 

*pulls images off of Google*

 

This is my camera but not my lens:

 

 

This is my camera with my little macro lens:

 

 

And this is my camera’s big lens:

 

 

I tried to find the pictures that had my lenses too!

 

Thank you and thank you again. ^^~

Edited November 28, 2013 by lovely_serenity

[Summergee]

Hi Sarah. Will you be including pictures of you and your family on formal nights? I don't see how you can pack everything in such a small amount of luggage.

[ORCRUISER]

Actually it's sort of a reverse N. South to SFO then north to Toronto through Chicago and then the long flight to Santiago. 25 honors from take off to final landing.at SFO now.

[lovely_serenity]

Sarah

I am loving all details. And your pictures are great as usual.

 

Thank you Krazy Kruizers! (: Glad you're enjoying it!

 

Great blogging Sarah! Love the pictures as well. I did have to laugh at your definition of an "infestation" of birds though....to read that you said 6! ;) That airport sure was empty and clean looking. Keep up the great work!

 

Thank you! :) LOL in my mind it was an infestation. Birds shouldn't be inside airports! :D :D :D There may have even been like 8! && indeed, it did get more crowded and filled up a flight started approaching though.

 

Thanks! ^^

[lovely_serenity]

Hi Sarah. Will you be including pictures of you and your family on formal nights? I don't see how you can pack everything in such a small amount of luggage.

 

Hi Summergee! Actually, I hadn't though of that! But sure! I will most definitely include pictures of our outfits on the formal nights! :) You will see the fruits of our labors LOL

 

Actually it's sort of a reverse N. South to SFO then north to Toronto through Chicago and then the long flight to Santiago. 25 honors from take off to final landing.at SFO now.

 

O_o? That's far!! A little tedious to go north just to go south, eh? So sad that you can't get a direct flight to Santiago from anywhere else :/ Well, have a safe flight! And tell me all about your trip when you get back :D!

[lovely_serenity]

At a distance, we soon spotted our parents holding a stack of brown paper bags with “Tim Horton’s” scrawled across the front, as well as several cans of diet Coke.

 

I opened my paper bag up and drank my delicious Cream of Broccoli soup!

 

 

It was hot and delicious, and helped make my stomach feel more settled. They had also bought a Chicken Noodle Soup, a Steak & Cheese sandwich and a Chicken Salad Sandwich.

 

After finishing our meal, we began our quest kill some more time. I took another picture of the open area, except not as dark as the last one:

 

 

Since Mom had not managed to sleep a wink on the flight, she took a nap. She’s a very light sleeper and has trouble sleeping all the time, so Dad tried to help by putting a scarf over her head to block out the sunlight coming from above. It was also effective in preventing random bird feathers from falling on her head. I’m not kidding when I say they were falling left and right. Pretty irritating, but still better than the extremely warm seat on the otherwise of the empty space.

 

Sis and I decided to begin painting our nails, so that they would have plenty of time to dry. I didn’t feel like putting my camera my camera away since it was such a hassle. I literally had to fit my entire camera case into my backpack, and then pack stuff around it.

 

Well, anyways, I asked Dad to hold it for me, and while we did our nails, (being the dork that he is), took a picture of Mom sleeping:

 

 

(*Note: Here you can also see the types of chairs available for seating. On our side of the place, if one leaned forward, so would another 5 chairs, with a delightful squeak. -_-)

 

Which I personally would’ve never thought of. ^^ Dad seems to have an odd attraction to taking pictures of people when they’re sleeping, and then making them irritated about it afterwards LOL. This picture isn’t even that bad compared to the ones he took of Sis & I when we were in Paris and we were 12 & 9 years old! We were sleeping at our table at a McDonalds outside of Le Louvre, and Dad took several pictures of us. Drooling and all. And refused to delete them afterwards. -_- //sigh// Dads.

 

Anyhow, I did a clear coat, and then a pink coat and was in midst of waiting for the pink coat to dry before I could apply another clear coat (because apparently, Sis read that according the Internet, nail polish should be applied: clear -> colour -> clear. So that’s what we did.). As we waited, I asked for my camera back, but Sis took the camera from Dad before I even got the chance too. I asked what she was up to, and she insisted that she wanted to take pictures too. Oh well, whatever sure. So she did!

 

She first took a picture of my nails (to the right is the picture I took myself immediately afterward ^^~):

 

 

(In this picture, you can see I’m actually wearing my Dad’s sweater since I got very cold on the last flight, which hindered my ability to sleep. He gave it to me afterwards because I told them I was very cold. This was in preparation for the next flight as well.)

 

She then proceeded to take a picture of her own hand, which only had a clear coat on one hand:

 

 

She actually complained that she had mistakenly put too much on her fingernails, so she wasn’t satisfied with the job done.

 

She then returned the camera to me and I proceeded to take that extra one of my own hand :D

 

I was quite satisfied with the job done, and this paint job lasted until the day before we left Rome for Civitavecchia.

