We awoke at around 8:30am but it was 7:30am as the clocks went back an hour overnight - now 7hrs ahead of the UK. We are getting closer and are homeward bound.
We slept well but cannot say we awoke refreshed - it will obviously take more than 1 night’s sleep to recharge our batteries. We had breakfast in the buffet but then returned to the room to complete some paperwork in order to gain entry to Mauritius in a week’s time. We have to give this completed paperwork, plus our passports, over to some staff early this afternoon and we will get them back in due course apparently.
As we are back on a new ship, we will do our tour sections again. We will start with the main atrium - known as the Grand Lobby. We will also include some of corridors off the atrium which showcase some amazing art.
We saw an very interesting insight lecture on the Cunard ship QE2 - launched in the late 60s by the late Queen who called it Queen Elizabeth the second when the naming card she was given just said Queen Elizabeth - well when you are queen you can do these things. It was certainly very different from the then current Cunard ships but we would have hated it as it was “modern” as all the art deco looks were removed and 60s greens and orange interior colours abounded. The design and layout we would have liked but definitely not the decor.
After that Pam dozed but Mark slept for over 2hrs - you will see a theme developing on this today.
We had a light lunch in the buffet - Pam had fisherman’s pie and veg and Mark had Beef, veg and noodles. Our appetites are there but are competing with energy levels. Then it was time for “join the Mauritius paperwork queue” - I don’t where this misconception of Brits liking to queue comes from as we all hate it. This one was long but moved fast for us as we were British and had our passports with us. Citizens from some other countries had to have their passports held in the pursers office and their queue seemed very slow as they obviously had to be found.
The mix of guests onboard here could not be more different from Arcadia. There are definitely a lot of Americans/Canadians and obviously a load of Australians / New Zealanders but also you can tell there are also some from Europe and Asia too based on accents and languages being spoken. That being said, the ship seems quite empty - maybe lots got off in Australia and only a few got on to replace them. We have also seen a couple of families on here - it is 33 days back to the UK but only 17 to Cape Town so maybe some are getting off there.
We decided to explore the promenade deck and also have a drink and chill out in the aft Terrace bar as it is a lovely 24c with a beautiful sea breeze - we are getting a little fed up of aircon but boy have we needed it! Still nothing beats cool, natural, fresh air.
We were then a little peckish and had a few finger sandwiches, cookies and cake for afternoon tea and then retired to our room again only to shortly after receive a visit from Janet who we were on the Arcadia with. It was great to see her again but, and we are writing this blog later, on reflection we might not have been that coherent to Janet as we were obviously still shattered. We must apologise next time we see her. Once she bade us farewell, and we think we promised to catch-up fully in a couple of days, we went straight to sleep for an afternoon nap. I say nap, Pam had over 2 hours and Mark was heading towards 4 before Pam woke him saying we would miss dinner and wouldn’t sleep tonight.
Tonight is a gala evening and guests are encouraged to wear red and gold around the ship, if you don’t dress in smart attire then you are restricted to which venues you can attend. Tonight we honestly could not be bothered and the thought, and time required, to get dressed up and the effort of coherent conversation with people was beyond us so we just went smart casual and ate in the buffet. However, before that, we stuck on a wash - we have at least 2 loads to do and one of the 6 laundry rooms onboard is just down the corridor from us and we knew it would be a quiet time on gala night so we took full advantage before it closed for the evening. Luckily there was 1 spare washing machine so we claimed it and went to dinner for 46mins until it finished. Lesley, our Arcadia friend, would have been proud of us.
We both had a lovely roast duck and potatoes /mash and steamed vegetables plus a dessert each. There seem to be plenty of staff onboard and your food is served to you in the buffet and cutlery and either table clothes, or simple table covering, is already on the table for you. Waiters will bring you free tea/coffee and water or any other drink you wish to buy. It is all very relaxed and civilised and, remember, this is the normally the food frenzy part of any ship. Not on Cunard.
Whilst we were away our room steward, Ray, had performed an evening turndown of our cabin and left chocolates on our pillow. This feels like we are back to cruising pre shutdown. It is so nice to be back onboard Queen Mary 2 - this our third time. Our good cruise friends Sarah and Andy were onboard her at Christmas and we told them to take care of her for us. They obviously did as it is in fine shape. Now we mustn’t wreck it as I believe they are due back onboard later this year!
We dried our laundry and retired to our room and watched an lecture by Kate Schroeder on Human Evolution - it happened earlier and was taped so we watched it on the catch-up lecture channel before falling fast asleep.
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