bluemarble

At first I thought this was going to be hopeless to identify. But a review of ports on your recent itinerary to Norway found a good match. I think this is showing one of the bollards at the south end of the cruise pier at Olden, Norway. There are two similar ones visible on google street view. I also found a YouTube video of Azura at Olden showing what appears to be the same boat with crew attaching lines and later casting them off from that bollard.

Yes indeed. Well done. There's even a portion of the stern of Queen Mary barely visible at the far right at the base of the dome, so that photo qualifies as having a Cunard ship in it.

Here's another view of a port we've already seen. Although it may not look like it, there are enough details in this photo for our forensic photo analysts to identify the port.

I think not. We've had a Kings Court on QM2 even though there was a queen on the throne. I find it interesting how many hits I get when I google "Kings Grill" from people who thought that was the name of the Kings Court.

You can find the dress code and theme schedule for your cruise in the daily calendar section of My Cunard for your booking. Or you can check the master dress code and theme schedule I've compiled for the "Dress Code and Theme Schedules for 2021-22" sticky on this forum. I'll post the link to the QV schedule here for your reference. But do double-check what your daily calendar says in My Cunard to make sure what I've compiled hasn't changed. QV 2022 Dress Code and Theme Schedule

Ah, yes. The ship is QE and I only figured you for having embarked QE in Adelaide, Melbourne and Yokohama from previous posts on this thread. Searches of those ports proved fruitless although Yokohama does have similar cranes so I spent quite a bit of time ruling out Yokohama before your additional hint ruled that out anyway. A post of yours on another thread provides the answer to this one including the name of the nearby hotel. I'll leave it at that for now. 😉

It's been a while since I've updated the counts I keep of the number of QM2 transatlantic crossings per year. I started posting these counts a few years ago in response to a question about whether the number of crossings had been decreasing in recent years. For obvious reasons, QM2 crossings were severely curtailed during 2020/2021. There is going to be an uptick in crossings for 2022 if all goes as scheduled. That's due in large part to the crossings included in the early 2022 Caribbean cruises which are replacing QM2's canceled 2022 World Voyage. For example, I'm counting two crossings for the QM2 Caribbean cruise currently underway: Southampton-Barbados (a westbound crossing) and then Tortola-Southampton (an eastbound crossing). Some of you may recall our discussions about that in my earlier thread What's the precise definition of "Transatlantic Crossing"? But now that the 2023 schedules are out, there is a significant drop off in the number of crossings scheduled for 2023. Some, but by no means all of that could be attributed to the gap in QM2's schedule between October 20 and November 16, 2023 which looks like it might be another drydock/refit. For 2023 crossings, it would appear it's back to levels comparable to ten years ago during 2013/2014. QM2 Crossings Per Year 2004 = 15 2005 = 26 2006 = 20 2007 = 23 2008 = 24 2009 = 23 2010 = 21 2011 = 21 2012 = 20 2013 = 18 2014 = 18 2015 = 22 2016 = 21 2017 = 24 2018 = 24 2019 = 24 2020 = 1 2021 = 1 2022 = 26 2023 = 18 Total QM2 crossings through 2023 = 390