Queen Elizabeth 2 - 2005

Canadian Crossing and Mediterranean Adventure - Overview

Our cruise on the Queen Elizabeth 2 from Southampton took us across the Atlantic and down the Canadian Seaboard to the USA where we visited Boston, Newport and New York before recrossing the Atlantic to Southampton. We then stayed aboard for the following cruise took us on a fortnight loop through the Mediterranean with days in Vigo, Gibraltar, Naples, Athens, Zakinthos, Dubrovnik, Cagliari and Lisbon. The Canadian Atlantic Seaboard, which was completely new to us greatly impressed us and we intend to go back again. Gibraltar, Athens, Zakinthos, and Cagliari were new to us and Gibraltar in particular stood out. Athens and Dubrovnik are places one must visit at some point in ones life but unfortunately everybody else knows that so they are packed, as was Capri, which we visited from Naples.

Usually we book an inside cabin on QE2; we prefer to have longer and more frequent holidays in comparatively less luxury. For this trip we chose one of the larger inside cabins, on 5 Deck. Everyone on 5 Deck eats in the Mauretania restaurant. As Cunard World Club Platinum card holders we had priority at check-in and boarding. We also found a bottle of cold sparkling wine waiting to welcome us in the cabin - another good idea.

Using the same style as previous journeys, the write-up is in several parts with navigation bars at top and bottom of each page allowing you to move from page to page.

Firstly there is a comprehensive introduction to cruising on the QE2 writen by Peter - this may be skipped if you have read about our previous experiences. It has however been updated to include details and cameos of life on board from this journey. That is where you will find information and pictures of everything from Gala dinners to ice carving, and tug of wars to crossing the line. This is common to several years cruising so use the links at top and bottom to return to this cruise.

Secondly there are a number of sections based round the ports, listed in the order in which they were visited. They have been extracted from a daily log kept by Pauline and make comprehensive use of photographs we took - a picture is worth a thousand words. All the small pictures (icons) give details of where they are if you hover the cursor over them and enlarged versions will pop up if you click them. The popup windows are reused and then tidied up when you leave the page.

There is a lot of detail, even with the small pictures, so the pages are large and slow to load the first time you visit them unless you have broadband. You should have text in seconds but the last pictures may take over a minute to fill in and it is best to wait before clicking on the popups - you may have to refresh some browsers to get the last icons filled in if you interupt them. If you have Broadband the pictures we took this year (which does not include those in the introduction) are also available in higher resolution click here for all pictures to have more detail and click again to revert to lower resolution pictures. You can also double click any picture and it will toggle between picture resolutions but only for following pictures that you click on.

We hope you will enjoy the write up and our pictures as much as we enjoyed the journey

Copyright © Peter and Pauline Curtis Most recent significant revision: 21st October, 2005