Cunard Queen Elizabeth 2 Cruise Liner 2007 Mediterranean Splendour and 40th Anniversary Cruises

Queen Elizabeth 2 - 2007

Mediterranean Splendour & The 40th Anniversary Cruise

Introduction to the QE2 || QE2 Mediterranean Splendour and 40^th Anniversary Cruise 2007 | Mediterranean Splendour Overview | Lisbon, Portugal | Cagliari, Sardinia | Corfu, Greece | Dubrovnik, Croatia| Trieste/Venice, Italy | Valletta, Malta | Gibraltar || The 40th Anniversary Celebration Voyage Overview | Southampton | Newcastle | South Queensferry/Edinburgh | Greenock/Glasgow | Liverpool | Southampton

This is the story of two consecutive but very different cruises. We had initially booked the 8 day cruise round Great Britain to celebrate the Queen Elizabeth 2's 40th anniversary, the date of which coincides with Pauline's Birthday. Eight days seemed very short so we later added the previous cruise which was a fortnight round the Mediterranean. The first cruise 'Mediterranean Splendour' was very much a typical cruise on the QE2 from Southampton to Southampton and took us to both familiar and new places.

The 40th Anniversary Cruise was by far the most memorable of our journeys on the QE2, it was not only a journey round Great Britain but a nostalgic and often emotional trip in time commemorating the 40th anniversary of the World's Greatest Liner, the triumphant climax of an outstanding tradition for safety and elegance built up by Cunard. It was a lap of honour visiting not only her birthplace but the roots from which the Cunard tradition grew over 168 years.

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 written 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 make comprehensive use of the 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 interrupt 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 'icon' and it will toggle between picture resolutions for the following pictures.

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