Craig's Travel Journal Day 3: Tuesday, May 17

Tuesday, May 17

I’m awakened at 6:30 by the sounds of construction about a dozen feet from our bedroom. A new high-rise apartment is underway adjacent to the NYLO. We get up; have breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant (it’s mediocre) and head out to go to The Metropolitan Museum of Art across Central Park from where we’re staying. There we wait in a long line to get inside as the museum has just opened and quickly head to a fashion exhibit I wanted Laura to see, Manus X Machina.

The exhibit is extraordinary. The entire exhibition is a juxtaposition of vintage couture from the houses of Chanel, Valentino, and others with more contemporary displays from Alexander McQueen and showing various techniques from draping to pleating to 3D printing. Laura enjoys it thoroughly, recognizing certain pieces from her textbooks.

We finish the exhibit in time to cab it back to the hotel, pack up the few things we had taken out of our bags and head off to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. As we head off the island of Manhattan and get closer to the terminal in Brooklyn traffic locks up on the two-lane road leading to Pier 12. People are getting off the Queen Mary 2 looking for taxis and car services. Taxis and Ubers loaded up with passengers about to board are streaming in at the same time. It’s a slow slog to the terminal.

Once there, we go through security and take care of getting our shipboard IDs fairly

quickly and then are boarded onto the very beautiful Queen Mary 2. We find our stateroom suite, pleased to discover it’s a generous size with an actual walk-in closet. The ship goes to Southampton on this journey and into dry dock for a month of renovations, so I was worried our stateroom would be worn and threadbare, like a hotel room in need of rejuvenation at the end of its cycle. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Our room was in great shape. We went out to the balcony and could see the Statue of Liberty. It was fantastic.

We walked around the ship and attempted to orient ourselves to what was fore and what was aft, what was high and what was low, utterly turning ourselves around and backwards in no time. Our suite entitles us to a private dining room for us and other guests in our class and we go find a late lunch in the Princess Grill Dining Room, meeting another couple at our six top table who live in Newport Beach, CA. He is English and she is American and they are off for five months of travel in Europe once we land in England. They have their dog on board. With a kennel capacity of 12, they booked their dog a year ago and were on a waiting list for a time. Crazy. This is why we don’t have pets. They are very accommodating of Laura’s allergies, providing her with a menu to pre-order her dinner so they will have everything prepared just for her. Lunch was a bit meh.

We discover the pub and order some drinks. After our mandatory safety muster, we head

back to our room, get cleaned up because there’s a dress code after 5 pm where women have to be in dresses or “smart pant suits” and men in jackets. We head out to explore the ship a bit more then go back to the Princess Grill Dining Room for dinner. Dinner was better.

Before dinner, whilst we were still enjoying a champagne toast as we set sail from Brooklyn and heading out to sea the Captain came on the ship intercom to inform us that there’s a medical emergency onboard. Later, we notice the ship is doing a 180-degree turn, affording us a lovely view of the Manhattan skyline in silhouette

against the western setting sun. We learn the ship is heading back to harbor waters where a medical vessel will pick up the passenger. All through dinner the ship sat still, likely awaiting the medical water taxi. We met the third couple at our table (the whole open seating thing doesn’t work when you’re at a table of more than two—you can find yourself eating alone or eating at a full table, which we find strange). They live less than two miles from us in Pasadena near the Arroyo. He’s a retired doctor/engineer, she a snooty housewife. The two annoy us. In the first five minutes of talking to them he informed us how he’d set up a college trust for his grandchildren of $300,000 each. Laura found it vulgar and I just found it crass.

First dinner in the Princess Grill:

Craig had a chicken and duck liver terrine.  

Laura had beef consommé. 

Laura had scallops for her main and Craig had fish. 

  











Craig had a selection of cheese for dessert and Laura had the treacle tart. 

Returning to the pub, we sit with another couple from outside Toronto on their fourth crossing on the QM2. Against our better judgment we play a pub-wide trivia game, then head off to bed. The ship, finally underway again, is very stable. Laura notes from the bed a harmonic vibration thrum, but I don’t even feel it. The ship doesn’t rock at all. We sleep soundly.