D&N

It is our local shop. Supposed to become Intermarche from April 30th. Remains to be seen how that affects prices and choice. We've done well over the years from their loyalty scheme and all the offers! At least staff are expected to stay on.

Rubber will stick to the floor. Proper ballroom and latin dance shoes have a soft suede sole and are totally unsuitable for wearing outdoors. The thin leather soles on those Barker Cheshams are a good compromise. My originals are nearly 27 years old and were refurbished once. Since then I keep them for times we get a chance to dance. I recently bought an identical pair as I don't think they make them anymore. But if you're not a hobby dancer or above it doesn't really matter.

I didn't even realise it was a port, and sorry I can't help on tours. However I like all of those wines and I've tasted some very nice Pauillacs, and by far the most expensive wine in my cellar currently is a Pauillac with drinking dates of 2026-2051. If Pauillac is the closest that may give you more tasting time! 🍷

I'm a bit puzzled by that. Nice Ville is two stops west from Villefranche-sur-Mer. There is no possibility of changing trains unless one breaks down. Journey time is usually about 7 minutes. Buses are a bit more complex. Since the current tram network went fully operational about four and a half years ago, buses have not been allowed to travel to Nice city centre. You need to ask for a transfer ticket (correspondence) on the bus that you then use for the few stops on the tram to the centre. Unless you are happy to walk from the Nice Port area to the centre. On the way back you need to buy a Ticket Azur for the tram at a machine at the tram stop (about third or fourth page of options) then hand that to the bus driver at a stop near the Port that you would need to find. The driver exchanges that for a no value paper ticket to Villefranche. We live the other side of Nice and the transport authorities have made a great job of putting us off visiting Nice with what they've done to the bus service.

On restaurants: Rue Princesse Caroline has several, some of which are reasonably priced. We have eaten at L'Escale beside the Casino Supermarket about 15 years ago and were happy with the food. The current menu seems reasonable for Monaco.

Further to comments and discussion by @marazul and @edinburgher : We normally go for a picnic in Monaco once each summer. We take: a large blue IKEA shopping bag, two old supermarket cool bags, plastic cups, some kitchen roll or paper napkins, small waiters corkscrew, some old knives and forks. We put a frozen 1.5 litre bottle of mineral water in one cool bag (might be difficult coming off a cruise ship). All that fits in a small lightweight backpack. We get off the train and walk forward (east) up escalators, then lifts as high as you can go. When we emerge follow signs for Casino Gardens & Cafe de Paris. Wander down through the gardens past casino (gambling type!) and then down hill to Port. Lots of photo opportunities there. If we get to Port about lunch time, go to Casino Supermarket and order fresh pizza. Someone waits outside and other goes in and buys a decent bottle of wine. If we spend €15 it might cost €80 in a restaurant! If it's a white or rosé buy from the fridges and it goes in the cool bag with the frozen water. If you don't have that frozen water you may find a 1kg bag of ice in the shop. They sell cool bags as well. If you can't find ice, buy a kilo of frozen peas to keep the wine cool and put them in a bin when no longer needed. If you prefer red you can miss out that bit. Buy some cakes for dessert. There is also a patisserie counter if you want something fancy but beware of buying anything that won't travel well. Collect the pizza from counter outside shop. Put it flat in a cool bag to keep it hot! Place that flat in the IKEA bag which with it's long handles allows you to keep it flat. Exit shop left, turn left, walk straight ahead on Rue Princess Antoinette (including pedestrian bit) until you reach Rue Grimaldi. Cross road to Place Ste Devote bus stop. Take a bus #1 or #2, we pay contactless with credit/debit card at onboard readers. I assume you need one each or NFC phone payment should be accepted as well. Take the bus to terminus at Monaco Ville. There are gardens facing out to sea (east) and part of Port Hercule or (south) and Port de Fontvieille. You should be able to find a wooden bench in shade, where you can dine al-fresco with much better views than most restaurants. Beware; keep the pizza flat, before the IKEA bag idea I spilt a creamy pizza sauce on the bus floor! At the picnic spot guard all your food from seagulls! And there's an ongoing issue with Casino supermarkets. The owning group has been a financial basket case for over 10 years. They are in process of selling off about 300 of their biggest stores. I don't know at this stage where that leaves the Monaco store, it might even be a franchise? But there will be some sort of store there and I'd be shocked if the pizza section with it's ovens would be removed. Lots of workers, including construction, queue up there at lunchtime. Here's a photo of a well fed and watered trio last August. My brother in law was visiting us. I do have a photo of the pizza menu but can't find it just now. And of course when you've finished the important feeding bit you can wander up to see the palace etc.

If your brogues are anything like that in post #4 or even a much heavier style as is quite common, then they are a very formal shoe by modern standards. I personally prefer a Derby fastening as I find them easier to put on and tighten securely. These are also excellent for dancing as they have a very fine bonded leather sole.

Silly of me to assume you were boarding at Red Hook! We do like avoiding luggage carousels but never know what we might be bringing back from London or Scotland, and if visiting my sister will have wine and cheese on the way there. We wouldn't intentionally travel light for QM2 though.

I've no knowledge of US Interstate flights. If we fly from here to UK on BA or Air France/KLM we'd normally book a luggage inclusive fare although they do offer hand luggage only for slightly less. If we use easyJet we pay for checked bags but it's not any more than BA. Ryanair are the same but their destinations don't suit us. Is checked luggage expensive in US? edit: If we fly to Scotland on BA it's a connecting flight and hand luggage fares are not offered.

