Posted by Brian Clarke on Jul 25, 2018

During the month of June this year Mary and I embarked on an exciting series of cruises with the Cunard Line.

 

In October last year we had seen this promotion advertised and thought “that sounds to good to be true”.  To cut a long story short it was true so together with another couple from Upper Hutt whom we cruise with we “signed up” and paid the deposit.  As an aside it turned out that there were up to 700 Aussies and some 65-70 Kiwi's on this particular package deal.

 

We headed off to the UK late May, after a few days in Glasgow (most enjoyable and plenty of sun) we travelled to Southampton to catch-up with our travelling companions and our first Queen Victoria was our home for some 8 days. We travelled on what was designated a “Western Europe” passage, including Oporto (Portugal); Vigo (Spain); La Rochelle (France) and St Peter Port (Guernsey); then back to Southampton.  This was a slightly different passage than expected as we were to also travel to Lisbon in Portugal however, a wharfies strike put paid to that and La Rochelle was the replacement. 

 

Highlight for us was probably la Rochelle, very pretty town however it rained all day which did put a bit of a damper on things.  Whilst we had cruised before we had never been on a Cunard ship before and we found the Victoria to be a lovely “home' with a very engaging staff.  This in fact turned out to be the “best” of the three.

 

After a night back at Southampton we boarded our second Queen, the Elizabeth for the “Baltic Highlights Voyage”.  We had 15 days on the Elizabeth visiting some places we had been to before such as Oslo, Helsinki and St. Petersburg, but also some new places yet to be explored like Visby; Riga (Latvia); Klaipeda (Lithuania) and Gdynia (Poland) before returning to Southampton.

 

There were many highlights on this cruise, the latter 3 ports of call were maiden calls for Cunard and we did not know what to expect from them.  We were totally blown away by the towns and accompanying sights and would love to have spent more time in in Riga and Klaipeda.  Gdynia is the port for Gdansk and we actually travelled into the city.  The old part of Gdansk is very interesting and it helped that we had a knowledgeable and very outspoken guide who “railed” against the Soviets and the impact they had on “his” country and Gdansk in particular.

 

As an aside we had some rough sea time on this cruise which saw the use of sea sick tablets increase among passengers but yours truly took it in our stride even though our cabin was “forward”.

 

Once back in Southampton we moved across to the third Queen, Queen Mary 2 for a transatlantic crossing to New York.  We were actually at sea for 7 nights, arriving in new York on the morning of 1st July.  This was a new experience for us, we had never spent this amount of time at sea and we had never undertaken crossing an open ocean before.  Cunard say that the Mary 2 is an “ocean liner”, not a “cruise ship”, and we notice how smoothly she cut through the water. 

 

They said we were very fortunate in that we had a couple of really hot sunny days, reasonably smooth seas, some wind, and also days of fog.  We did not slow down for anything and the captain reported we had averaged 21 knots for the overall trip.  However we could have got off after 3 days; we were disappointed with several aspects including the engagement level with staff; average to poor evening shows and day activities; however, on the positive side we did relax.  This rejuvenation of the mind and body was necessary of course as the “package” included time in New York prior to heading back home via Hawaii.

 

Overall we were away from home for 7 weeks, it was great to see family, friends and be home again, however we did not enjoy the cold weather reception. It is still early days, we need to reflect on what we saw and did and to also process all the picture one takes etc.  We had a great time and have not changed our opinion on cruising as a means to see this wonderful world we live in. These three ships were bigger and carried substantially more passengers and crew than we have experienced in the past.  They were very refined in their fit outs and I suppose a bit “old worldly” in a sense.  As to whether we would travel on a Cunard ship again, time will tell.

 

If you'd like to learn more about the 3 Queens, click HERE for a short video.