Queen Elizabeth 54 days of cruising on her this year. My views

[Mareblu]

4 hours ago, bazzaw said:

Yes - I think so. I have been on Cunard ships with a large contingent of Aussies and most wore Black Tie. But Black Tie is very rare in Australia.

Where did they find their formal wear then?  

[Mareblu]

11 hours ago, Solent Richard said:

 

Agree. 

 

We sail from Southampton to Sydney onboard Queen Mary 2 and swopped over 800 Brits for Aussies at Los Angeles before crossing the Pacific. 

 

As a bit of a fanatic on 'dress codes' I had nothing to complain about following the changeover. Indeed, if anything the daytime standards were appeared to be raised.

Thank you, Richard of Solent🙏🙂

[Mareblu]

18 hours ago, bazzaw said:

Cunard dress code? She is now in Australia - I have read elsewhere that Aussie's sense of dress is "casual - to the point of indifference " 🙂 Most of our Cunard cruises have been from Southampton (2x3 Queens)  - with one QE from San Francisco to Sydney. We have a short 8 dayer on QE in January (think HOT summer)  Sydney to Hobart and return. I am expecting it to be a bit rough!! 

Bass Strait may be rough...we're on that cruise too.  Nothing could match the heaving North Sea we endured six weeks ago, but then again....

[Mareblu]

11 hours ago, exlondoner said:

I was on one of the 3 Queens with 400 Aussies and I must say that, as far as I could tell, they were just as smart as everyone else, that is pretty smart. Is it different at home?

Thanks, exlondoner.  No different at all.  Humans on our blue planet are a diverse lot, and that applies to each and every nationality.  We have recently spent time in your lovely Bournemouth, and in Richard's beautiful Hampshire, I wouldn't dream of opining in a sweeping statement that Britain is populated by rampaging football hooligans, just as Australians don't all inhabit buffets and pubs.  Educated people, fortunately, realise that we are all diverse, yet all the same.  

[addo]

  The Wipe Out Trivia at 7.30pm was held either in the Garden Lounge or the Golden Lion.  I passed through the buffet and could judge how busy it was and the Golden Lion was also busy serving meals.  It was not the best venue for Trivia at 7.30pm I have no idea why it was moved from the Garden Lounge as this was the better venue.

[exlondoner]

10 hours ago, Mareblu said:

Thanks, exlondoner.  No different at all.  Humans on our blue planet are a diverse lot, and that applies to each and every nationality.  We have recently spent time in your lovely Bournemouth, and in Richard's beautiful Hampshire, I wouldn't dream of opining in a sweeping statement that Britain is populated by rampaging football hooligans, just as Australians don't all inhabit buffets and pubs.  Educated people, fortunately, realise that we are all diverse, yet all the same.  

I’m glad you liked Bournemouth: the bay is beautiful and this year the sea was very warm for Southern England. It does, surprisingly, have a Premier Division football team, but not, I think, much rampaging in its very small ground with a capacity less than 12,000. 
 

Incidentally, I feel rather guilty, because having complained previously about being called a Brit, I called Australians Aussies in an earlier post. Sorry about that.

[Mareblu]

1 minute ago, exlondoner said:

I’m glad you liked Bournemouth: the bay is beautiful and this year the sea was very warm for Southern England. It does, surprisingly, have a Premier Division football team, but not, I think, much rampaging in its very small ground with a capacity less than 12,000. 
 

Incidentally, I feel rather guilty, because having complained previously about being called a Brit, I called Australians Aussies in an earlier post. Sorry about that.

Aussies is a much-loved moniker, feel free to call us that.  Incidentally, having traced my ancestry to the 1200s, all documented amazingly, I feel a deep connection with Scotland, Devon, Somerset, Cornwall and Birmingham.  I truly believe there is such a wondrous, elusive mystic element as genetic memory.  I am totally at home in Britain.  My husband was born in beautiful Friuli, the alpine region of northern Italy close to the Austrian border, and because I love and speak that lyrical, romantic language, I feel equally at home there.  Language is culture, as one of my university lecturers was fond of saying.  This world of ours is incredibly rich in diverse cultures.

[lissie]

On 11/16/2022 at 12:45 AM, Solent Richard said:

 

Oh I don't know, my wife and I found both the music and style ...

 

 

....certainly equal to Cunard when onboard Saga's Spirit of Discovery. As for dance floor space, there was certainly more than enough for us...