On a Helsinki to Stockholm ferry, dining in their speciality seafood restaurant there was a very large and loud Russian man at another table being poured unmeasured glasses of Vodka. Eventually they just left him with the bottle, there was never a risk of any being left.

Not a chance! Our backpack carry-ons are full of enough evening wear to dress formally for 14 nights. There might be a fair bit of recycling though.

In case the tag gets ripped off, I also put a printed sheet in each bag with contact details and cabin number. Since we have to check some bags on a flight to Heathrow, I also include details of the address at Red Hook and the time/date QM2 will be docked there in case a bag is lost on the flight and can hopefully catch us up in New York for the return trip.

Given where we live, we normally only drink French wine. Although there is a local deli with an eat in facility that serves Basque cured meats and cheeses and does have a nice Rioja. And we'll consider a few Italian wines, although I'm only confident in my knowledge of a few of them. That might change in May when we visit Rome for several days. The other couple we're meeting there are looking forward to visiting all the old relics, and I just want the food and wine! 🙂 I would only drink New World wines in exceptional circumstances. The Sancerre was just within the package when the limit was $12. I don't think they are likely to price it above the package. We'd be very happy if the Chablis was included.

British tabloids are generally only negative towards the odd one that carries a massive piece of King Edward potato about on their shoulder. There are very few republican tabloids in the UK, and any US perspective of UK tabloids is probably influenced by a very twisted view of events pedalled by one couple.

And of course we all know that $53,999 is much less than £32,849. 🤣🤣 Sorry, couldn't resist.

This might be the Chart Room menu rakkor was looking for. I found it a few weeks ago. It claims to be May 2023. It doesn't list the Cunard own label wines, which are fine for refreshments. I don't know if the Chart Room stocks them. We'll drink the white and rose over an evening of dancing, alternated with gulps of still water. We drink lots of similar wine in France (mainly red) on a daily basis poured from boxes. The Pinot Grigio and Sancerre were ok as well. For dinner we're looking for decent Burgundy Chardonnay or Bordeaux reds and you probably need to be looking at between $60 and $90 for them. We had a Paulliac over two nights that was delicious. qm_chart_room_menu_may_23.pdf

I'm seeing £32,849 pp That's for M603H

Shipyard availability? I don't think we know where the work is taking place yet. Perhaps when that is known it will be clearer. You'd imagine it'll probably be Hamburg, Rotterdam or North West France. Any of them will have nice long daylight working days at that time of year.

Thanks. I think Victoria has mentioned Camilla in the past. I'm sure they are very well made, but they're not really her style, and they are pricey on their French site as well. And of course she doesn't need any more. That won't stop her buying of course! Biggest problem is choosing. We think there's about forty evening outfits we would take and fifty daytime, before she starts looking at different options for coordinating skirts and tops. Some of those certain to go next time are pieces she's had for years and had been on the point of being given away had she not lost weight. But when they went last time they could have been accessorised better than they were and our camera gear and photography skills were lacking. Next time they'll be more sparkly, we'll make sure the right heels are on for photos (dance heels are slightly lower), and we've upgraded to a full frame camera and I'm teaching myself which lenses are best for portraits. Here's a collage of what might have gone, but it's been overtaken by acquisitions. Some will be relegated to make room for dressier sparklier items. And we don't have any problem packing that lot, and if we did we'd just pay for another case.

It's a wee bit more than that. You do have the same table with same waiters and Maître d at every meal. It might be a substitute sommelier at lunchtime. You can walk in anytime that suits within opening hours. You also have the à la carte menu in evening if the main menu doesn't inspire, although some might need to be ordered at lunchtime. There were several dishes on that we rather liked. You do get a full bottle of sparkling in cabin and daily replenished bottled water. We like deck 12 for the cabin. We never use pubs, buffets or specialist dining so quite like the dining situation. I've no idea what the price difference would be for our bookings but if you don't think it's worth £2,900 to you I'm sure you'll enjoy the MD just as much. As you say the main menu is just the same.

If you can! I'm told that this time there isn't one A1 cabin being offered for our itinerary. The option seems to be to book an A2 then hope the agent can persuade them to release one of the A1s we'd like to our itinerary and pay the small difference.

Underneath the Useful Information section about bringing your own onboard on the US site is a statement: "Any wines purchased via the Little Luxuries Collection are not subject to the on board $25 corkage fee". I assume therefore that the fee is still $25. That may be subject to the 15% service charge. In turn it might attract the 20% discount from the package. From a response point of view a problem may be that there aren't many folk who take or are given the package, who then order a bottle of wine at $80 or $150 or even pay corkage on their own wine.

Do you mind explaining where about on the website you found the link to that? I can only see links to the brochure up to Jan 26 on https://www.cunard.com/en-gb

We don't really care what others pay either. We ended up in Britannia Club the first time because the obstructed balconies we wanted were no longer available and we had more FCC than expected. Having discovered that the MDR for BC, and the cabin location were to our liking, that's what we have and will book. I know roughly what the price will be, but my instructions to our agent are to book what I have specified. If those in the next cabin pay less than us, good luck to them. I know BC is by no means the most expensive grade on the ship. Our costs are about £10k including flights, hotel and onboard spend. I'm not really bothered that it might be possible for someone to do the trip for 10% less. For me the more likely future scenario is that we may eventually get fed up and decide to spend that money on something else, probably high end restaurants around this region with overnight stays. That would avoid the trauma of leaving home (and cats) for two weeks.

I found this brochure on Calameo. The link leading to it appeared to be in Italian. CUN-Brochure_Aug24–Jan27.pdf