After being back for a month we have finally got around to typing up our New York blog. Only one more blog to go, Long Beach and the Queen Mary. We arrived in New York early on the 16th, the QM2 docking in Brooklyn in sight of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Sadly the QE2 had left us and sailed on to dock elsewhere. It took a few hours to disembark, pass through customs and find a cab. The cab took around 45 minutes to travel to our hotel Inn414, which we found was only a few minutes walk [View Full Entry]

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QM2 10th - 16th October Comfortable spacious quiet cabin, lovely after the small noisy cabin we had on the QE2 Undertaking the traditional transatlantic crossing with no ports meant we had 6 days at sea to enjoy the ship, daily routine went something like this: Fresh fruit, pancakes or French toast for breakfast Walk around the deck three times (1.1 mile), sometimes spotting dolphins Enjoying seeing the QE2 sail next to us, we felt privileged to undertake the tandem crossing with the QE2 on its last voyage to New York Trivia Lunch in the dining room or pub Afternoon t [View Full Entry]

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We arrived early morning at Newcastle and were soon on our way as we had organised for “Kenny’s Canny Car Hire” to drop off a vehicle for us. Susan and Chris were going to visit with Chris’s mum for the day so Lyn and Ken decided to spend the day touring with us. We decided we would try a TomTom (GPS) for the day as we thought we would venture further a field and tour Durham and surrounds. We were soon on our way navigating through Newcastle, after a few confusing instructions delivered from the TomTom we found ourselves on the [View Full Entry]

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After arriving at Queensferry early in the morning and anchoring near the Fourth Bridge, we went ashore by lifeboat and were pleased to see Ian from Doodlebus waiting on the jetty. First stop was the Royal Yacht Britannia, it took a little finding as it was hidden from view by a large shopping centre. We were all given audio sets and as you travelled around the yacht you were able to press the appropriate number on the set to get an interesting commentary. I found it surprising that there was only one double bed on the yacht. The bed had been [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 5th October We had a leisurely breakfast and our daily dance lesson before we arrived at Greenoch (Glasgow) around noon. It was a beautiful sail into Greenoch, up Firth of Clyde. We were accompanied by a flotilla of ferries, small craft, jet skis plus a navy war ship. There was large turnout on the dockside to welcome us, possibly because the QE2 had been built in the area. Throughout the day there was a gold coin donation to view the ship and apparently 20,000 pounds was raised for charity. The weather was fine and we were pleased we had organised [View Full Entry]

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Saturday 4th October After sailing overnight we arrived in Belfast around noon. We had organised to be picked up from the docks by a black cab to take a short tour. The six of us all squeezed in the cab, escaping the heavy rain. We had decided to take the political cab tour that explained the conflict between the protestants and the catholics in the area. The tour stopped to allow us to walk around some of the famous murals painted on the buildings, the murals visually depict the story of the conflict and suffering. One mural had a gun barrel [View Full Entry]

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At last an internet connection that works, sadly we could not get our laptop to connect on the QM2, they're upgrading the system next year which will hopefully solve the problem for others. We arrived in New York this morning and thankfully the Hotel 414 where we are staying has Wifi so we are back in business. We have a lot of blogging to catch-up on but a Broadway show awaits tonight so we will try to type a little each day, we may have to complete our blog when we get home at this rate! Friday 3rd October Around noon [View Full Entry]

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The QE2 boarding process at the Southampton docks was very easy and we soon found ourselves in our cabin on the four deck, aft. The cabin is a small internal one but quite comfortable. After unpacking our suitcases we went exploring the ship. The captain announced instead of making our scheduled stop at Cherbourg we would be sailing overnight to Cork where we would spend an extra night. The change was made to avoid a bad weather front which would have made it impossible to dock at Cherbourg harbour. We met our friends, Chris, Susan, Lyn and Ken for pre dinner [View Full Entry]

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September 25th, leaving the Isle of Man. After a 6.30 wake-up call and a snack for breakfast poor Ron struggled down the 70 stairs with both suitcases and down the street to the car. Even though Ron is used to carrying heavy items as a builder, my case was the straw the broke the camels back and we decided to post some clothes and purchases back home before we left England. We had tried to post things back from Egypt but it was much too expensive and difficult, we found the English post system interesting in that one parcel of 6 [View Full Entry]

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21st - 24th September We left our hotel in Muscat at 9pm to start the long journey to Isle of Man. We flew Muscat - Abu Daubi - London - Edinburgh - Isle of Man, arriving at around 4pm (8pm in Omani time a 23 hour journey). We picked up our rental car from the airport, we circled the around a few times before finding our bearings to Douglas and our B&B, not sure if we were just tired but Ron’s normal radar for finding directions was not working. At our B&B we were shown to our room, one of only [View Full Entry]

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