Voyage Day 4 - Thursday 31 July

We awoke to hear the ship’s horn sounding faintly in the distance and looked out to see a flat calm and thick fog.  We were now on the longitude where the Titanic met the iceberg and we were also much further north than the Titanic had been, so we hoped that no icebergs were lurking in the fog!

We had missed the live talk the day before by Roger McGuinn, co-founder of the folk rock band ‘The Byrds’ and this was now on the cabin TV.  We realised we had missed a good talk; he was very interesting and seemed such a normal, rather modest guy.

It's a long ship!

We met a retired associate professor of paediatrics who was to bump into us on many more occasions thereafter.  He was very jovial and very chatty.

We went to the first of the George Takei talks which was entertaining and he then moved to the library to sign books.  We went along and found the library and bookshop and the forward look-out area where you can walk the width of the ship below the bridge.

George Takei at his book signing after the first talk

We had our first lunch in the restaurant today.  It was hard to resist when Wiener Schnitzel was on the menu, served up with a very appetising warm potato salad.

We discovered the Boardwalk Café on Deck 12 with free ice cream cones – and the dogs next door.  We were eating our ice creams when we heard barking.  It took a moment for us to take in that we had heard dogs barking in the middle of the Atlantic and realised that they were being housed just round the corner on this high deck.  There is room for only 12 on each crossing and places are booked up for at least a year ahead.  Large dogs may need to be given a double berth and this reduces the number being transported below 12.  They have their own boarding staff but one of the ship’s two doctors doubles up as a vet.  The ones we saw were all beautifully groomed.  We discovered later that it costs $150 a day to have them on board.  Only assistance dogs are allowed in cabins.

The pub lunch today offered sticky toffee pudding, so the desserts there were picking up at last!

We were beginning to get out into the Atlantic proper by now.  Whereas we had seen some sea birds when we were up to 80 miles from either Nova Scotia or Newfoundland, there were no sea birds now. And yet, on Friday afternoon, in the middle of the Atlantic we saw one, but it was hard to identify it.

A selection of celebrity passengers from past years.  How many can you name?

We asked our wine waiter if he had ever seen any celebrities on board.  The ones he had seen or served were almost all professional footballers – Ruud van Nistelrooy, John Terry and Rio Ferdinand, but also Prince Philip, Russell Crowe and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  He did mention an actress but we didn’t catch her name.  He had also met others when he worked in the hotel industry on Mauritius including the actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and the Queen.

The lifts on board are excellent and we never have to wait long to get to where we would like to be.  Todd English is their specialty restaurant.  You ‘pay as you go’ for individual dishes there.

The Purser’s Office will provide a print-out of your on board account on demand and they are happy to take cash in part payment.  We suddenly realised that we each had an on board credit of $80, so that was a nice start to reducing our bill!

This is a normally a white plate!

The ship boasts that it has 33 musicians on board.  This is indeed impressive when you think how big this ship is but that it only has just over 2000 passengers.  Tonight, they put three of the ship’s bands together to create ‘Big Band Night’ and it was a great dance night.  It started at 10pm and ran till midnight and the quality of the musicianship was excellent.  As they played and as the passengers packed the dance floor to dance, they ran a loop on a screen behind the band - once again to emphasize the heritage which they feel Cunard has – lots of photos from many years ago of transatlantic voyages.

RADA - Arabian Nights