After a light breakfast we headed off, our original boarding time was pushed back an hour because of the rough weather encountered on the crossing from New York so instead of setting off at 10:00 we left at 11:00 for a 12:30 boarding, fully expecting Friday lunchtime traffic to be horrendous. As it turned out there was nothing and the expected hour journey turned out to be only 35 minutes so we were very early. Dropping the car off with CPS used up a bit of the spare time as did trying to drop the luggage through a gaggle of Asian tourists who were just alighting from their coach and taking up the whole of the footpath blocking access to the bag drop #2. There was a large queue of people being held at the entrance to the Mayflower cruise terminal, luckily our priority boarding meant we could bypass these and go straight through to check-in.

We only had one glitch in the check-in process, my printer had defaulted to double sided printing when I printed off my boarding passes, so I just printed off a second copy, which I thought would be OK but it turns out the boarding passes can be only printed single sided and would have to be reprinted there and then. Not a big deal but we now had two easily lose-able small passes rather than the nice big A4 ones.

Once past check-in we had a bit of a wait for the ship to become ready, 40 minute was promised over the PA, but they called the carded Queens Grill passengers (Q1 and Q2 staterooms) as they get a personal escort and before long we we called. After a quick security check we were through and on board the ship. The luggage hadn’t arrived at the stateroom before us so we quickly unpacked the hand luggage, messed up the safe locking requiring a visit and a reset, and headed down to our Muster station to get our cards scanned. After that it was time to find our table for lunch. We had requested a table for eight which Osman, the Maitre’d, provided for us. We’re usually the only ones at lunch, people have often had a long journey so give lunch a miss, but we had 4 table mates for lunch and very pleasant they seemed too. The afternoon was spent unpacking, visiting the concierge desk to book a Future Cruise Bookings slot, as we need to see if we can change next year’s Caribbean cruise and checking that Jane’s Gala Night hairdo is booked in at the Spa as it’s not showing up on My Voyage. It was booked for 4 pm and we have a 10:40 cruise booking appointment so all is good. After that it was time for the Commodore Club where we’d arranged to meet up with friends who had been witnesses at our February wedding. Jane is still not happy with the bar menus, no selection and you are at the mercy of the waiters when trying to find a cocktail to drink. The signature QEII is no longer available and this cannot be because they don’t have the ingredients

After that it was back to the room to head out for dinner where we met the final 2 table mates, we now have a full complement of guests and we seem to be a good mix, we were very nearly the last to leave the dining room which is always a sign of a good table.

Only four of us made breakfast, where I had bircher muesli and a cheese and mushroom omelette, different courses of course, very nice, and the omelette was very cheesy. Jane had avocado toast with a poached egg and a side order of crispy bacon. We had an appointment booked with the future cruise sales desk to see if we could rearrange our 2026 cruise, and we did, we changed it for a 16 night cruise on Queen Victoria in Princess Grill in 2027, V708N. Since we were now cruiseless for 2026 we also booked a fly cruise out of Barcelona for May.

After all the excitement and the shock of paying all that money I needed a lie down. I’d pretty much missed all of the Insights Lectures for today, so will have to catch them on the TV. Lunch was a nice sedate affair, there were six of us around the table which meant we spent longer than we should yapping away over a starter of salt and pepper squid and tuna poke bowl followed by a mango mousse for desert.

I spent all of the afternoon trying to resolve my internet issues, I only have the essentials package as I’m not streaming data, but I do want to be able to tkae photos, and back up those photos but for some reason I am struggling to get it to work. I know the isue is with the essentials package as I can use a VPN to bypass any packet snifiiing and connect without issue. I shall have to visit the concierge and see if he can offer a solution as I don’t want to constantly use a VPN.

