Honeymoon on QE2 in 2002

[June Ingram]

Very good size comparison ! I didn’t realize the model was so large !

[Peter Mugridge]

Tonight we are lounging about again - and isn't that the Queen Mary's piano behind us in the first two pictures...?

[Isabelle Prondzynski]

Tonight we are lounging about again - and isn't that the Queen Mary's piano behind us in the first two pictures...?

Yes, I am pretty sure that it is. And there is even a pianist! I cannot remember anyone ever playing that piano whenever I was on board.

[Peter Mugridge]

Yes, I am pretty sure that it is. And there is even a pianist! I cannot remember anyone ever playing that piano whenever I was on board.

I wonder if most people would have been terrified of touching it because of where it came from because they were worried about breaking it or something?

To continue... tonight, we are back to the paperwork.  This letter was after I realised that the official bridge visiting port would be after we had disembarked ( remember we were only doing half the voyage; see the early posts in the thread for the background to this ).  Well... one had to try, surely?

Later, there was a surprising turn of events but that will have to wait for the relevant part of the story to come round...

[Peter Mugridge]

A more familiar bit of paperwork here...

[Peter Mugridge]

Now this was a photo opportunity that I just could not resist; the Rock of Gibraltar through the porthole in the cabin...

We were only there for an hour or so in the morning, anchored outside - this was one of those short administrative stops rather than a port call.

[Peter Mugridge]

Back to the plans for the day...

[Peter Mugridge]

...and the daily news for the same date.  With a surprising typo on it; it was in fact 4th September - not August.  I wonder if the printer was made to walk the plank afterwards...

[Lynda Bradford]

Its good that you have kept all the paper work and the daily news, which lets us read some of the news from twenty years ago. 

[Peter Mugridge]

Its good that you have kept all the paper work and the daily news, which lets us read some of the news from twenty years ago.

Thank you Lynda, and twenty years ago it is - almost exactly!!  At some point very soon, we will be coming up to that exact mark...

[Peter Mugridge]

Back to the pictorial side of the story tonight.  That day, 4th September, just happened to be Yola's birthday.

If you look very closely at the picture of the flowers, at the top of the bunch near to the lamp, you can see the card that is mounted below the picture in the album.

The flowers were pre-arranged a few days earlier - I guess birthdays and anniversaries would probably be the two biggest sources of business for the on board florists?

[Lynda Bradford]

Well done Peter for organising lovely flowers for Yola's birthday. 

I had a look at our photos of passengers on deck for the Straits of Gibraltar, to see if you were in any photos, but could not see you. 

[June Ingram]

How wonderful to celebrate a birthday on a Honeymoon cruise !

[Peter Mugridge]

...the reason Lynda probably can't find us in any photos that morning is that Yola overdid things and had a fit as a result ( she is epileptic ) which necessitated her to have a few hours ( including overnight for observations ) in the ship's hospital.

This happened roughly at the time when we started moving from the anchorage at Gibraltar.  It would probably have helped if she hadn't ignored the advice of the doctor on board when she started feeling woozy ( just after the pictures in the previous post ) to just rest for the whole day; within 30 minutes she was "feeling OK so I'm not wasting the day lying around down here" and about 30 minutes after that we had to summon the doctor back and he immediately admitted her, as you can see.

[Rob Lightbody]

Lots of us can relate to overdoing things on board QE2, and not wanting to miss anything by resting!

On our 10 night "dream come true" med cruise in 2008, I got to about day 5, and had an enormously long lie in, completely missing half the day in order to recharge the batteries!