D&N

I don't think that the sort of dancer described will always be skilful. If they are then you should dance in front of them to check it out. If they are skilful they will avoid you. If they don't, they are not skilful but inconsiderate and you should sue them for any injuries that you suffer. In practice the only times we found the floor to be really busy were the first few dances on gala nights. Otherwise there was plenty of space for dancers of all levels of proficiency. When party music is played in Queens Room sometimes there is a problem when ballroom dancers hear a piece they can dance to but the floor is full of disco dancers blocking the lines of dance. Some recent threads have published programs listing when recorded music is on, or a small section of the Queens Room band are playing. The floor is usually less crowded during those times than the headline session of each night.

Is that the one with Toulon? It's a bit far from us (90 miles) but there's less chance of missing it due to weather than there is at Cannes or Villefranche. Oh I nearly forgot, we'll be sailing back to Southampton then.

Writing as a retired professional scheduler/planner in the transport industry, Cunard's methods of allocating cabins to itineraries seem very basic. With bus or light or heavy rail there could be several million potential pieces of a jigsaw to cover, and these could result in infinite combinations of potential crew shifts. When I started out all that was done manually on pencil and paper, but for around forty years there have been continually improving software solutions to speed the tasks up and minimise cost. The cabin grade we've booked can only be allocated to four other different itineraries that could overlap while we are onboard. In fact the ones we would prefer are all allocated to the east and west components of our round trip. That makes it a very simple case of two halves or both together. It seems odd that they'll make 90%+ of the cabins available to the east and west crossings only, when it would be quite simple to cross off the same one in each direction and allocate it to the round trip. It ties in with the familiar theme of their IT not being the best.

That nice lady that phoned me earlier was on Explora a month or two back. The photos she posted on Facebook looked great. Destinations not of interest and I didn't see much sign of dancing!

I got a call at 13:10 UK time for my credit card details. I wouldn't normally entertain such a thing, but since I was expecting the call and recognised the lady's voice I didn't have a problem. As she had already warned me, there was only one A1 cabin allocated to the itinerary that we wanted so she was on sharpish and nabbed it. We'll see if we can change it to one of our preferred numbers at a later date. It doesn't have a connecting door, which was the most important thing. It's about 6 cabins further on the wrong side from what we would prefer, but it's not a big issue if we end up staying there.

I won't be booking anything. But I know someone who will.

I hadn't found an entry for Nuuk in my zone settings, but realised when I researched a few days ago that it was a sub menu of a Greenland option.

I looked up "android scan and combine to pdf" for future use. On Android it can be done through Google Drive https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9308884?hl=en I tried it with 3 pages of a wine catalogue. You need to tap bulk add before each additional page. I've not figured out if you can choose to have pages portrait rather than landscape yet. Might simply be a case of turning phone round. Scanned_20231002-1205.pdf

You'll probably be disappointed. It is not clotted cream served with scones in Queens Room at afternoon tea. It's a sort of quenelle shaped dollop of thick sweetish chantilly like cream. It's quite a nice cream but not clotted. I have seen photos of clotted cream being served, which might have been from the Grills Lounge.

It was 25 years ago past July that we sailed 7 nights northbound Vancouver to Seward on Sun Princess. I wore my black dinner suit on one formal and my ivory tux on the other. My wife wore gowns. I varied between a suit and tie and open necked shirt on other nights. There may have been a semi-formal option back then. We also did about 7 nights of land tours. We had two huge bags, and probably far more luggage than we really needed if we had planned properly. Our table companions were another couple and two single ladies travelling together. The other guy wore dark suit and tie on formal nights. Formal night compliance was probably 90%+ tuxes. But we did spot one family group threading through the throng, presumably to the buffet, in shell suits and trainers. In talking to some of the crew; they said that on the odd occasion they were able to get off ship for an evening and visited clubs and bars in Alaska, they felt overdressed in jeans! The region does appear to have a reputation for casual dress.

Moonset and Sunrise at same time this morning.

In each direction you are likely to have two Gala Evenings on nights 2 and 6. Normally the themes are Black & White and Masquerade westbound and Red & Gold and Roaring Twenties eastbound. It's highly unlikely that will change. Besides there is no obligation to follow the themes. You can simply follow general gala evening guidance. And you can exceed the dress code. There's nothing to stop you dressing formally every night if you want.