We’d arranged to meet up with Pam and Max,who are friends who’d been our witnesses in February, for the first of our quiz outings. Jane had a Gala night hair do booked in Mareel, so wouldn’t be there for the quiz, but would join us back in the room for drinks and canapes. I thought the quiz was a bit on the easy side, and fully expected a winning score of 19 or 20 out of 20, so was a bit disappointed with our 15/20 but the winning score was 16/20 which gives me hope for doing better in upcoming quizzes. After our near miss we headed back to our stateroom where we’d requested canapes for four from our butler. We had the bottle of welcome Champagne from embarkation to drink. Matthew our butler did us proud with an excellent selection of skewered prawns, satay chicken and spring rolls. 

It was Gala Night with a Black and White theme, the easiest theme to take part in, as all my formal wear is black and white. We’d requested Tequila prawns as a main for dinner. We’d had this in February as it was the then Maitre’d’s speciality, Osman was on holiday then  and his Tequila prawns is intended to be a starter and significantly different but as it turned out it was really nice and came with a really delicious mushroom risotto. We also had Crepes Suzette as dessert which as always was delicious.

After breakfast I headed back to the stateroom with the requested granola pot before heading down to Illuminations for the morning Insight lectures. The first was Dr Alison Norrington talking about Trolls and the myths and legends surrounding them, I din’t enjoy her lecture half as much as the following one where Professor David Sanders gave his talk on Conspiracy Theories. This was right up my street, informative, entertaining and full of humour, apparently he is a proper Professor. This left me little time to find Jane for lunch. She had parked herself in the Grills Lounge and aided by a flat white she perused the Daily Programme and read her book while waiting for me to be educated.

We had a late lunch. I avoided the starters opting only to have the Spaghetti Bolognese, you really can’t fault Cunard’s pasta dishes as they are consistently good Jane had the same, but she also had the avocado tartar to start. I had tart tatin for dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, mmmm! After that we went down  Illuminations were the Quiz show “The Pinnacle” was already in progress so we stayed to watch it, a similar concept to the BBC TV show “The 1% Club” and looked like a lot of fun. After all the fun of that it was now time for more fun as we’d arranged to meet Pam and Max in the Carinthia Lounge for the Trivia quiz. The quiz started off with three very simple questions but rapidly descended in to the impossible. In the end we struggled to get 14/20 with the winners on 17/20.

After there it was  Commodore O’clock where Jane finally got a QEII after being told the day before it wasn’t available. It turned out to be a bit of a disappointment and tasted weaker than she remembered. I had a spicy Bloody Mary rather than a beer and I really enjoyed that. I’ve been cutting back on my boozing lately, mainly because I sleep really badly after drinking alcohol. One of our table mates suggested a re-hydration sachet before going to bed to replace electrolytes, so I drank one down before retiring and had a fantastic nights sleep. I’m going to get hammered tonight and take one again to see if it still works on more than a Bloody Mary and a couple of glasses of wine.

There was lamb on the menu for dinner so that was Jane sorted, I had the fillet steak from the a la carte menu and that was perfection. After dinner we went to the Royal Court theatre to see the show. It was the acrobatic act Travellers Duo who did things with ropes and ribbons I can only dream of. On the way back to the room Jane got a hankering for a hot chocolate and after a bit of persuading she headed the short distance to the Commodore Club returning five minutes later sporting a big grin and steaming hot chocolate drink.

The tour took the stated 3 hours and we walked about 8 km with a couple of breaks for restrooms and coffees. It was really interesting to find out about somewhere that I knew nothing about and I’m really glad I did the tour, but I was very glad when it was over. I was cold, proper British cold, the type that seeps into your bones if you stand around too long and by the end my feet ere starting to ache, which I also attribute to the cold.

When we got back we went straight to the stateroom to divest ourselves of the winter coats and woolly hats before heading down to the QG restaurant for some much needed lunch. A steaming  hot bowl of pea and ham soup has never been more welcomed. It was an inspired choice by whoever chose today’s menu and was lovely, the bowl was enthusiastically cleaned with a thickly buttered roll. The soup was followed by richly cheesy beef cannelloni and shock, horror, no dessert.

