QUEEN MARY 2 CROSSING TO ENGLAND

We just arrived back from our round trip on the Queen Mary 2 plus a month in London. We left June 13, home July 28th We have many friends in London, visited them, the fine museums, parks, Shakespeare plays and diverse restaurants. We made a day trip to ancient old Oxford where we spent a month twenty years ago. We stayed in a small apartment in Chelsea with a French vegetable and fish market right across the street.

The black and red ship is gorgeous but weather was cool, cloudy and windy except for two really fine days. I did get to lounge twice in a deck chair, just like in the movies.

Fourteen days of no cooking, no shopping, no bed making and toilet cleaning. Our steward cleaned the room and made the bed right while we ate breakfast. While we had dinner, he straightened the room, turned down the bedding and left us chocolates. The food was plentiful and delicious and imaginative. Lots of fruits and vegetable and, meat, fish and fowl choices and delicious small desserts that we (I) couldn’t resist were available.

We walked around deck 7 each day, three times around the ship six a mile.

The ship is beautiful with interiors of highly polished brown and tan woods, grand elevators, staircases and theaters. Entertainment ranged from computer workshops to a production of Arabian Nights and Shakespeare. Music, dancing, movies (all bad), lectures. Ann loved the ones on the planets and space. I read a lot – Joyce’s The Dubliners, Paul Auster’s Invisible and some others. A fine small library was aboard too.