Colin_Cameron

Walking (though this is a good half hour to the centre and 40 minutes to the Hagia Sophia).

Like the others I'd recommend the tram. When you come out the docks you want to head left but depending on exactly which berth the ship is at the closest tram stop could be to your right. Have a quick check to see if you see a tram platform close by, if not follow the tram lines to the left, towards the Galata Bridge and you'll soon find a stop. There are token machines at the entrance to the platforms. The stop you want for The Blue Mosque, Topkapi, Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern is "Sultanahmet".

When you've seen all of those :D follow the tram lines in the same direction you were heading for one more stop and you are at the Grand Bazaar. From here on it's all downhill. Through the Bazaar, out the other side, down the hill, through the Spice Bazaar and you're back at the Galata Bridge again. You can either take the tram a couple of stops or walk from here (you'll be able to see the ship from here).

A very easy do-it-yourself tour of Istanbul. Have a great time.

Came across an interesting item today.

Stuck inside a coin counter in a bank I found a disc, larger than any current UK coin, about the size of a half crown if anyone remembers them. It's made from really light metal. The face is badly damaged but it shows two heads in profile. On the reverse, around the top it says "DAILY RECORD MEDAL" and below that the image of a ship, which I immediately recognised, and the number "534". Around the bottom edge it has the date "SEPTEMBER 26th 1934"

There's a couple of clues there for anyone with more than a passing interest in Cunard history.

The heading confused me for a while. Was it a record (memento) of the day? Turns out the medal was a free giveaway from the local newspaper the Daily Record.

The staff had no idea what it was and told me to take it. I fear due to its condition it's value will be zero but I see there are some on eBay for a few pounds.

But looking on the bright side I managed to find out what was wrong with the coin counter:D

Colin

Hi This is a pic of 4010 on QV

As the others have said, you can't really see over the railing comfortably when sitting down but on the plus side the balcony is about 18 inches to two feet deeper than the ones above it (the width of the extended panel on the left of the pic).

Regards, Colin.

Todd English: Have They Lost Interest?

I asked myself the same question on QVs maiden voyage. What chef opens a new restaurant, with his name above the door, and doesn't even bother to turn up for the opening?

Regards, Colin.

A new coat. And a go-faster stripe.

We thought our transfer had pulled up at the wrong ship when we arrived in Barbados on 7th Jan. The new colour scheme is so new that a sizeable chunk of the port side wasn't complete at this point and in this photo you can just see that the bow still needs a bit of work. It was all completed in Jamaica on 20/21/22 Jan.

There's been a couple of other changes since we were last on board, but they won't be new to some of you. The new canopy over The Grill (Deck 6 outside the Palms Cafe) means that the aft decks are pretty useless now for sailaway music as you can't see deck 5, where the band used to be, from the upper decks. Sailaway parties are now held up on deck 8.

The outdoor bar on deck 6 has gone and is now the servery for The Grill.

Deck 5 aft, outside the Coral Club, now has the same faux cane furniture as the Marquee bar and seemed to get much more use throughout the voyage than it did in the past.

Inside the ship, the computer room has gone and is now just a couple of PCs in the library. (I guess because most people now use their own devices on the wi-fi, which was upgraded during our last few days aboard.) The card room next door has been moved down to the old gym beside the beauty salon on deck 3. These two rooms have been knocked together and opened out into the Braemar Room to create the new coffee/chocolate shop.

There's been a general shuffling of the shops and the sundries shop is now down here as well instead of up on deck 7 (which is now cabins)

I've seen a lot of changes to this ship over the years, most of them for the better, thankfully.

Regards, Colin.

Hi, I wish I had seen this question before last week. I would have paid more attention.

There was some seating, but not a great amount. There was a couple of small "Duty Free" shops, one of them for cigars. A money exhange. One, or maybe two, car rental desks. Ship agents and various other offices. Maybe twenty check-in desks. Plus Customs and Passport and Security (both entering the country and when returning to the ship).

Surely with that number of people there must be toilets! But as I said, I wasn't paying attention.

Is it the Celestyal Crystal you're going on? It was embarking (and presumably also disembarking) on our second day there.

Sounds like a great trip. Colin.

I've now found some photos of 5001 & 2 and they look OK.

Richard, Your photos of the P grade cabins are better than any I have seen. Congratulations.

To add to our dilema we have now narrowed our choice of cruises down to two. Both in the Med and both with a couple of new ports for us. A rare find these days.

