Hello Everyone! We made it across the ocean to Southampton, England. We even had the scary experience of crossing over the wreck of the Titanic during a bit of North-Atlantic storm! But, we are here and our 1930’s time travel has come to an end.
Actually, as we reach the end of this first stage of the adventure I think it might be interesting to talk about a few unexpected things. First, Tommy did not know there was going to be a small group of youth his age who would develop a tight bond and spend as much of the cruise together as possible. They actually had a place on the ship called “kids club” and it was really awesome to see how the bonds of friendship developed after just 8 days together. I think it was really a testament to how small the Queen Mary II is (at least compared to a cruise ship). I loved seeing the kids outside of the club continuing to interact and shoe interest in what each other is doing. This was an unexpected highlight of the voyage.
Another thing that we noticed was that there is not the culture of excessive eating and drinking that we have observed on other cruise lines. In fact, I think we lost weight, and the food we had was far healthier and served in smaller portions than maybe even at home. But with that said, the formal nightly dinners were great, and we really ventured outside our comfort zone to eat unusual foods. Tommy was as adventurous as any of us in his eating and that was fun to see.
Finally, the educational aspect of the voyage was high quality and not what I expected. We regularly attended academic lectures on everything from British history to marine biology, to our favorite– the planetarium lectures. The Queen Mary II actually has the worlds largest library on the sea, a huge planetarium, and a number of academic scholars who take turns lecturing on the different voyages. And of course there were concerts and plays that were enjoyable, but all in all, it was the educational events that really made the voyage shine.
We are very excited to be arriving in England (I got up in the middle of the night to go on our balcony and watch us dock), but I am also sad to see our adventure on the high seas end.
