We find that in our current life we have the luxury of time. Without needing to rush to our destination, we started looking for alternative ways to head to Europe. Chris found lots of information regarding repositioning cruises, which are one-way cruises that occur when companies are moving their ships to different areas of the world for seasonal cruising. We also learned that there is still one Ocean Liner performing transatlantic passage, Cunard’s Queen Mary 2.
Cunard has been synonymous with transatlantic crossing since 1840, and the Queen Mary 2 is still doing its duty. We chose the QM2 for two reasons. One: it departs from NYC which made it convenient for a drop off from CT. Two: it is an experience from bygone days and a bit different from the rest of the cruise industry.
We booked a four-person inside room and kept our fingers crossed that we would have enough space for our bags! I suppose RV living was training us to be able to live in tight quarters with each other in many different situations!
One thing that make the QM2 different is the evening dress. If you wish to eat dinner in the main dining room, you are required to wear appropriate attire (collared shirt at a minimum) and two of the evenings are designated Gala evenings with a suit and evening dress required. We treated this as a great opportunity to instruct the kids on proper table settings and formal dining protocol.
We spent our days attending lectures from guest speakers (WWII, astrophysics, American heiresses in the 1800s), our evenings enjoying delicious food and the daily show, and peppered in trivia competitions whenever we could. Jack learned that he really enjoys trivia and we are good at general trivia but awful at the 1920s specific ones.
We had an overall wonderful time and arrived in the United Kingdom rested and ready to hit the ground running! The kids are already asking when we can do this again, maybe we will have to cruise back to the US….
