On our way to Saipan

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Tuesday 13^th March:

Today has been a total relaxation as we’ve been at sea. We crossed back over the Equator late this morning so watched other people being covered in gunge. We would have to give the prize for the smelliest crossing the line ceremony to the Queen Elizabeth. Here on the Mary it was largely food dye and spaghetti. No match for the QE’s rotten vegetables and fish guts!

We went to another lecture today and I really enjoyed this one. Cunard have art galleries on all their ships and they’re run by Clarendon Fine Art from Mayfair. That means we can hardly afford to look, never mind actually buy anything from them but one of their people did a talk today on Rolf Harris and it was fascinating. I learnt loads about his early life and how he was picked for the Australian Olympic swimming team but missed the games because he got sick. His sketches done as a 6-year old school boy now sell for over £15,000. The Beatles did the backing singing and played on one of his hit releases of Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport and some of his 6ft x 8ft paintings that he used to do on TV now sell for up to half a million pounds and that all got started in Australia when he did TV adverts for an Australian paint company.

The weather has been very cloudy today but still hot and humid so we found a lovely indoor swimming pool with loads of sunbeds under a glass roof complete with air conditioning. There was only one other person in it so we had a lovely swim and relax.

Tonight we booked ourselves into the Chef’s Galley which is a very small restaurant where the chefs demonstrate their cooking techniques and show you how they prepare your dinner. The theme today was Indian cuisine so right up our street! There were just 13 diners and the food was wonderful. You also get to keep the menu which has the recipes printed on it too and we’ll definitely try to cook some of them once we get home. The starter was a cold tomato soup with roasted spices served in Martini glasses with garam masala round the rim. That was followed by

Sheekh kebabs with a chick pea salad. Then baby chicken masala with Bombay potatoes like none we’d ever eaten before. And pudding was a revelation: grated carrots cooked in milk with cardamon and pistachio nuts. Sounds weird. Tasted delicious!

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Comments

[Walt Goodridge]

Heard about Saipan the cancellation
Hey! Great to know someone on the Queen Mary is blogging about their experiences. I just got the news that the scheduled stop on Saipan was cancelled at the last minute due to non-typical rough seas. Of course, the Universe is perfect, and everything happens as it should. If you'd like to get a very, very small taste of what you might have experienced, (smile), take a look at http://jamaicaninchina.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/the-short-happy-tale-of-41-australians-and-the-jamaican-on-saipan/ Walt