I don't generally need alarms to wake me in the morning and I think there were enough clocks around the ship or the cabin phone to tell us the time. However I do like to keep the time updated on my phone and camera so that photos have the correct digital time stamp in the data. Last time I had difficulty finding a time zone for GMT-2 on my phone and had to set that manually. I've figured it out for next time. I forgot to do that with the camera I'd taken, but it was only used for a limited number of snaps. I used an app to bulk change the exif data in the files to the correct times. The new camera makes it easy to change between zones in each direction.

I'm told that A1 and A2 grades are $145 per person for the 14 night trip we want. Don't know about others. That came from my agent. You could ask an agent about others. I book through a UK agent. I wouldn't trust a French agent with something so important!

Likewise our wonderful agent, who shall remain nameless, along with her daughter that we've never dealt with, will attend to our booking. However she has given us her prices and levels of onboard credit for the grade we want. She has also warned us that only a certain quantity of that grade will be available to the itinerary we require. But she can't check cabin numbers at this stage. There are a further four different itineraries that will be on sale that partially overlap the one we want and it's possible that our first choice cabin may be allocated to one of them. Therefore I have supplied her with a list of cabin numbers in order of preference. There are certain cabins within the grade we don't want. If using an agent or even if booking direct, perhaps best to do some homework and make sure you are familiar with what cabins will be acceptable to you and what ones you would want to avoid.

France are inviting the various "at risk" groups to be vaccinated with the latest versions of vaccines from October 2nd. That includes me in the over 65 category. My young 🙂 wife will have hers fully reimbursed as well even though she is hasn't been in a target category for over 2 years. Don't know about the rest of Europe.

We saw Chicago last July, Sunday Matinee at the Ambassador Theatre. We were very disappointed. It seemed amateurish compared to our admittedly distant and infrequent West End and Glasgow/Edinburgh experiences.

On board of course. Here it's easier to move them from machine to balcony and for most of year everything is dry in a couple of hours.

Easy/non iron cotton shirts look fine if dried on hangers. Most other things don't need ironed if smoothed out while damp.

Yes. As decided last October we will book a round trip to New York in June 2025 in Britannia Club. And in subsequent years until something prevents us from doing so. I don't really see any disadvantages. If there wasn't a round trip between end of May and mid June we might have a problem, but we could possibly move to September.

My agent was able to give her prices for the grade we want, along with how much OBC, and the number of cabins of that grade that Cunard were stating would be available. Those prices were based on specific cabins from a list I gave her. Perhaps ask agents for some quotes. Doesn't stop you booking direct when on sale.

I can't answer your question, but rolls were mentioned in a previous post. What I can say is that the bread that is baked in our local supermarket (Tesco Extra sized) tastes much better than Cunard's rolls. Presumably it's prepared elsewhere then cooked in the store's ovens. The ovens are visible, but I don't think there's enough space in the prep area for them to be making from scratch. In the last 10 years they have been stocking more British style loaves for sandwich making but the bulk of what is sold is freshly cooked. I'm not complaining about Cunard's rolls but bread isn't my biggest concern when eating on a ship.

I couldn't last 36 nights. When we lived in Scotland and came to our studio here for all our holidays it was hard to go home. The only thing I looked forward to was getting back to our cats. Living here, I just don't want to leave. Two weeks is about all I can cope with. It feels like I'm on permanent holiday and if I go elsewhere it's to experience the few things we don't have here or to visit friends or relatives. It would be better if they all came to visit us.

We used to assist at dance classes held in two masonic halls. One had many photos from lodge activities displayed. In the early 80s I recall meeting one of my colleagues en route to a lodge meeting. At the time I naïvely thought he was heading to a snooker club and his little case contained a screw together cue! 🙂 There are also lots of photos and videos of events on the internet. I'm sure there are things that aren't shown but type of attire doesn't seem to be a secret.

It all sounds incredibly civilised to me. Many many years ago a large group of my former colleagues went to an afternoon banquet in a medieval themed restaurant. They hit the headlines in the local press, since their interpretation of a medieval banquet was that they should have food fights and were throwing food at the folk on neighbouring tables!