Reflections, 6 months later (above “Who is”) >>>

PORT by PORT POSTS for all 41 ports is found by clicking on the Months under ARCHIVES at Right — the oldest posts are February and March 2009 folders (Fort Lauderdale, Curacao, Panama Canal, etc); the posts for the final ports (Barcelona, Southampton & New York City) are found in May 2009 folder.

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ITINERARY/ at right
LIFE AT SEA/ at right
PORTS/ scroll down
QUEEN MARY 2
QM2 BridgeCam
QV BridgeCam
QV Design Elements/ at right

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PHOTOGRAPH:
Ship Locator Sign, Stairwell A, Deck 2, Forward Elevators

Day 96 … Southampton, England

The Queen Victoria World Cruise officially ended in Southampton, but for 225 others who sailed on to New York on the Queen Mary 2, it actually ended a week later on April 26, 2009. For our final QM2 leg click HERE; the QM2 six days are also under pages, at right.

Disembarking the Victoria (and while waiting to board the QM2) we found Southampton both a new port, and a very old one.

The Mayflower sailed from here in the 1620s. The Titanic sailed from here in 1912 on its first, last and only journey (it met its iceberg end a mere two days after leaving Southampton).

The port of Southampton is reached by navigating from the English Channel past the Isle of Wight and then sailing half a hour northward. This is not an easy approach because tides and currents are formidable, as the officers of the Queen Elizabeth 2 (now out of service and docked in Dubai, UAE) were reminded last year.

On her final departure from Southampton last fall, the Queen Elizabeth II ran aground because of tides. Unlike ships today, which need tugboats only in certain conditions (modern ships have bow thrusters), the QE2 needed tugs nearly every time she went to sea. The QE2 also brushed a Japanese warship in docking in New York when a tug lost power and she drifted in the current of the East River earlier in her career.

Southampton was the 41st and final port of the Queen Victoria’s 2009 World Tour. She started from Southampton on January 3rd crossing first to New York. We boarded her at her third stop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on January 13, more than three months before.

As the Victoria proceeded up river to Southampton, the Queen Mary 2 trailed her. The QM2 would be our ride home to the United States, along with 225 others on the world cruise. The QM2 had also cruised the world, ending her world tour in Southampton two weeks before our arrival. The Mary 2 was returning the day we arrived from her first of more than twenty 2009 trans-Atlantic roundtrips to New York City.

This was the first time the two ships had been in port together since Fort Lauderdale three months ago.

Initially we had planned to spend our day in Southampton touring Windsor Castle, but Cunard canceled that tour due to lack of interest. We remain interested in seeing Windsor because we are friends with the architect who had overseen reconstruction of Windsor Castle after the fire in 1988. With that tour cancelled we then hoped to putter around Southampton for the better part of the day. Unfortunately, disembarkation lengthened and lengthened erasing most of our time ashore.

Southampton was mostly leveled in 1940 during two nights of Nazi bombing. We walked the old town wall and had a look at what was left of the 14th century Catchcold Tower once used to store arms. The Catchcold was last used to defend Southampton in World War II. The name Catchcold made no sense to me – when you figure it out, please tell me.

As has often been the case in many other ports, time had grown short. We retreated to the Queen Mary 2 to have a look around at our new digs. The Queen Victoria was wooded, comfortable and tasteful. After three months she really had become our home.

The Queen Mary 2 was stunning, magnificent and grand. We had not expected to like the Queen Mary 2. We loved her immediately.

PHOTOGRAPHS
Queen Victoria anchored off Caines (Yorkeys Knob), Australia, February 23, 2009
Taxi and car passenger drop-off at the Queen Elizabeth 2 Terminal
Carol Anne in front of Southampton’s Bargate
The Catchcold Tower
Map, approach to Southampton (below)
Map, approach to Southampton (below)

Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California

Gibraltar

Gibraltar
April 18, 2009 Friday

Webcam from the Bridge of the Queen Victoria is HERE.

For a day after leaving Barcelona, the Victoria sailed south and finally turning west past Gibraltar on its starboard (right hand side of ship). Gibraltar is a huge fortress peninsula that the British fortified and used to control the Mediterranean Sea. These days Spain, which it adjoins, agitates regularly wanting Gibraltar, but to date the British have resisted handing it over.