It was when I noticed that they were consecutive that I started to fantasize. :)

"We could do both."

"NO!" was her response.

"In the Queens Grill" I suggested.

"#### NO!" was her response

Never one to take a first (or second) answer as final, I plan to make enquiries.:D

Thanks for your input everyone.

Regards, Colin.

Thoughts anyone?

While we have sailed in both PG and QG on QE2 and QM2 we have never tried them on either QV or QE (but we have sailed on both ships, multiple times). We're thinking that the current "Upgrade, on us" promotion would be a good opportunity to try it out.

However... Looking at on-line and brochure photos, I'm finding the PG cabins a little uninspiring. A bit longer than normal balcony cabins and this, at least in the photos, makes them look narrower. They would appear to be only slightly larger than our normal deluxe insides but with a less usable layout. The two square cabins at the front of deck 5 look interesting but I can't find any photos of them.

The QG cabins on the other hand, look special. And if you're only paying PG prices...:D

Colin.

Hardly obstructed at all.

Regards, Colin.

One other thing I've never seen mentioned whenever this topic is discussed.

Booking in the UK will give you ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents) and, if a flight is included, ATOL (Air Tour Operators Licence) protection should the travel agent or operator go bust.

Are there equivalent guarantees included in the US fares?

Regards, Colin.

The UK 3-pin sockets are (or at least were) a little too close to the desk below, especially for some transformer/charger type plugs but I believe most, if not all, have now been refitted upside-down.

Regards, Colin.

Hi Mateybubbles,

I've read that review as well and was concerned when we had a delux inside guarantee on QE but we ended up in 1058 and it was fine.

But back to QV. We've been in 1074(twice) and 1078 and never heard any sounds coming through the wall from that central white space between us and your cabin. One night we did think we could hear music from the Queens Room above but the harder we listened the less we were sure. It was that quiet. I await your report when you return with interest.

This is a much larger cabin than your original one and we find the squarer layout gives much more usable space.

Cabin 1078

Regards, Colin.

... but my eagle-eyed sister did spot the 3 of us in the background in Knossos (12 minutes) pointing!

We are in the 2nd video of the 3 at 10:05 dancing (throwing each other about!!)

We're on QV Canaries cruise on November 16th. Can't wait.

Have a great time and please tell us all about it when you get back.

Regards, Colin.

P.S. And many thanks legion3 for posting that

I think my sister might have been the girl in the bikini with her back to the camera around 5:20 minutes in....?

Is that also her at 8:38?

I've also been digging through our stash of treasures. We were in 4010 and paid £1515 each. (ouch!) Cocktails were all $3.00, $5 in a souvenir glass (we still have, and use, all four that we brought home), spirits were $2.95 - $5.00(Chivas Regal 21YO). The largest item on our bar bill was $24 which I suspect was after dinner drinks for all eight of us at the table:D

My Grandmother had taken our younger sister on a cruise on the Vistafjord earlier that same summer and the Princess didn't seem to measure up, she would often say "it wasn't like this on the Vista, love"! [emoji23]

First time back on Cunard next month.....

As we sailed out of Venice in '92 we passed Crown Odyssey and we were pretty impressed so we tried that the following year but although it was nice and shiny and new it wasn't the same so it was back to Cunard again.

In '95 we booked the Princess again but they sold it and we were moved to Sagafjord. In '96 we booked Sagafjord again but they sold it and we were moved to Crown Dynasty. In '97 we tried to book the Dynasty again but ... Yep, they sold it. So we went on Vistafjord and managed to get in nine cruises before they sold her. So far we've managed to sail on 10 Cunard ships so you could say the Princess has a lot to answer for.

Regards, Colin.

I'll try and get time to upload my video to Youtube. You never know. You might see yourself.

OK. Apologies for the picture quality. It's been transferred from video8, to VHS, to DVD, and now to Youtube and it's lost a little bit each time.

Also, it seems to have split into 3 parts as it came off the DVD, so here's

You never realise how much older you're getting untill you look at old photos:eek:

Colin.

Cunard Princess is still sailing as Golden Iris.

Oh happy days! ...the small cabins with their awful tinny drawers

I think we were on a September sailing from Venice visiting Istanbul and many of the Greek islands sailing back from Athens.

Regards, Colin.

I'll try and get time to upload my video to Youtube. You never know. You might see yourself.

They were promoting Fever Tree on QE recently so I guess that makes it a possibility.