 

Unfortunately, out of the one bottle of pink and the one bottle of clear nail polish that we had brought, while moving things here and there, Dad accidentally knocked the clear polish off the seat it was sitting on, and it cracked on the floor and broke. ): Please note that this was in the middle of the paint job, and I was missing a clear coat, and Sis was still missing all of the nails on her right hand. This was actually why the paint job chipped off so darn quickly for me. It broke off throughout our whole adventure in Rome, until we finally found a place that didn’t sell ridiculously high priced nail polish. In the U.S., we bought this polish for 90-something cents. In Rome, nail polish ranged from 5 to 15 € and often landed around the 8 € mark!! :O! The conversions for us were basically, take the amount in €s and add 50% on top. That would be quite close in estimating how much that would be in CDN$. We would actually spend our entire trip in Rome looking at nail polishes and their prices. Literally the ENTIRE trip.

 

We lied around for a few hours before the amount of people began steadily increasing. There was obviously a flight coming in, so the place was starting to get seriously packed. We eventually moved to another location, opposite to the warm window area from earlier, and settled there instead. There we discovered something amazing. POWER OUTLETS!! :D Finally!! Dad was the one who had discovered it there before we all officially transferred all of our belongings to the new location. It was the area beside the elevators in the back area, next to a bag store. The outlets were at this one metal pole embedded with a fire extinguisher. It was located directly adjacent to a set of chairs. There were only 2 sets of chairs, so we just took up both of them. One for our parents and the electronics, and one for my sister and I, as well as our cart full of bags.

 

We stayed there and hung around for quite a few hours. I FaceTimed with a friend back in Vancouver, Sis and Dad did their own things on their iPads etc. I had already put my camera away for quite some time, before we had even moved here. We took a few naps here and there as well.

 

Anyhow, a couple of hours before our flight was due to arrive, Mom & Sis went off to buy dinner for us. They had concluded that in the food area of YYZ Terminal 3, there were basically only the options of: Swiss Chalet, Tim Horton’s, a burger joint, a pizza place and a not-yet-open-to-business Yogen Fruz (frozen yogurt place we like that’s in Vancouver too). They came back with trays and bags of sodas (to wash down our Beano & Bonine pills. One for gas to prevent stomach problems on the flight that would lead to discomfort, and one for motion sickness), 2 portions of french fries, 2 burgers to cut up and share, as well as a calzone to cut up and share as well. Since this was actually the first time I had ever eaten a calzone before (I've seen and heard about them, but have never eaten one before. I've heard that they’re folded, baked pizzas :D), I wanted to document it. My camera had already been properly stowed away, so I didn't want to go through the hassle of digging it out from the bottom of my entire bag, pulling shorts, underwear, skirts and toiletries, out for everybody to see once more, just to unzip my camera zoom lens holster case and pull out the camera, simply to take one picture of a stupid calzone ^^”. So I opted for the easier, simpler alternative. My iPhone! I only took 4 pictures with my iPhone the entire trip, so don’t expect these rare, low quality beauties :D.

 

 

It’s actually not as bad as I thought :P, I thought it’d be more pixelated, but this is pretty good!

 

We would then proceed to eventually go to the check-in counter a few hours later at the Alitalia desk, and get checked into stand-by by a man who seemed to be quite new at his job. We got our seats we were all sitting together, somewhat farther back on the plane. While we were waiting to check in, we actually saw some people panicking and freaking out because their bags were over 10kg, which meant they'd be charged a lot of extra money. They ran back and forth, moving things from bag to bag, trying to distribute the weight. See people? This is why you measure your mags ahead of time! Leave yourself at least half a kg of extra space!

 

Anyways, we went through security, walked to our ever-so-far-away gate (30-something I think), and watched the news about the loopy Toronto mayor that did drugs and whatnot. Which was funny, because it took me a minute to realize that we were actually in the city that it was happening it :P.

 

We got called, and we boarded the plane. It was a new-ish plane, with television screens on the backs. I got a good seat that had no person sitting behind me (row of 4, then row of 3 behind us, gap). The first thing I noticed and was extremely surprised by, was the distance in which the seats could lie down! 0_0 It was like triple the distance the Air Canada plane could lean! I could actually sleep on this flight, instead of having my head and neck droop here and there. I also took note at something else cool, the tv had the option to watch the cameras placed on the front, bottom & back of the aircraft! This was a first for me (I think), which was very interesting. My favourite part was watching lift off! Don't watch it after you land though, the taxi-ing around the airport made me dizzy and want to puke. Something else I noted about Alitalia was the fact that they had semi-gross removable fabrics at the headrest, which had someone else's hair on it. Ew. Lastly, their food was (according to Mom) "by far the worst plane food" she had ever had. And this is coming from a woman who travels. A lot. The service wasn't bad, but it was pretty bad on the flight home, since we were placed on a really cruddy, old plane. But more on that later.

 

We flew for just over 7 hours and arrived earlier than scheduled (at 12-something in the afternoon) at the Rome airport.

Edited November 29, 2013 by lovely_serenity

[capnpugwash]

Mmmm, partially consumed food!!! How cute.

[lovely_serenity]

Mmmm, partially consumed food!!! How cute.

 

Right? :D LOL I couldn't get to it before they attacked it!

[capnpugwash]

46 pictures thus far and not at the ship yet.

[Krazy Kruizers]

46 pictures thus far and not at the ship yet.

 

 

I haven't counted the pictures -- but I like all the details -- even those pre-cruise.

[jbhcw]

Following along Sarah!! Love your reviews…especially the food pics…and your commentary…thanks for another one:):):)

[Krazy Kruizers]

Great Report Sarah

[Jules 1970]

Buon giorno Italiano !