About 7 p.m. after a day or rough seas and rain, skies cleared and the Victoria glided quietly by Gibraltar with nary a mention from the Bridge. Within an hour the Victoria had passed the Spanish port of Tarifa, Spain, and was in the Atlantic Ocean.

PHOTOGRAPHS
Gibraltar on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula
Tarifa, Spain, from the Victoria
Exiting Mediterranean with the Atlantic Ocean ahead (below)
Map, Gibraltar (below)
Map, area (below)

Photographs and Text of QueenVictoria.WordPress.Com are property of, and Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California. All rights are reserved.

Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona, Spain
April 16, 2009 Thursday

Webcam from the Bridge of the Queen Victoria is HERE.

This was the final shore day of the round the world tour. Today, British immigration would board and begin the process during the next few days of interviewing everyone on board for entry into the UK on Monday.

As we have occasionally done in the past, Carol Anne and I headed out on different tours in Barcelona for half-day tours in the morning. I have been to Barcelona before and wanted to ride up to Montserrat; Carol Anne had never been here before and wanted to see Barcelona.

Getting off the Victoria was a mess. Initially they planned to have the usual two gangways, one from Deck 2, and the other, one deck below, on Deck 1 midships. The tour groups gathered on Deck 2, but after much effort, the efforts to install a gangway on Deck 2 failed and were abandoned. Now an enormous crowd gathered on Deck 1 snaking up Stairwell B. Mayhem. Ugly words from same ugly passengers. I hid behind a plant until the coast was clear.

The bus ride to Montserrat took about an hour, first on the circle road built for the Olympics years ago, and then out into the country. At the base of Montserrat the tour boarded a train and after an hour on the top of the mountain, we were bused back down the mountain and back to Barcelona.

The weather was sunny in Barcelona, but inexplicably, during Carol Anne’s tour, it not only rained but also hailed – all still with the sun shining. Go figure.

In the afternoon Carol Anne and I walked Barcelona, including the market. Even on a Thursday afternoon it was crowded. We checked for Internet using our iPhones as we walked, but never found it. We had decided not to haul our computers along since we had had found Internet in Civitavecchia earlier in the week.

The ship’s shuttle bus stopped near the statue of Christopher Columbus. Columbus is grandly pointing not toward the sea or the new world, but toward Italy and the bay. Had the statue been positioned to point toward the New World, Columbus would be pointing at a mountain. That didn’t seem right to the locals when they erected the statue so they turned him around.

The norovirus, which infected the ship, was abruptly declared ended in late afternoon and all of the food and drink in the Lido, including the popular ice cream machine, were suddenly available to all passengers again. The Captain declared that the virus had been brought under control. Oh, really?

Cynics noted that forty travel agents had boarded along with British immigration in Barcelona — just in time to witness the end of the norovirus crisis. The norovirus had been pesky and uncontrollable for almost three weeks, since Mumbai. They should have gotten those immigration and travel agent people on a lot earlier.

The Victoria was scheduled to depart Barcelona at 5 p.m. so time, as always, on shore was short. We retreated to the ship and watched from our balcony as first a P&O ship, the Oceana which was berthed just ahead of us, slipped her lines and chugged by us toward the open sea. And then, as evening fell, the Victoria followed the Oceana into the ocean, turned west toward Gibraltar, the open sea of the Atlantic – and Southampton.

PHOTOGRAPHS
Barcelona spiffy Cruise Terminal B – but the gangways don’t always work
Statue of Christopher Columbus pointing toward… wait! — toward the Old World?
Montserrat
One of Goudi’s many architectural masterpieces in Barcelona
Restaurant in stall at market
Barcelona harbour from Deck 9 of the Victoria
Map of Victoria’s path to Barcelona and beyond (below)
Area map (below)

Photographs and Text of QueenVictoria.WordPress.Com are property of, and Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California. All rights are reserved.

Strait of Bonifacio

Strait of Bonifacio
Between Corsica (FR) and Sardinia (IT)
April 15, 2009 Wednesday

Webcam from the Bridge of the Queen Victoria is HERE.

