Final days at sea.

It is morning of the final day of our cruise; all good things must come to an end, I suppose, but I sure wish the end weren't so soon.  I think I could stand a few more days aboard this magnificent ship.  I'm putting up some pictures from around our floating home away from home.

The past two days have been at sea days; no ports of call…just sailing from Barcelona to Southampton.  So I've had fun just being on this ship: relaxing, reading, taking part in the various activities offered, and, of course, eating.  According to a key ring that I bought for myself yesterday, the Queen Mary 2 is 1,132 feet long and about 135 across.  She can carry 2,620 passengers with a crew of 1,253 totaling 3,873 people aboard.  Her maiden voyage was in 2004 (which is when Marilyn & I did the North Atlantic crossing).  According to the report from our Daily Programme, the largest number of crew on our voyage comes from the Philippines while the most number of passengers are from Great Britain. 

Yesterday, I did my third and final RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) acting class and got a certificate to prove it even.  The classes covered a variety of acting methods using voice and body to express character and status.  On this final day, we got to use some of what we had learned with a monologue from Shakespeare which was very fun.

We've also gone to the planetarium on board ship to see a the shows there.  The QM2 was the first ship to have a planetarium; the shows came from the American Museum of Natural History and NASA and talked about the immensity of the universe.  Not a bad thing to consider when one is at sea in the immensity of the ocean. 

We also went to afternoon tea for the first time on Thursday; a lovely English tradition of tea and goodies at 3:30 in the afternoon.  I think we enjoyed it so much that we'll be repeating that particular activity again today.

Last night's entertainment was a show by the resident singers and dancers called Viva Italia.  It was, to put it mildly, over the top, but in a good way.  The costumes alone really were quite amazing.  There are four singers and 12 dancers who perform the various shows.  I had the pleasure of running into & meeting one of the dancers a few days ago.

I also took a class on Wednesday in the computer learning centre.  They offered classes throughout the voyage but I only made use of one class; about using Photoshop Elements to fix photographs.  Unfortunately, the next class was too full for me to take it so I remain ignorant about the use of layers in Photoshop Elements.  Alas.

As I said this is the final day so I don't know when my next posting will be put up.  If I have a chance to write again, I'll do so; otherwise I'll post again once again when I'm back in San Francisco.

Ahoy!