The dance hosts on our cruise seemed to treat the single ladies quite fairly, dancing with both the attractive and the good dancers equally with the not-so-attractive and not-very-good dancers, however the same could not be said of the dance teacher. He danced exclusively with a Taiwanese lady,who we presumed was having private lessons with him, and when they took to the floor there was little room for anyone else, they danced as if they were on "Strictly Come Dancing." It was quite intimidating for novices to be on the floor at the same time as them.

Our paths must have crossed so many times on this holiday.

I was very impressed with the ability of three of the four hosts (especially Colin, the tall one) to dance so well with lots of different women. Not that the forth was bad, just not as good at getting the best from strange and varying partners as the others.

I danced with several of the Taiwanese group and in my opinion the one you mentioned may not have been the best dancer but was excellent at following a lead. Apparently the female profesional was off on maternity leave. I'm not sure what the policy is on the teachers dancing in the evenings, some of them help the gentleman hosts out some don't.

As for female dance hosts I'm not sure there's a need. If you run out of single lady passengers there's the cruise staff, and the waitresses. I've even been known to ask the female professionals to dance (when I was young and foolish).:D

Regards, Colin.

It happens all the time on Cunard's website. For example, the cruise I'm on next is currently showing an inside for the same price as a balcony.

Yep. Last year we booked a balcony 'cause it was cheaper than an inside.

Regards,

I have heard him speak many times over the years but one of the most interesting was an unscheduled talk (one of the other speakers was seasick or something and John was asked to fill in). With no notes, no slides and no preparation he spoke for an hour about anything and everything (apart from ships). He talked about his life, his family, places he'd been, people he'd met. Absolutely fascinating.

They used to say that the late Sir Peter Ustinov could have read the phone book and made it interesting. To my mind John Maxtone-Graham was in the same category.

Colin.

I think 3/7 is a reasonable number. Personally, I'd like 4/7 but I know that's unlikely.

 

Transatlantic crossings should be formal affairs.

It used to be 4/6 :)

I found nothing wrong with the old three tier system of Formal, Semi-formal & Elegant casual. Dressing down for dinner is certainly not what I want.

It could be argued that the new code is even dressier than the old one. Whereas the "jacket & tie" nights have been replaced with a minimum of "jacket required", so too have the first night/last night/evening-in-port casual nights. The minimum standard, for gentlemen, is now "jacket required" instead of "jacket/tie not required".

The combined effect of this is that, in practice, very little has changed. I would estimate that on an informal evening recently, approximately half the men were wearing either a suit or a jacket and tie (maybe a little under 50% on an in-port evening, maybe a little over 50% on an at-sea evening).

We've only got 3 formals on an upcoming 12 night cruise on QE, I was expecting 4. Three years ago we had 4/12 on a P&O cruise!

And we may yet still get them. It wouldn't be the first time (or second, or third) that the pre-announced schedule bears no resemblance to that issued once on-board. We've got sea days that are listed as informal, and port days listed as formal. While it's not a hard and fast rule, I'd be prepared to do some rearranging.

Regards, Colin.

It's nothing new.

In 1999 I spotted a well known (female) TV presenter, regular passenger and guest speaker, sunbathing topless on the Sun Deck on QE2. :eek:

Fewer private balconies in those days and considerably lower risk of ending up all over anti-social media.

Regards,

This could be a deliberate policy since many passengers will be taking statins and it's a well known fact that grapefruit interferes with these drugs.

Being one of those affected I should have considered this possibility but it never crossed my mind.

We've done two AI cruises on Fred (the first one, the whole ship was AI) and only saw one person overindulging, or at least only one who had obviously had too much. Out of two shiploads that's probably not bad.

Colin.

Wish I could find information on their voyage, but I understand Cunard itself kept no records from that time.

The Cunard archives are held at Liverpool University. Some of it was available online about 15-20 years ago but has since disappeared.

Regards, Colin.

From last September:

House wine Roc D'Opale

Boddingtons draught (bars only)

Stella Artois draught (bars only)

Strongbow cider can

Spitfire (it says cans but I'm sure I saw bottles)

Carlsberg Export can

Heineken can

House spirits: as 1160451 says, unheard of names.

soft drinks from the soda gun

fruit juices - with one exception, think it might have been grapefruit. When we first questioned this a couple of years ago we were told that whoever wrote the list of included drinks simply forgot it. It would appear that oversight has never been fixed.

Regards, Colin.