The Victoria spent this day steaming due west from Civitavecchia, Italy, toward Barcelona, Spain. Early in the morning, not long after dawn, the Victoria made a graceful turn (photo, above) and ran along channel markers passing between Corsica, a French island on the north, and Sardinia, an Italian island on the south.

Weather had turned chilly, but not cold. The seas had calmed and the sun, although not warm, was bright.

In the afternoon we received a letter from the Purser’s office containing our missing luggage tickets for our transfer on Monday to the Queen Mary 2. Our luggage must contain both a pink and a white tags to bypass British customs and be delivered directly to our QM2 cabin. Our actual tickets will be waiting for us in our cabin on the QM2 along with “leather luggage tags” (which apparently is a big deal).

… but wait! – how are we supposed to get on the QM2 if our tickets are already on the ship in our room? We were given a letter that we are supposed to present at the gangplank.

Oh. Okay.

We were still waiting to hear whether any tours will be offered during our day in the UK. We’d like to go to Windsor Palace. Stonehenge is of less interest because we have seen such stone arrays elsewhere in the UK, and because neither of us have ever been taken on alien spaceships and medically inspected.

Southampton will be fine if nothing else works out. Everyone without exception is telling us there is little to see in Southampton, but, fact is, Carol Anne and I always find lots of interesting things and people in ‘uninteresting’ places.

Photographs and Text of QueenVictoria.WordPress.Com are property of, and Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California. All rights are reserved..

Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy

Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy
April 14, 2009 Tuesday

Webcam from the Bridge of the Queen Victoria is HERE.

Rome is only 40 miles away from this ancient seaport on the western side of Italy. It is a fairly quick bus or train ride, and the train station was about a quarter mile from the gate to the port area.

Nonetheless, Carol Anne and I decided to take a day off. My need to find high speed Internet had gone Code Red, and she was simply weary and unwell. After a few false starts we found wireless high speed Internet down a small alley at “The Seaman’s Center” and settled in a back room.

I had been to Rome before, but Carol Anne had not. She decided weeks before that she would skip Rome this time and only later after we sailed for Barcelona did she have some regrets.

A surprising number of people also skipped Rome, and some crew members, including Xenia, a sommelier we have become fond of, found that she and her boyfriend did not have enough time to go to Rome and be back in time. With only one port left after Rome, everyone seems weary and many were saying that, while it’s been a great trip, they are ready to go home.

There is more to Civitavecchia then we saw. Ancient forts guard the harbour but have long since been built around and seem haphazardly preserved. We drifted into the San Giorgio Hotel, a gorgeous hotel just down the street, thinking we would spend the afternoon there having coffee or eating if they would allow us to use their WiFi (no go).

The train station was functional and not exactly dreary. Pete snapped his pictures and poked around, then adjourned to a nearby McDonald’s and wolfed a Big Mac. The French fries were way too salty and he dumped them.

Carol Anne returned to the ship and went to sleep. In the early evening friends called and invited us to join them for a private dinner in the Lido’s Alternate Dining. The Lido has private dinners each evening with a single menu restricted to the first 60 guests who call at 7 a.m. The menu changes every three nights. We have eaten there a few times.

We ate Indian food and watched as the Victoria slipped ropes and left the port to start out across the Mediterranean for Corsica and Sardinia. The Victoria would pass between these islands early the following morning and then, one day ahead, due east was Barcelona, final stop in our round the world tour.

PHOTOGRAPHS
Entrance, San Giorgio Hotel — even dressing really well didn’t get us access to their WiFi Internet
Fort that once guarded Civitavecchia
Railroad station
Welcome sign on pier where Victoria docked
Map of Victoria’s path to Civitavecchia (below)
Area map (below)

Photographs and Text of QueenVictoria.WordPress.Com are property of, and Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California. All rights are reserved.

Strait of Messina

Strait of Messina
Between Italy and Sicily
April 13, 2009 Monday

Webcam from the Bridge of the Queen Victoria is HERE.

The morning was rainy and the sea got choppier as the day went on. This was the lumpiest sea we have encountered on the world cruise, far more than off New Zealand in the Tasman Sea where, as Carol Anne pointed out, we had been bumped around at night, not all day long. We sat in the empty Lido for a while in the afternoon and enjoyed the waves and the beauty of the sea. We’re pretty sure most passengers stayed in their cabins, which was fine with us.