After lunch we went back to the stateroom to recuperate, oh! the joys of getting old. We’d thought that there wasn’t a trivia quiz being held as it was a port day so we’d not arranged to meet Pam and Max in the Carinthia Lounge. It turned out that there is a quiz on port days so we went up to get a table just in case Pam and Max did turn up. The lounge was really busy and we had to fend off several enquiries about the spare seats knowing that as soon as we gave them up Pam and Max would come rolling in, eventually Jane relented and we ended up with a couple sharing the table but not the quiz. We were appalling again 13/20 with the winners getting 17 – It’s a shame that the table sharers didn’t join us as we got a couple of the questions they got wrong and I aced the tie breaker.

After that it was Commodore O’clock, I was back on the Doombar and Jane had a Lemon Drop as I’d seen it talked about on one of the Cruise Critic Trans Atlantic threads, not impressed. We were meeting up with Pam and Max for dinner in the Bamboo Alternative dining Restaurant. This is one of the pop-up restaurants that appear as a restaurant in a restaurant taking over part of the Kings Court Buffet in the evening. The theme of the Bamboo is pan-Asian and was very good. There is normally a $30 per head up-charge, but Diamond loyalty tier members get a freebie once per cruise , so we took advantage of that, but I would happily have paid for the meal we’d just had

The meal started with a bento box selection of six amuse bouche sized morsels, I had the crispy chilli beef as a main which had a nice bit of heat to it and then a trio of Asian desserts to follow. it was an excellent meal with excellent company.

After sitting in an empty Illuminations for 20 minutes I thought I may have gone to the wrong venue, yep as I walked past the Royal Court Theatre the first of today’s lectures was in full swing. Since I had already missed the start I thought I’d go to Sir Samuel’s for a nice coffee instead. I had thought you could get some specialist coffees there, but the menu only included the usual Americano, Latte, Flat White etc so I ended up having a Cappuccino for $5 before I realised I could have just gone to the Grills Lounge and had one for free. So after that coffee I headed up to the Grills Lounge as I’d arranged to meet Jane there and when I arrived she was already there sipping on a hot chocolate. 

We hung around in the lounge before heading for lunch  in the dining room. I gave the starter a miss as I was still not massively hungry and opted for the Asian dumplings which were lovely with a nice kick of heat but size wise they were more of a starter than a main. I should have asked for a second portion, but I was being good and Jane, who had ordered the pretend Philly cheese steak sandwich, couldn’t finish hers as that was huge, so I bravely assisted her..

We then did nothing until it was time for the Trivia quiz at 16:30. Pam and Max were already there so we joined them, ordered a Ginger beer to drink and settled in for an afternoon’s hard quizzing. A pathetic 13/20 was attained with the winners again getting 17. It seems to be a bit of a theme on this cruise 17/20 as a winning score. We then retired to the Commodore Club for a Doombar and a glass of the house Rose.

It was our second Gala night of the cruise, and there was no theme associated with it, so essentially black and white night although one of our table-mates did sport a very snazzy bow tie. We went off menu and had the Dover Sole with added steamed vegetables from the A la carte menu and prepared table-side. After dinner we went back to the room to prepare for an excursion up to the top deck to see if we could see any aurora activity. It was freezing, but there was a bit of a grey smudge crossing the night sky which when processed by my camera turned out to be the Northern Lights. A bit underwhelming, but we can say we have seen them. Hopefully we’ll get a break in the weather tomorrow night when we go chasing them on our excursion in Tromsø

We had an early lunch, we wouldn’t make Dinner as we had to be at the Arctic Circle tour office for a pickup by 17:45 and we’d planned to supplement our calories with Afternoon Tea in the Grills Lounge at 16:00. Lunch was really nice, I’ve been told that the confit duck cottage pie is excellent, so I ordered it and I can confirm it is very nice, Jane had one of her all-time favourites, spaghetti carbonara.

