Not a lot to write about today. We woke up feeling quite sad that this would be our last sea day and we would have to drag our cases out from under the bed and start our packing later on. 🙁
At 10.00am we took our seats in the Royal Court Theatre to watch/listen to a presentation called “Maritime Southampton – A Millennium of the Docks” by the martime engineer Andrew Roberts. It was a fascinating history of Southampton’s nautical past from the times of William the Conqueror to the present day, and how it has had to evolve with new cruise terminals in order to cope with the ever-larger ships. Southampton surely must be the most famous cruise port in the world, and the “Southampton to New York” route is the classic transatlantic voyage that everyone should do at least once. 🙂
Trevor then remained in his seat to see another Will Carling talk – this time, it was a Q and A session with Neil Kelly, the cruise director. I just relaxed in our cabin and did some of this blog, read my book and enjoyed a chilled glass of the sangria we’d bought yesterday in La Coruña. 🙂
Trevor arrived back in 11046 just before 12.00 noon, in time to hear the captain’s navigational announcement. After giving us the latitude, longitude, speed and weather conditions, Captain Inga Thorhauge wished everyone a pleasant day on Queen Elizabeth. Queen Elizabeth !!! 🙂 Even when the first officer came on the tannoy for a few minutes afterwards, no-one corrected the error. So our own captain didn’t even know which ship she was on. 🙂
We went down to the Artisans’ Foodhall for lunch, where I enjoyed some cold meats and salad washed down with some cold water. Then we returned to 11046 to open the bottle of Freixenet cava; we had planned on sitting out on our balcony to enjoy it, but it was a little breezy and getting colder the closer we got to Blighty. Trevor mixed his cava with some of the sangria.
Afterwards, we made a start with our packing, filling one of the suitcases; we would do the other one later on as we didn’t have to place them outside the cabin door until 10 o’clock tonight.
We spent the rest of the afternoon just pottering around, not doing very much in particular at all. Soon it was dinner time once again; the last time with our friendly and interesting table-mates on #349; Andy and Margaret, Eric and Christina. We enjoyed a wonderful meal once again in excellen company and, afterwards, everyone swapped calling cards; ours included the URL for this web site, which the others were keen to read. 🙂
Then it was along to the theatre once again for tonight’s performance starring the Flyrights. It was an excellent show; a mixture of swing, motown and pop, including lots of Michael Jackson hits. Several people got up to dance in the aisles.
At nine o’clock we went along to the Golden Lion for the trivia quiz, which we didn’t win as usual. This had been one of the few cruises where we didn’t win any prizes at all. At home, we have all sorts of merchandise that we’ve won from various cruise lines; Fred Olsen, Celebrity, Holland America are ones that immediately spring to mind. Many of the items are very useful, and they always provide a happy memory of the ship and cruise on which they were won. But nothing from Cunard for us this time!
After the quiz, we returned to 11046 and changed into the clothes we would be travelling home in tomorrow as we filled the second suitcase (and I wrapped all my Irregular Choice shoes in their tissue paper and stored them neatly in their own case). We left out only those last-minute things we’d need in the morning, and locked and labelled the suitcases before placing them outside our stateroom door.
We decided to finish the evening by going up to the Commodore Club for a nightcap. It felt slightly uncomfortable to be in such an elegant room in our casual clothes; I was wearing sweatpants, a t-shirt and a denim jacket, but what could we do? The cases had to be outside by 10.00pm.
When we returned to 11046 for our last night on board Queen Anne, the cases had gone from outside our door. We finished the last of the cava and the sangria before getting washed and changed and into bed. Tomorrow we would arrive back in Southampton and disembark before the long coach journey back to the North-East. We settled down and slept very well.