D&N

I briefly used a second hand 35mm SLR over 30 years ago. With cost of film and developing and lack of an internet to teach me, I didn't really get my head round using it properly. I'm very pleased with the A7C but there's lots to learn. I'm getting some great results and lots of rubbish but even saving RAW and X.Fine jpg can get a huge number of shots on a card. I use a WiFi FTP Server to backup the jpg files to phone, which then backs up to cloud and in turn to desktop. Cons: Much bigger/heavier than a phone and doesn't fit in pocket. Needs a much sturdier tripod or selfie stick than a phone. Pros: Supposed to be smallest/lightest full-frame available. Rangemaster viewfinder keeps it as compact as possible, my right eye is fine with that. Battery lasts 700+ shots. I can take it most places in a small camera bag, a tote bag or light back pack. Otherwise I've never had a serious camera to compare it to. It is expensive of course. I've spent close to €4,000 between the A7C with 28-60 kit lens and a variety of others. Spare battery, charger, tripod, flash equipment, SD cards, bags. Some of the kit was second hand saving about €400. Some Sony lenses are very expensive, so the second hand ones have been Samyang. I did have a cheap second hand APS-C 55-210mm, which I removed the baffle from to get max zoom with minor vignetting, but I recently got a new Tamron 70-300mm. I should replace the baffle and get the 55-210mm up for sale.

You need to calculate based on your own expected consumption. The average prices of the drinks we would buy including the 15% charge are: Hot $4.57, Cold $4.07, Alcoholic $11.31. Decent bottle of wine $92.00 We have 1 hot drink at 11am and 3.30pm. We have 1 cold drink at lunch, 1 at dinner, and 2 over our evening of dancing. We have 2 x wine at lunch, 1 x aperitif before dinner, 1 x wine at dinner, 2 x wine while dancing, and 1 nightcap before bed. That totals 2 x Hot, 4 x Cold, and 7 x Alcoholic, which would cost $104.62 per day, or $2,929.31 for two of us in 14 days/nights. But we will also share a decent bottle of wine split between 2 nights, so 7 bottles over 14 nights. That would add $644 for 2 weeks, making a total of $3,573.31. For us the package at $72.00 per person per day would cost $2,016. Due to the package the total price of the decent wines would be $515.20, making a total of $2,531.20. To explain our dinner plans; we don't think the wines by the glass are good enough for dinner. But for decent wines our taste buds won't need a full bottle between us each night. We'll share half the bottle and ask the sommelier to keep the rest for another night. Then we'll finish our dinner with a glass from the package list. On days 1 and 8 we'll miss 1 x hot and 2 x wine. But we could do that every day and still be better off.

Most of those photos were dated March 21st so there could have been lots of progress since.

Of course my suggestion isn't backed unanimously!😀 The rooms and areas do look great empty and your photos are really bringing out the colours and the feeling of space. I just feel that all the spaces were designed to accommodate hundreds of people. My memories are generally of them being full and that's what I look forward to seeing on our future sailings. What I realised after our last trip was that my phone and compact superzoom camera have really small sensors and the quality of most of our photos was very poor in comparison to your APS-C. I've now bought a Sony A7C and lots of kit, which of course is far bulkier than a phone and selfie tripod/stick!

A place that allows you to spend two weeks on QM2, eating and drinking as much as you want, and lose weight!

@tjunmin Thank you. Your photos are great. I'll make a point of watching for more. One minor thing, and I know it's difficult from a personal privacy point of view, but I think most of the venues look better when they are packed with people enjoying themselves. I'd enjoy any you get the opportunity to take without having recognisable faces.

On YouTube search for "queen victoria gym". There's a video posted 2 months ago that covers it quite well.

I don't recall barbells on QM2. I only use dumbells for free weights so might just not have noticed. From a safety point of view perhaps there's a risk of a heavily laden barbell rolling about and injuring someone. Although it must be possible to get weights that aren't circular. There should be plenty there to improvise on your regular routine.

We'd probably only do crossings, but on previous cruises we've normally taken lunch on the ship, except 2 days on P&O when the Britishness of the food just became too much for us. If we did take a cruise now, we'd probably just stay on board. It's quite nice to have an empty ship.

If you read the quantities stated as 5.5 x wine, 2.5 x hot drinks and 2 softs or water. I've ignored spirits as the list is too long. If you take the average value by category of those drinks that are available within the package and include the 15%, you get $84.67 per day. From the UK you would need to cut out the hot drinks or have one less wine before you would get down to less than the $72/day that they charge for a 5 to 14 day trip. If you're happy with coffee from push button machines or filter coffee that could reduce it, but I wouldn't touch the stuff. And we're more likely to have around 8 drinks per day. Beer drinkers are less likely to see a saving.

