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david,Mississauga

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About Me

  • Location
    Mississauga, Canada
  • Interests
    Classical music, opera, ships, rail travel
  • Favorite Cruise Line(s)
    Cunard
  • Favorite Cruise Destination Or Port of Call
    Transatlantic

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  1. Indeed, the Hudson Valley is attractive. I well-remember my first ever visit to New York, enjoying breakfast in the New York Central dining car whilst going down the Hudson valley on an overnight train from Toronto. The comments that inspired me to comment referred to commuting and I doubt the views from a commuter train would impress as much as what we enjoyed on the Flam to Myrdal trip.
  2. Although I have never commuted into NYC I have travelled in and out by train several times over the past 50 years. The scenery on the Flamsbana line was far more spectacular. 😊 I note that individual bookings can now be made on the Flamsbana. When we took the Norway cruise on the QE several years ago only group bookings could be made in advance except through Cunard. We booked the excursion with Cunard and were glad we did. When the ship docked there was a mad rush to the ticket office by dozens of people. Many of them were disappointed. There was a second ship in port and a large land-based tour.
  3. I suppose there is no chance Cunard will ever present Wagner's Ring Cycle.
  4. As I have previously mentioned my displeasure with Cunard for moving the QE Alaska cruises to Seattle as of next year, I will only add there is a considerable fare difference between this year's cruises from Vancouver and next year's. I made a comparison between two 10-day cruises from similar dates and ports of call and I compared what I will call the full fares not the discounted fares. I compared Britannia Balcony and Queens Grill fares (in Canadian $) and was surprised that QG next year was about 30% higher. Britannia Balcony for one cruise was 60% higher. This is just one more reason why we are seriously thinking of postponing our QM2 booked for the autumn and taking yet another Alaska cruise.
  5. Perhaps it varies by ship. Last year we saw Top Hat on the QE. It ran a little over an hour. The longest play we saw was Romeo and Juliet, performed by members of RADA on the QM2.
  6. All the plays I have seen on Cunard ships have been shortened to between an hour to an hour and 20 minutes maximum.
  7. This may have been a recent change. A year and a half ago we saw the second Downton Abbey film which we had missed seeing in our local cinemas. This discussion got me thinking of our first crossing on the QE2. At that time Cunard was advertising that they showed pre-release films. We saw The Day of the Jackal prior to it being shown in Toronto cinemas.
  8. One of my favourite rooms on the Union-Castle Line's RMS Windsor Castle was the First Class drawing room. It was usually a quiet place which was used for the occasional function. The portrait of The Queen Mother was an original. HM had launched the ship. See Figure 5.1. https://repository.londonmet.ac.uk/6107/1/BD-Manuscript_McKay-for-REF-2021.pdf
  9. On our Alaska cruise on the QE last summer (our first time in QG on that ship) I was surprised to see the list was less than half the length of the one pictured here - and other photos we have seen. There was Bombay gin but no liqueurs that appealed to us. Thanks to advice on CruiseCritic we wrote a note to the butler requesting Baileys and it was provided.
  10. We have embarked the QE in Vancouver three times. For the first and second times we uploaded our photos as requested. Both times the check-in agent did not like them so took new ones. For the third time we didn't bother uploading them. It took the agent just a few seconds to take our photos.
  11. Many years ago when we were members of the P&O Line's P.O.S.H. Club there was a letter published by a regular passenger. She said: "Ports are an unnecessary interruption to my sea-going experience." Well said, I thought.
  12. Cunard has been pulling this stunt for several years on some consecutive voyages. We discovered this with the Québec-NY-Southampton and vv voyages. Very few cabins - especially in Britannia Club - are available as one 14-day voyage but ample space is available for two back-to-back voyages at a higher cost. Even if the same cabin is available on both segments Cunard will not sell it as one voyage once the single voyage is marked sold out in that category. On principle we shouldn't let them treat us this way, but those two segments are amongst our favourites so we do it. At our age we don't like booking much more than a year in advance.
  13. We always have a G&T at the interval of plays in London and noticed that many years ago. I wondered why there was so little gin in the glass. In the 1980s and 1990s we cruised several times on the P&O Canberra. The spirit measurement was one-fifth of a gill which I calculated as one ounce. The standard measurement in bars and restaurants in Canada used to be 1.25 ounces but has dropped to one ounce - which is better than 25 ml. It is strange that despite having gone metric decades ago, wine and spirits in restaurants are still measured in ounces. Bottles purchased in wine and liquor stores are metric, however.
  14. The measure of one shot of spirits is shrinking again. It wasn't long ago it was 1.5 ounces, then reduced to one ounce. The 25 ml measure is a mere .8 of an ounce. I wouldn't even taste the gin in a G&T. Thankfully they are offering doubles.
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