 

 

*****

 

 

*****

 

 

...aided of course by the fact many of the passengers sadly are no longer as agile as they once were.

Saga won't sell to non-UK residents! I agree that does look like a decent sized floor - but we colonials are not allowed LOL 

[lissie]

13 hours ago, addo said:

  The Wipe Out Trivia at 7.30pm was held either in the Garden Lounge or the Golden Lion.  I passed through the buffet and could judge how busy it was and the Golden Lion was also busy serving meals.  It was not the best venue for Trivia at 7.30pm I have no idea why it was moved from the Garden Lounge as this was the better venue.

Did it move back to the Golden Lion? I was on the BCN-SIN leg and they moved to the pub for a while - mainly because the Garden Lounge was getting too hot (it either doesn't have air con or it doesn't have air con suitable for hot weather! ) -but it was moved back after a few nights - because it clearly doesn't work with the new evening pub menu being served 

[lissie]

12 hours ago, exlondoner said:

 

Incidentally, I feel rather guilty, because having complained previously about being called a Brit, I called Australians Aussies in an earlier post. Sorry about that.

Ooops - I naturally just call Brits POMs in casual conversation - is that considered insulting? We generally get called after the  green fruit in NZ  - perfectly OK with that.  And the national chant of Australians is "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie...." 

[Mareblu]

1 hour ago, lissie said:

Ooops - I naturally just call Brits POMs in casual conversation - is that considered insulting? We generally get called after the  green fruit in NZ  - perfectly OK with that.  And the national chant of Australians is "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie...." 

Kiwi to me is a term of endearment.  My close friend, who hails from Central Otago, always says, "Kiwi here" when she rings.  At the risk of making a sweeping statement myself (to which I normally have an aversion), Kiwis, like the fruit they're named after, are lovely.  POMS may be another matter, and may not always be taken with affection.  The original spelling was POHM, and is thought to refer to convicts in Australian historical times (Prisoner of His Majesty).  In this day and age, some would consider that an ancestral badge of honour, because needing to fill "the colony🙄", the English sent mainly fit, young prisoners to a foreign hemisphere for the most trivial of matters, sometimes.  One of my ancestors was a 14yo girl, arrested and convicted in Ross-on-Wye for "stealing a piece of cloth".  She was immediately sentenced to death, commuted to penal servitude via Botany Bay.  I weep.  Her grandson became the largest landowner in New South Wales, and a Member of State Parliament for many years.  He was also responsible for sinking the first artesion bore in either NSW or the Northern Territory.  Maybe he was born of wonderful, courageous, stock.

[addo]

They moved all the Trivias to the Golden Lion after Singapore .  The result was a very crowded pub including the bar.  Even the 9.15pm quiz was held there.  We disembarked in Perth so I do not know if it continued on the way to Sydney.   The Garden Lounge was not too hot in the evening so would have been the better venue.

[D&N]

It is nice to have a large dance floor, but we can dance in much smaller areas.

We danced from around 8.30pm to 11pm on all 14 nights of our round trip TA in May/June. Over half that time was spent in G32 because the music was better there than in the Queens Room.

We did: Waltz, Foxtrot, Social Foxtrot, Quickstep, Tango, Viennese Waltz, Cha-Cha, Rhumba, Samba, Jive and Disco; either to the band Exile or recorded music.

Some of our earliest public dancing was in a local hotel restaurant that held dinner dances. The floor was no bigger than 4m x 4m and the keyboard/singer duo took up about 20% of that, so we got used to small spaces at an early stage. And we've been on competition sized floors with several hundred folk up dancing in between the competition rounds and had less space than on a small floor.

We have very little opportunity to dance locally so we just make the best of anything that's offered.

 

[MMDown Under]

On 11/2/2022 at 9:42 PM, lissie said:

What's Appassionata ? 

Not heard of that . The standard shows were Be our Guest,  Palladium Nights,  Top Hat (went to that one 2 or maybe 3x). The thing is they went through the same shows 3x on the first cruise and 1x on the 2nd so it was definitely getting repetative. 

 

Return visit - Maderia and Azores - always loved Portugal and the islands were gorgeous. Oh and Mallorca - not what I expected at all. Oh and Crete . I hardly ever repeat locations because so there is so much I haven't  seen but Crete is probably going to return in a year or so 

Thank you for your detailed comments on your cruises.  What a wonderful trip you have had.  We also love Madeira and Azores, visited by cruise ship, and Crete visited independently by ferry and local bus. PS Don't visit off season as everything was closed!