Our table is on the second level on the right.
What can you say about a Queen Mary experience that hasn’t already been said? I guess I am going to see what I can do about that.
I’ll start with the obvious and talk “royalty”. The ship is named for a queen, is one of a fleet of queens, and uses royal honourifics frequently when naming rooms.
The Grand Lobby sits mid ship (ohhh, boat-talk) over the second and third decks. Surrounding the Grand Lobby is the Royal Arcade….shops filled with things that sparkle, twinkle and smell delicious (I’m talking perfume not food here, most out of character I know). As we walked through this area I was reminded of a colleague who talked about having the attention span of a magpie, i.e. constantly distracted by bright shiny objects. Serendipitously, since walking through the Royal Arcade, Ken has renamed me Maggs (not Maggie for Margaret, but Maggs for Magpie). Lots of bright shiny objects in the vicinity.
From the Royal Arcade, we move through to the Queen’s Room, where people in all their sparkling finery dance the night away. Then there’s the Royal Court Theatre where all the entertainment was presented (Let’s hear it for James Taylor), a beautiful theatre with wonderful sight lines and acoustics, seating I don’t know how many people in comfortable plush red seats. Moving down the hall and up a few decks is the King’s Food Court, where food was always available, and more exclusively the Princess and Queen Grills where you could eat only if you spent a year’s mortgage on your tickets. James and his family ate there. We didn’t; we ate in the Britannia dining room.
Not all the rooms were royally designated, but carpets in public areas were royal blue or red. And all the rooms were all glorious and we had several favourite places to go.
At the top of the list was the Library. Apparently the world’s largest floating library, featuring more than 10,000 titles. It was everything a library should be… a glorious room cloaked in wood. The books were housed in glass-fronted cabinets (each with a lip to prevent slippage in rough conditions). The perimeter of the room was filled with wooden desks complete with ink wells that had been repurposed to allow computer wires to slip through to appropriate plug ins. It even had a quiet area. Ken sat in this room and read every day. He read six or eight books while we were aboard. I read fewer, but I took painting classes. He loved this room, and always managed to score the desk at the very front of the room which gave him an incredible view. The library was on deck 12 (I think) at the front of the ship. So the view was indeed splendid.
Another favourite area was the Chart Room, a lovely room on the 3rd deck just down from the dining room, theatre and Queen’s room. The Chart Room was filled with tables for two and four and even groups of eight. The tables for two were the most popular as they had windows and were another reason to use the word splendid. It was also a bar and we would find our way there at the end of the afternoon to have a lovely peaceful drink before dressing for dinner.
The room was always filled with music, supplied by a harpist and a pianist as well as a trio, alternating through the day. For obvious reasons I found the harpist enchanting and thoroughly enjoyed her music. She was beautiful as well as talented with long blonde hair, and she wore some gorgeous gowns.
Ken introduced me to a drink he discovered in the Chart Room called Cloud 9. I don’t know if you can get it everywhere and it’s just me making a mid-to-late-in-life discovery, but it was something I could drink quite regularly. I don’t even remember what was in it, besides the slice of apple, but my it was fine, and it became my late afternoon drink.
Another favourite destination was the Illuminations theatre. We watched a couple of really interesting planetarium presentations there, in special reclining chairs giving a 360 degree view full of the three dimensional audio-visual presentation. Tickets for the planetarium presentations were in high demand and hard to get, so you had to be at the Purser’s office by 9:00 a.m. to be sure to get them.
Our stateroom was quite lovely too. It’s amazing how much can be fit into a small space when you are efficient about it. We had a king-sized bed, with night tables on each side, a huge closet with hanging space flanking a series of drawers (in spite of a tux, several shirts, blazer and flannels, four floor length evening dresses, three cocktail dresses, and all our day time clothes, we only used one side of the closet!!!), and space for a safe. We also had a love seat and small coffee table, a desk and a small bar fridge, and of course an ensuite. Suitcases fit under the bed The balcony was lovely, but really, we hardly used it. The bottom edge was so high that you couldn’t see over it sitting, so we stood outside several times each day but we didn’t stay out for long as we were always off somewhere doing something.
And how could I forget. We had a tv. With several channels no less. We always tuned in at noon for “Captain’s” address, and after he chit chatted a bit he passed the mike over to “Lucky” the navigator who gave us chapter and verse of where we were and what we could see if we could see the bottom of the ocean floor.
The most interesting piece of information he gave us was about the chain of mountains we were about to cross over midnight that day. To that point in the day, the depth of water beneathh us ranged between 3,000 and 4,000 metres, but when we cross this ocean floor mountain range, the depth will drop dramatically to 1,000 metres, OMG we could scrape the bottom of the ship. Captain said that this is the longest mountain range in the world and starts north of the Arctic Circle and continues through the north and south Atlantic, He said where it ended but i missed it. At any rate, he said the mountains break the surface of the water several times over the course of therange, creating islands, most notably Iceland and the Azores.
Fascinating, Captain.
He also regaled us with the Grand Banks story of how Perfect Storm was filmed there. The Grand Banks were huge and we were over them for the better part of 24 hours.
We loved dressing for dinner and even on nights that were not formal nights, it was lovely to dress up. We do love getting gussied up. We tried our hand at dancing, or should I say, we tried our feet. Sadly the experience of finding the floor missing when we went to place those feet in time to the music was disconcerting and in a very uncharacteristic move we abandoned the dance floor.
We were well looked after all the time….our room was tidied several times a day and we had clean towels as many times as we had showers, even if we didn’t leave our towels on the floor (you know — to preserve the environment, leave your towels on the floor if you want clean ones). Always a chocolate on the bed at bed time.
At meals, our waiter was Jana, who was charming, and kept us entertained. Jakub was our wine waiter and he delighted in suggesting good wines and scotches. The head waiter for our area was Luis and he was wonderful. We watched him perform magic with a small girl seated behind us. He put me in mind of Antonio Banderos when he played Peron in Madonna’s version of Evita.
It was always a treat to go in and be served by these gentlemen.
The most amazing sight? The 90 year old woman with so much work done to her shiny bronzed body no single part of it was untouched (except on later viewing her face) and parts of it were firmer than nature ever intended at any age.
The second most amazing sight, some spectacular face lifts that should have resulted in law suits. The carved fruit and designer desserts were pretty amazing too.
Our most cliched activity? Playing shuffleboard. What else would you do mid-Atlantic.
The most unusual food? Cherry soup served cold.
The best? The sushi/sashimi buffet we stumbled on in the King’s Court buffet one day. The sticky toffee pudding was also pretty fine! I had it for my friend Anne Marie.