I slept unusually late, weary from the four straight port days and glad that we will not go touring in Italy tomorrow. Of the final six days, we will be go exploring in port only once more (Barcelona).

Preparations to transfer more than 200 from the Victoria to the Queen Mary 2 a week from today are well underway. All but ten passengers received their tickets and port tags last night – Carol Anne and I are among the ten whose tickets did not come out from Southampton. This presents only a problem: To move us seamlessly from our Victoria cabin to our new cabin of the QM2 we need the white tags that Southampton provides. This will allow us to bypass UK customs. I visited with Gaynor, the world cruise concierge and she has promised to provide us with the tags and I think she will.

We will take the last flight from Islip, NY (New York City) to Orlando on Sunday, April 26 and should be home in Celebration by mid-evening. I booked my ticket using a free Southwest Award and booked Carol Anne using her free her Companion Pass — total cost: 5-bucks. Why Southwest gives people like us peanuts, and how they stay in business is beyond me.

In the afternoon Carol Anne napped but I went to see an afternoon movie directed by Brian Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie. I’m big fans of these guys from their first movie, “The Usual Suspects”. McQuarrie came across a room and introduced himself to me at an Austin Film Festival a few years ago and we chatted for while. Nice guys; hugely talented.

By early evening we were passing through the Strait of Messina, the narrow passage between Sicily (port/left hand side) and the tip of Italy (starboard/right hand side) and entering, again, the Mediterranean Sea. We passed within two miles of Stromboli with its volcano, which last erupted in August 2008. Ahead, overnight is Civitavecchia, which is the container port for Rome and where we would be docking at dawn for the day.

PHOTOGRAPHS
Carol Anne reading on our Deck 7 starboard balcony, Ionian Sea in background
Looking at Italy in Strait of Messina from our balcony
Island of Stromboli and its active volcano
Map, Strait of Messina (below)
Map, Area (below)

The Strait of Messina

Area map

Photographs and Text of QueenVictoria.WordPress.Com are property of, and Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California. All rights are reserved.

Athens/Piraeus, Greece

Piraeus/Athens, Greece
April 12, 2009 Sunday

Webcam from the Bridge of the Queen Victoria is HERE.

A chocolate rabbit wrapped in clear plastic showed up in our room today celebrating Easter. Downstairs, below us in the main atrium on Deck 1 mid-ship, a large Easter display of huge real chocolate eggs arrived on Friday.

Cunard tries. But 90 days of sailing, and weeks into the novo virus medical crisis, have taken its toll. Passengers and crew are grumpy and territorial.

This was the fourth day in a row that was a port day (Kusadasi, Istanbul and Myconos were the previous three days), and everyone – us included – was tired.

Nonetheless, we planned to tour the Acropolis and other sites in the morning ending at the Plaka (a huge market area).

Reliable high speed Internet was becoming almost an obsession and when we left Athens it would be a total obsession. In Athens we planned to spend the afternoon catching up on Internet talking by Skype to relatives, answering email and updating web sites.

We had been assured that high speed Internet was widely available, and likely would be free. This would be the eighth port since Mumbai where we have tried to find reliable high speed Internet. Today we were sure would be the day (we were wrong).

The Victoria docked at Piraeus, which is ten kilometers (little more than 6 miles) from Athens. The tour personnel handing out tickets for the tour was grumpy insisting over and over on a loudspeaker that passengers should step back and wait for their tickets (no one, including us, would do so). The method in which the Victoria cruise office has chosen to fill tour buses has created chaos and frequent ugly confrontations which Cunard personnel, having created the situation, ignores.

Piraeus is seamlessly connected to Athens, just a few minutes drive. The area where we docked was not a container port, one of the few times recently when we have docked in an actual cruise ship area. Finding places to dock anywhere except a container port has not been easy because of the size of The Victoria.

We toured the 1896 Olympic stadium where the first modern Olympics were held, then were bused on to the Acropolis. It was busy, but unlike Topkapi Palace several days earlier, the crowds and traffic were manageable, probably because it was Easter Sunday morning.