After lunch we relaxed until it was time for Afternoon Tea. It’s a bit of a Cunard tradition for white gloved waiters to serve Afternoon in the Queens room at 15:00 every day. Grills passengers can also take it in the Grills Lounge on QM2, on the other ships it is served in the Princess Grill dining room for Grills passengers. The tea consists of cups of tea, with finger cut sandwiches and various small cakes as well as the famous fruit scone with clotted cream and jam. The finger sandwiches were a little dry around the edges, but very edible and the small cakes were very nice. The scone did come with clotted cream, but it was a very small portion and it really wasn’t enough to counter the sweetness of the strawberry jam, it was still very nice though.

Suitably replete we went back to the stateroom to prepare to head out into the snowy North. Merino base layers, fleece lined walking trousers and a fluffy jumper, hat, gloves and a big coat. After all this had been donned, we headed to get the Shuttle Bus to the centre of Tromsø, The Ami Hotel where we were to join the tour was about half a mile from the drop off. Not far, but it was very icy underfoot and part of the route was up a steep set of ice covered steps. Jane had almost got to the top of the steps when her feet started to slide backwards, so I had to go back and rescue her as she clung onto the handrail for dear life, panicking that she was going to slide back down the hill. 

We made it to the Ami Hotel eventually and signed in for our expedition with Arctic Circle Tours where we were booked into their Minivan tour. There are 7 guests in the very comfortable van rather than the 15 in the minibus. Jane wanted to make sure that they would be able to drop us off at the QM2 on the way back after her harrowing experience of walking in snow earlier. It turns out that they would have happily have collected us from  the ship anyway as they were heading there to pick up the remaining four passengers. The final guest was a no-show so after David our driver introduced himself we headed to QM2 to pick up four Australian friends who made up our party. I had asked David what our chances of seeing anything given the heavy cloud cover and he was quite cagey, saying anything could happen as the weather changes so fast in these high latitudes, spoiler alert, it didn’t. We drove about 65 kms North, about an hours drive to one of the coastal sites where the chances were deemed to be highest, a fact borne out by there being lots of Northern Lights tours all converging on the same place. Once David had found a suitable parking space along side the minibus group, he went about setting up the campsite. This consisted of a heated toilet tent, bonfire area and a bunch of camping chairs, and we settled in for a bit of Aurora spotting. David kept us fed throughout, we grilled sausages and marshmallows over the campfire, drank lots of hot chocolate and devoured chocolate and doughnuts. Even though we never saw any evidence of the Aurora we were kept entertained, but eventually even all the hot food and drink couldn’t keep the cold out and we called it a day returning to the ship about midnight, where we went straight to bed.

There was another favourite, or rather two favourites on offer. Buffalo wings for the starter and Lasagne as the main, both of which were excellent. The buffalo wings were the messy option but they did come with a finger bowl. We had missed dinner the previous night which meant we now had a spare bottle from the 12 bottle Commodore’s collection. Jane has decided that she can select a nice light Sauvignon Blanc to have a glass of wine with her lunch.

When we left the ship we were corralled in a holding area while waiting for our coach. We were a little distracted chatting to another couple while waiting, when we were ushered forward to get on the coach. It was only when we had been sat for a few minutes that Jane thought it was odd that crew were getting on a tour bus, and with a little further though we realised no one had taken our tickets. It turned out we’d wandered onto the shuttle bus by mistake and the tour bus was round the corner and was still there so we got on board apologising for keeping everyone waiting.

