David: Final Night at Sea

We did not file a report yesterday -- partly because we were pretty busy, and partly because we were running out of Internet time and the service is fairly slow for the steep price we've had to pay for it, so we decided to save the final half-hour for tonight's wrap-up.

As we've gotten closer to the continent, I've found myself doing more "continental-style" things. At this afternoon's tea, I put milk in my tea, which did not knock me out, though I saw how it could work. At lunch today I put malt vinegar on my fish and chips -- works on the fish, not on the chips.

At yesterday's lunch, I cut and ate my veal schnitzel (another serious violation of my eco-ethical pescatarianism; hey, I'm on vacation) in the continental manner: keeping the fork in the left hand. I can recall a joke or riddle in which a Nazi spy disguised as an American Army man is "outed" because he doesn't switch his fork to his right hand like everyone else in the mess hall. I became aware that the three men around the table to my right -- a retired engineer from Long Island, an elder gentleman from rural Georgia, and the Canadian fellow on the other side of the Georgia man's wife -- were all putting the slices of veal into their mouths with their left hand as well. Only the woman was automatically switching the fork to her right hand after holding it down with her left while cutting with her right. This is kind of cool, I thought. Then, late in the meal, I noticed that Jimmy from Georgia was cutting with the fork in his RIGHT hand and switching to the left to put the pieces in his mouth -- a real Southpaw!

One of the video shows in the planetarium theater was a virtual tour of the bridge with notes about the vessel as a whole. I missed the beginning, but I noted that my earlier report on the cost to build the QM2 was two decimal places off: it was $800 million. The ship has four stabilizers -- 15 feet (or meters?) long when they swing out from the ship underwater rather like whale flippers; only one or two are typically in use when the seas are moderately rough. The ride has been pretty darn smooth after the relative noise and roughness I reported several nights ago. Weather's been great, too: even more sunshine and temperatures around 63 during the day. Lot of wind, though, so deck strolls have still been fairly few and brief. Carole and I did sit a couple minutes on deck chairs in the sun and took photos, just to have done it.

Another thing that amazed me about the ship's engineering was that, in addition to two fixed propellors, it has two "azi pods" (for azimuth), each weighing 260 tons, and each capable of swiveling its propellor mount a full 360 degrees. These make berthing at the docks much easier.

I think since my last report, I've participated in two more pub trivia contests -- teaming up with folks from Britain and Canada, and even a couple who retired from Memphis to settle on land on the south bank of the Umpqua between Scottsburg and Elkton! (Didn't win anything.) I caught the tail end of the Royal Cunard Singers & Dancers -- a troupe of four singers and 12 dancers; mostly Eastern Europeans/Russians and Brits -- rehearsing their show for the NEXT cruise; saw their proper show for this cruise the next night (last night); and a final Neil Diamond tribute tonight at the tail end of a solo concert by Delores Park. It's a bit like Vegas, I gather: the singers and dancers work HARD, move fast and beautifully, wear an endless array of incredible costumes that necessitate astoundingly fast changes, do athletic and sexy dances of complicated set, duo, and solo choreography. It's exhilarating to watch. I saw another (all-Brahms) concert by the Kennedy Center Chamber Players, watched the RADA kids do 55-minute condensations of "Romeo & Juliet" and Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood," did the third and final workshop run by the RADA team (and got my certificate of completion), and had another great night of karaoke at the Golden Lion Pub last night.

This time I got my ballads ("She's Leaving Home" and "Since I Don't Have You") in early, and also managed to get in "Mississippi Queen," "Superstition," "Undun," and "Sunshine of Your Love." As a result, I have a bit of a reputation among other passengers as a karaoke performer. I wasn't the best singer -- one of the Royal Cunard featured singers came to karaoke both nights and did the country tunes she loves and shines at (e.g., "Strawberry Wine," "Born to Fly") and never gets to do onstage. I found out that Hannah is from Britain, lived with her companion in Spain for six years, and has relocated to Nashville the past two, where she is composing and recording her first country record. It's not my cuppa, but I'll watch for her album, since I "know" her now. Her girlfriend told me she'll record under the name Lennia.

This morning I succumbed to one more luxury. The Canyon Ranch spa was offering cut-rate basic full-body massages if you got up early, so I set the phone alarm for 7:45 a.m. (as I note just below, we lost an hour every night, so I got even less sleep than you might think) and showed up first thing. A tiny Chinese-looking gal named Dina who had an Australian accent (she was a native of Melbourne) worked on me, and answered my questions about the facility and her work, and then I went to the hydrotherapy pool for 20 minutes. And THAT was an amazing facility. But details will have to wait, because my clock is ticking away.

We've been told to pack our bags and put them outside our cabin doors before midnight tonight. The ship has already entered the English Channel, it will go around the far side of the Isle of Wight before turning in and docking at Southampton around 6:15 a.m. I intend to go to bed "early" tonight (that is, before midnight when, the past four nights, we've had to move our watches ahead an hour and lose an hour of sleep) so we can rise early and watch our arrival. If the weather's clear, we might be able to see France as well. Once through customs, our particular Elderhostel group will be placed on a bus for Winchester Cathedral, where some early church-approved versions of what would become mystery plays were performed in the nave, and where we'll disembark for tour and a lunch, before pushing on to London and our hotel.

Some last random notes before I run out of our allotment of Internet access. The air on board, apparently because of its constant circulation, is very dry, so we've awakened with dry and cracked sinuses -- Carole's drawn a little blood when she blows her nose. So saline nose spray (or regular cracks of the balcony door and strolls on deck) are recommended for travelers who will follow us.

There are 165 chefs on board -- the senior ones appear to hail mostly from Italy, India, and Nepal; although the executive chef de cuisine is German -- and (the only other item about the service crew I managed to note down, partly for its wonder) 13 sommeliers.

I decided to buy a big coffee-table book about the ship which has great photos, information, and fold-out maps of the multiple decks that we ALMOST managed to master in our six days aboard. Carole picked up a jacket for Pixie with the Queen Mary 2 name on it, to go with my polo shirt. And we were also gifted with copies of each dinner menu, so anyone who is curious can see the choices we had; toward the end, I took photos of some of my dishes because they were lovely to look at and I'll probably never lay eyes on similar dishes again.