The Plaka was a charmer with many streets of small shops. We quickly found Internet and used our iPhones to get mail, but we had not brought our computers because we had been repeatedly assured that we could use free WiFi at the passenger terminal in the afternoon.

But we couldn’t.

PHOTOGRAPHS
View of Athens from the Parthenon
Site of the 1896 Olympics, the first of the modern games
Crew of the Victoria looking for real Internet in the Passenger Terminal in Piraeus (the Victoria charges crew 10-cents a minute on board and sells them cards based on what they download, but crew internet works every bit as badly as the service provided to passengers)
Carol Anne in front of the Parthenon.
Map (below)

Photographs and Text of QueenVictoria.WordPress.Com are property of, and Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California. All rights are reserved.

Myconos, Greece

Myconos, Greece
April 11, 2009 Saturday

Webcam from the Bridge of the Queen Victoria is HERE.

Myconos is a charming island that is at once very old, and very new.

The tiny island (41 square miles, 9,320 inhabitants) sits in the middle of the Aegean Sea, an easy sail from both Athens and Istanbul. Settlers first came here in the 11th century BC and until recently inhabitants survived both by fishing and as a supply island for nearby Delos. The island, like Greece itself, is steeped in rich Greek mythology.

Today Myconos is a snappy looking tourist destination with direct flights to all major European cities and four ferries a day to nearby Athens. As recently as the 1950s, before Myconos remade itself into a tourist based economy, the island had fallen to less than 1,000 population with many houses abandoned. That was then.

The Victoria spent an afternoon moored off Myconos in fierce winds and seas so choppy that the ship’s officers had to use bow thrusters to steady the ship for loading and unloading tenders. The summer season had not begun so the island was largely deserted. The temperature was 60F, chilly but not uncomfortable.

Carol Anne and I toured Myconos together and while it is a pleasant place, there is not much to see. All of the houses, except for the city hall, are, by law, whitewashed giving the city its crisp, clean look. The downtown area is a labyrinth of small streets occasionally so narrow they can be difficult to walk through. No cars are allowed in the downtown area. Myconos was laid out this way in antiquity as a defense against pirates who, once they attacked the town, would quickly get lost in its streets and be ambushed. The street design can also have the effect of getting visitors lost.

With much wind, Myconos has a number of windmills. But with little natural water, and a two-year drought several years ago where there was no rain at all, water is a problem. We looked at the windmills and visited the Panagia Tourliani Monetary in the tiny hamlet of Ano Mera where Ouzi, a deadly liquor, was served. Carol Anne drank both her Ouzi and mine, and immediately claimed to have lost feeling in the tip of her nose.

We also stopped at Ornos Beach where the film “Shirley Valentine” was filmed, and then wandered the winding streets of Myconos looking, in vain, for reliable high speed Internet.

On the way back to tender embarkation, we ran into two of our dinner English companions, Joe and Steve, who we have become very fond of, and one of the ship’s officers who was co-coordinating the shore tender. We snapped their pictures before riding back out to the ship together.

This was the third straight port day, of four – the most port days in a row in the entire world cruise. Tomorrow, Athens, will be the last of the four days. And after Athens, only Rome and Barcelona remain before we arrive in Southampton in nine from Myconos.

Our round the world crew is drawing to an end. This morning we began gathering flight information from the ship’s concierge that we will need to decide when to fly from New York to Orlando after we arrive in New York City on the Queen Mary 2. At last count about 150 to 200 of the Americans on the Victoria who have traveled with us around the world, will sail on that final 6-day trans-Atlantic voyage to New York.

Our flight from New York will by the second in our trip around the world. The first flight was a short hop from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale on the morning our journey began on January 13.

That seems a long time ago.

PHOTOGRAPHS
Myconos city view, whitewashed and crisp by law
The Panagia Tourliani Monastery in Ano Mera
Windmills of Myconos
Ornos Beach where “Shirley Valentine” was filmed
Myconos and surrounding islands (below)
Area map

Photographs and Text of QueenVictoria.WordPress.Com are property of, and Copyright 2009 by, Seine-Harbour Productions LLC, Studio City, California. All rights are reserved.