Wednesday 8th April 2009

Today was disembarkation day from Queen Mary 2. The end of our wonderful cruise to the UK. We left Cherbourg last night at 6.00pm, and had quite a send off from the people of the town, who came down to the quay to wave us off, and the ship was followed by a flotilla of small craft racing along trying to keep up with us. The little boats were kept away from the ship by the water police, but it was great to see them waving and cheering us as we left.
Deb and I went to the final concert in the Royal Court Theatre at 7.00pm, and while the musician (a pianist) was quite good, the singer was only just OK, still we have had terrific shows throughout the cruise.
After the show we had dinner in the Lotus Restaurant – Asian, which was good. It was quite strange as there were very few people having dinner – most people must have eaten earlier, and then gone off to do their packing.
After dinner, we took a final stroll around the deck, then back to the cabin to go to bed. We had finished our packing before the ship sailed, and had put our cases out for collection around 6.30pm.
Not a great deal of sleep for both of us, I was awake around 3.30am, but tried to sleep a bit more but without much luck. Finally, I got up at 6.00am when I could hear the ship docking at Southampton.
Deb was awake soon after, and we showered and went up on deck to see what the day was like, and take some final photos, before going down to the Britannia Restaurant for our final breakfast. It had been raining, but the sky was clearing, and we ended up having a beautiful sunny day for our first day in the UK.
We had plenty of time for disembarkation, as we had been advised that our Deck would not be called until after 9.30am.
We had to vacate our cabins by 8.30am so that they could be prepared for the new contingent of passengers who were coming on board in the afternoon. The ship was scheduled to sail for New York at 4.30pm – talk about a quick turn around timetable. Also many of the crew were being replaced as well.
At 9.30am Deb and I went down to Sir Samuels’ Bar where she was to be assisted ashore with a wheelchair. The men were there waiting for those who needed assistance, and had us through customs rapidly. He deposited us in the Departure terminal, and as it was only 10.00am, we had a bit of wait for our private hire car that we had booked. The driver arrived around 10.30am, and loaded us into his Mercedes minivan and off we went on our way to London.
The driver was an interesting fellow, dark skinned but born in the UK. We heard pretty well all his personal history about his relationship with his partner, plus his views on politics, etc. The trip took around 2 ½ hours, with a stop at a roadside “Welcome Break” for toilet break and some food and drink. Here we discovered how much the price of food was with 600ml of diet coke at ₤1.49 (nearly $A3.00) – but they had 1.25ltr at ₤1.89, so we bought that size to share, and 2 muffins, for ₤1.49. While we were at the shop I saw a travel rug, that was rolled with carry handles that I thought would work well as a back pillow for Deb (to replace the one I lost). That only cost ₤5.00, so we bought it. The driver had purchased some healthy Kentucky Fried for himself and a huge cup of coffee – goodness knows what that cost him.
Anyway, we got back on the motorway and continued the drive into London. The scenery was quite interesting, but like being on motorways in Australia – not a lot to see other than cars, trucks etc.
When we finally got to the hotel that had been arranged by the travel agent on behalf of Cunard – was the Caesar, in Queens Gardens, Bayswater. We arrived at 1.00pm, and they indicated that our room would not be available before 2.00pm as it was not ready. So we waited – and waited, by 2.30pm, Deb was pretty sore from having to sit for so long, so I went to see how much longer it would be. So they said they had a room ready, but didn’t think it would be suitable – and perhaps I had better have a look – well, I didn’t actually get to see the room – as it was at the top of a very steep set of stairs, and I knew that neither of us would be able to negotiate the stairs – so I told the check in person, that we would go out for a while, and could they please get us a room accessible by the lift, or with no stairs.
We were pretty famished, as we had only had the diet coke and a muffin since breakfast, at it was now 3.15pm. So we got a map from the guy at the front desk, and took off to explore our surroundings and find something to eat.
The first place we came to that look to have edible food, was an internet café that made hamburgers – so we ordered one for each of us, and a cup of tea – it was delicious, especially the cup of tea.
After refreshing ourselves we walked to the end of the street to Bayswater Road, and found that Hyde Park was across the road, so we went in and explored – it was marvellous – we could hardly believe that we were finally in London, and walking in Hyde Park. We took photos of all sorts of silly things – and ended up wandering around Kensington Palace. The daffodils in the lawn were in flower, and it was a magnificent sight. Check out the photos in the Picasa Album.
We decided not to go into the palace, as it was nearly closing time, and we still needed to get back to the hotel and get checked in to a room, so we walked back to the hotel, and hooray – we had a room, and it was on the ground floor – only problem this time was – it was made up as a double – anyway we were able to get that fixed, however, the shower is one over a fairly high bath which will be problematic for Deb tomorrow, but we will manage somehow.
The room and bathroom are quite small, but we had been warned that this would be the case in the UK, but it is only for one night – tomorrow we will be staying at the YHA at Thameside, which will require us transferring all our suitcases to another part of London. When we packed up, we were able to pack all the clothes and stuff we won’t be needing for this part of the holiday into one of the suitcases, and we plan on leaving it at the YHA while we travel on our bus tour, which will make it a lot easier to manage our gear. Also, we packed clothes for one day into a carryall, so that we don’t have to open either of the suitcases until we get to the YHA.
We had a rest in our room for a couple of hours, and then went out around 6.45pm to find somewhere to have dinner. We walked a couple of blocks up the road from the hotel, to a main street that had heaps of restaurants and tourist shops in it, and had dinner at an Italian one called Bella Italia – they had a special, 2 courses for ₤9.95 – so we had minestrone soup, and Deb had a linguine dish and I had a Pizza – they were delicious and filling, and when we left, we were undercharged by ₤2.00, so we kept it, and wandered down the road gazing into the shops. The weather was still fine, but the wind was quite cool, so we bought Deb a “beanie” and some postcards to send home, some milk to make tea in our room (at least they have a jug, mugs and tea, sugar and coffee in the room – but no fridge), and walked back to the hotel.
We organised for another blanket – as there was only one on each bed (the house-maid had separated the double into 2 twin beds for us earlier on), made ourselves a cup of tea, watched some TV, loaded the photos onto the computer, and wrote up the blog for the day. Then off to bed. Tomorrow should be another exciting day for us.