The current price on a 39 night cruise is US $67.50 per passenger per day. Unless you were to buy the very cheapest wines or spirits you are likely to save money on 5-6 wine or spirits, 2-3 coffee's and a couple of soft drinks or waters per day. Many people don't seem to realise how quickly it all adds up, particularly when you add in the 15%.

Perhaps Cunard could introduce knife throwing classes as a daytime activity. Then visitors to The Verandah could select their knife on the basis of it's balance and suitability for throwing.

If the flights from Paris are suitable then I can't really see much difference between Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle. In the UK/EU flight prices should include all applicable taxes so it should be easy to compare fares. I spent at least a week per year in London when I was a child, and many more as an adult. Our first visit to Paris was ten days. And we went back many times for shorter stays. To me three nights in either city is simply a shopping trip. Both need several weeks to experience properly. I realise that many visitors have limited time available but a few days might just give you a hint of the atmosphere in a few parts of these cities.

🍸 would Cocktail Glass be any use?

We wouldn't eat or want more than three meals a day, and the gym was very effective in counteracting the effects of them. But we only use lifts when we have baggage, unless with folk that can't or won't walk. From memory it's 99 stairs from deck 12 to deck 7, and about the same again to deck 2. Climbing 10 decks five or more times per day if you are fit to do so is also helpful. I've read that the jarring effect of descending the stairs is very good for some of the leg muscles.

There's a drop down at AVAILABILITY. Selecting one of the other options suggests it doesn't work very well in some areas that have satellite coverage. I don't know anything about how that all works. There are other sites such as SatMagazine that try to explain some of what's behind it all. But I assume that initially the target will have been to cover inhabited land areas since that's where they are most likely to make money and any sea coverage will have resulted from that. Some articles mention being able to switch off coverage, an example given was ocean areas without regular shipping lanes.

I disposed of my 1997 tuxes. They had stretched several sizes.

I'm not sure how well access points are located on QE and QV just now. I read the reports of upgrades during QM2's drydocking in November. But Starlink still doesn't offer cover worldwide, so service will be variable depending on where ships are. Here's a link to a coverage map. https://www.starlink.com/map

Could you elaborate on your plans? I think most are assuming you are boarding at Southampton due to your post about transport from Red Hook. How long will you be in Southampton before boarding? Are you spending time in London before travelling to Southampton? Knowing that we can advise options for ordering/trying/buying pre boarding.

I tend to agree with you. Perhaps a more appropriate wording would have been that you are not supposed to do so according to the terms and conditions. But if lot's of folk did so, Cunard might start clamping down and stop treating their passengers like adults.

We're not tempted by the QM2 Steakhouse at the Verandah menu. Our meat consumption on our Mediterranean diet is probably far lower than most non vegetarians. We only eat fillet or Wagyu steaks (only twice so far) and would never have more than 5 oz each as part of a balanced plate. We eat seafood but my wife isn't that keen on vast quantities and the platter sounds far too big. We rarely found that the Britannia menu didn't have something we wanted to taste and on the odd night that we felt all the options were a bit boring, we had the Britannia Club à la carte menu to fall back on. There wasn't a night I would have preferred the Verandah menu to Britannia Club. To be honest we don't really sail to eat well. We cook almost everything from scratch here, or batch cook it and freeze it. Our food always tastes good but isn't presented as in a restaurant. Our four legged waiters are more likely to try and steal our food rather than serve it. If we want a gourmet experience we'll go to one of the many top restaurants along this coastline. So in conclusion, after that lengthy explanation, from our point of view Cunard would probably be wasting their time coming up with anything different as we're unlikely to be tempted.

We'll settle for 95%. 90 minutes before sunset. On our balcony, no travel required.

"Roads get awfully clogged when trying to position on land making any type of independent excursion risky." We were in the path of one on August 11th 1999. We'd intended to drive from Freiburg to Baden Baden that morning and possibly be in the Caracalla Therme's outside pool, which in normal circumstances would have been quite easily achieved. The traffic on the autobahn that morning was awful. We ended up in a Lidl supermarket car park in a town several miles south. It wasn't even very nice weather. I think we only really got a break in the cloud for a short time around the eclipse. Plus the camera we had at the time wasn't very good.

Were the chairs on the dance floor? I'd have thought the friction on the carpets would have kept them steady, or if really bad they would tip over.

On the subject of the sling. We saw a lady who wasn't disabled but like the OP couldn't manage the ladders. They were advised that they needed to have someone with them to operate the hoist, which she had. A member of staff came to instruct them but would not operate it for them, possibly an insurance issue. It seemed quite straightforward.