I am back from my trip to New York.

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I have just returned home from our crossing to and from New York. We had the most brilliant time on the Queen Mary 2. We met some fantastic people on this trip and laughed from start to finish. Well not quite but nearly. On crossing the North Atlantic we had quite bad weather for three days. The sea was very rough. The Queen Mary is geared up to do this crossing as she was purposefully built as an ocean liner and not a cruise ship. She is the only ship that has a scheduled service across the Atlantic to New York. Currently she takes 7 days to cross the Atlantic ocean although she can do it in six days. About three days into the cruise we hit a bad patch. The sea was quite rough and although the ship has stabilisers it was still a bit unsteady. Imagine had this lovely ship did not have them. In all the years I have been travelling I have never had any sea sickness but I ended up having to go to the pursers office to buy some sea sick pills. We had got ready for dinner one evening but as soon as I was dressed and ready to go the room started to spin this lasted for 24 hours until I was able to get the seasickness tablets. It was awful but anyway I lived to tell the tale and it has not put me off travelling by sea in any way! The facilities on board are second to none. The library is the largest libarary in the world on any ship. She is as long as four football pitches and believe me you will know it. Dinner is held in the dining rooms at the back of the ship. Where is the two tier theatre.......you got it right at the front. So there was a lot of walking about to do. There is an art gallery, enrichment lectures by guest speakers and on the return trip there were 15 veterans who gave talks about what they went through in WW2. The talks were filmed and a film crew were on board filming for the weeks crossing back to Southampton where they were going to continue to Normandy for the D Day celebrations this week coming. Dining. Well if you wished you could eat all day long plus have room service in your cabin too 24/7. The food was absolutely brilliant I have to say and some of the best food I have ever eaten on a cruise. There were 6 Gala evenings where you should dress up in your finest. Some of the ladies were absolutely stunningly beautiful in their ball gowns. Some really went to town and were covered in their jewellery and in their fine dresses. The final ball on the way to New York was a masquerade ball and many people bought masks to wear until it was midnight when they all were removed. Just prior to this they did a massive walk around parade in the Queens ball room. There were several nice lounges and bars around the ship even a pub type bar. At different times and in different venues there were wonderful bands, string quartets, pianists and singers of some kind or another. The theatre had some kind of show on each night which was really good too. Including plays (Royal Shakespear company). Broadway shows etc etc. There is also I night club which believe it or not we went to a couple of times. One night we lost track of the time and finally returned to our cabin at 4AM. Time changed every day on the way over by putting the clock back an hour before going to sleep. On the return journey the clocks were put forward an hour a day until we reach England. Drama At three AM on our last night we heard a muffled announcement there had been an accident with one of the guests who ended up in the ships hospital. At 9AM the captain announced that a helicopter would be airlifting a passenger once we got a bit closer to Ireland. The helicopter arrived at 09:30 no one was allowed to be out on the open decks during the rescue mission. A lady was winched up to the helicopter and flown off to Hospital in Cork Southern Ireland and we continued our journey. On Wednesday on our return I realised we had not taken many photos so decided to do a lounge crawl ( Sounds much better than a bar crawl). Sadly things went a bit wrong and we only managed half of the lounges because we had a drink in each lounge and chatted to people plus got engrossed in the wonderful musicians had a bite to eat along the way. We had to finish off our lounge crawl on Thursday. Some people thought it was most amusing as we were slightly inebriated each time we did it. The best thing for me was the afternoon tea in the Queens Ballroom. It was an amazing experience. Served by white gloved stewards with dainty sandwiches, delicious cakes and pastries and finally scones jam and clotted cream all washed down with copious cups of tea. The string quartet or harpist would be playind whilst afternoon tea was being served. On the way over to New York there were lots of French people and German people who did not quite get the true idea about the Queen Mary. The Queen Mary and the two other Queens of Cunard are quintessentially British and are not like the all bells and whistles modern gaudy cruise ships. They wanted shiney dazzling plastic coated sparkling decor. No what you get it a classy nostalgic when people behaved appropriately, dressed for dinner and the full blown etiquette of days gone by are well and truly on display. We met some fantastic people, all with stories to tell. Some funny some sad but oh so interesting I can tell you! I have never laughed so much in all my days! I would do it again in a heart beat despite the little hiccup on the way over. The photo is of the harpist during an afternoon tea.