This cruise is a 14 night Western Mediterranean Adventure aboard Cunard’s newest ship Queen Anne. This will be our first cruise on Queen Anne, and completes the set of cruising on all of Cunard’s ships. The cruise leaves Southampton today heading for Cadiz, Cartagenia, Valencia, Malaga, Gibraltar and finally Lisbon before heading home for Sunday !st December. There has been much comment about the amount of hanging space available, so Jane has been getting stressed about how much she can pack, which dresses get left behind and don’t even get me started on how many pairs of shoes is too
Category: Port Days
Today’s Daily Programme Can Be Found Here Hello Cadiz! I’d not heard us arriving into the port of Cadiz, the sea state has been so calm it’s easy to forget you’re actually onboard a ship at sea. When I woke we had already docked and the great thing about arriving in Cadiz is we were right in the city. We had a walking tour booked for today, so we just had a light breakfast in the restaurant, I had bircher muesli and a strangely sticky croissant, Jane, fruit and yoghourt and also one of the strangely sticky croissants. The tour
Today’s Daily Programme Can Be Found Here We’ve arrived in our second port this morning, Cartagena, it’s a pretty little town/city where wed park up right in the city. So it’s a short walk from the ship to the shops and attractions. But before we head into town we need breakfast first, that is taken in the PG restaurant as usual, bircher muesli, yum! And since we’ve been here many times we had decided to spend a little time lounging in the sun, so headed up to the Grills Terrace where we hoped to grab a sun lounger. As luck
Today’s Daily Programme Can Be Found Here I woke early again, it wasn’t even light, so I threaded my way past the coffee table, to open the balcony curtains and get my first view of Valencia on this trip. The sun was just rising and it was looking overcast. The chances of getting some sunbathing didn’t look too promising so we decided to pop into Valencia after breakfast. I has my first “full English” of the cruise, which was very nice, substituting the hash brown for an extra slice of black pudding. Cunard supplied free shuttle buses into Valencia, but
Today’s Daily Programme Can Be Found Here We’d decided to have a leisurely breakfast this morning followed by some relaxing time on the Grills Terrace to let the hoards of day trippers vacate the ship. This was a good idea even though it was overcast early on the sun broke through soon enough and we has a toasty deck 11 all to ourselves. Jane even ventured into the Jacuzzi to get a good bubbling. Once she’d dried off it was time for us to follow the rest of the ship into Malaga. We’d decided to eat off the ship, possibly
The plan today was the tried and tested one we’d used all cruise, after breakfast head upstairs to the Grills Terrace and grab some rays and let all the old dears head off the ship. We’d then follow after lunch, do our Xmas shopping and job done! Unfortunately it was grey and overcast and although not cold, but it wasn’t a lot of fun lying on a lounger reading my book, so we joined the hoards processing their way off the ship and up Main Street. It’s a long boring walk into Gibraltar from the port and doesn’t get interesting
Today’s Daily Programme Can Be Found Here The approach to Lisbon along the River Tagus is always spectacular, we didn’t have the glorious sunset today but that didn’t diminish it. We’d gained an hour overnight so it was very leisurly getting ready for breakfast. No kedgeree today, I had intended to have a light breakfast as we were going to have lunch out in Lisbon. It was possibly our last chance to get some sun before returning home, plus we needed to do some laundry, so the plan was to set off the laundry, then head up to the Grills
It’s always sad to be leaving the ship, more so when you’ve been having an excellent cruise. Typically we slept in on our last morning, breakfast was an early affair ending at 08:30 so it was a bit of a rush getting in the shower, dressed and everything stashed in the hand luggage and ready for our 09:30 departure. The breakfast menu is more limited for disembarkation, missing the many eggs benedict variations but that didn’t matter as I had planned to have my second ‘Full English’ of the cruise which was delicious and fortified me for the journey home.
It had been a stressful night on Saturday, the train strike had caused issues getting Raffy to the dog sitter’s, and Jane wasn’t able to drop him off until after 8pm, which meant that our travel plans of driving down to Southampton were postponed until this morning and all the pre-departure checks were more than a little fraught. We departed at 07:30, heading down to New Milton where the car was going to be left with Jane’s Dad for the duration. The drive down was uneventful, and we were in New Milton before 10am and the bags transferred to John’s
Today’s Daily Programme can be found here… We’re in Cadiz today, a city we’ve visited many times, and we love it but there’s an issue. I’m full of a cold, probably the first proper cold since COVID, and I feel terrible so after a late breakfast where we were alone at our table, we headed into Cadiz with the sole intention of finding a Farmacia, luckily there’s a couple dotted around Cadiz. Actually there are probably more Farmacia than bars. I wanted some COVID lateral flow tests, as we’d neglected to pack any, some Lemsip or the Spanish equivalent and