The tour started with a commentary about Tromsø while we took a circuitous route through the centre of the city to our first point of call. The guide was very interesting with lots of stories about Amundsen, the Lutheran cathedral, the catholic cathedral, the library and a hot dog stand and much, much more. The first port of call was the Full Steam museum, which turned out not to be about trains, but is the worlds most northernmost coastal museum. It is located in Bangsundbrygga and was built in 1902 as a fish factory. Here we took part in the cod tasting experience where we had the Skrei Fishing Trilogy. with a guide and storyteller, who lead us through “exciting tasting experiences” that took us on a journey through the history of Arctic cod fishing, presented through flavourful elements served from Full Steam’s own kitchen:

• Savour a delicious portion of smoked cod roe and learn about the journey from cod roe to the rich abundance of Skrei in the Barents Sea
• Taste the delicacy that is cod tongue
• Understand how Peter Møller developed the steam method to extract cod liver oil, and the significance of this product for the population during the long, dark winters over centuries and where the Steam in Steam museum came from.

The only downside of this part of the trip was that drinks weren’t included, but paying for a single beer or coffee didn’t detract from the experience, and the beer was very good.

The second venue was the Magic Ice, which is a bar set in a freezer container. It turned out to be quite good fun, sipping on the signature cocktail, the Arctic Crowberry, it is served in an ice glass and includes crowberry juice and white wine. We had been given lined and hooded ponchos to keep us warm in the sub zero conditions. There were lots if ice sculptures and artwork to look at and interact with. All surfaces were made of ice tables and seating.  We only stayed about 30 minutes in there before heading back to the shuttle bus for the short journey back to the ship.

Dinner was lamb chops which are Jane’s absolute favourite, so there was no chance of going off menu, My choices were warm chicken livers to start and a red Thai prawn curry, both were excellent. We retired soon after dinner and I prepared my warm weather gear to put on if I woke during  the night on the off-chance there would be some Aurora actions occurring. I did wake but there was a storm going on and I didn’t fancy going out on the balcony with the ship pitching around like like it was.

It was the last of our Gala nights, Red and Gold and that means another hairdo for Jane, so she departed for the Salon while I went in search of a coffee and somewhere to get around to finishing off yesterday’s blog. I ended up in the Grills Lounge where I had a particularly nasty flat white coffee, really strong with grounds floating in it, it was free so I didn’t worry about it too much. While I was typing away Jane arrived with her new bouncy hairdo, I think bouncy is the correct verb for more body when referring to hair.

Lunch was a nice one, tandoori lamb skewers and a lovely piece of calves liver, I am a fan of offal, especially calves liver and the chefs cooked it perfectly. The afternoon was a bit of a bust, we just chilled while waiting for the 16:30 trivia. There wasn’t a massive amount happening, The Cunard story (Cunard Street) was showing in Illuminations, and I’d advise anyone who hasn’t seen it to make the effort to do so, but we have seen it. It was also freezing outside so there was no chance of spending time out there. So we just spent the time in the room keeping warm watching a bit of TV.

We were awful in the quiz again, the quiz this time had a theme running through it, every answer started with a D. We’d figured this out early on and there were still a bunch of answers that we didn’t get. We ended with 15/20 with the winners getting a full house. After the quiz we retired to the Commodore Club for a consolation Doombar, Jane had a Mai Tai, apparently not sweet enough, plenty of alcohol but not enough flavour.

As said previously, it was the Red and Gold gala evening. Jane had brought her wedding dress from February to wear, but was worried that as this was the third of the gala nights she was going to struggle to get into it. She did struggle, I thought she looked amazing but she wasn’t happy, saying it felt tight but it didn’t matter as she’d brought another shiny gold dress which was more comfortable and she went with that instead. We had gone off-menu for dinner ordering one of Osman’s specialities, seafood pasta. Osman, the Maitre’d, prepared the dish table-side flambéing the dish spectacularly. Needless to say it was delicious.

We went to the Royal Court theatre after dinner to watch the Queens of Rhythm, a Motown Trio who had the audience dancing in the aisles with their covers of classic Motown songs. Adherence to the dress code in the QG restaurant was very nearly 100%, very nearly everyone was in a DJ. In the theatre, not so much people wandered in in sweatshirts and jumpers or just shirts and no jacket. It does state that there is a dress code in the restaurants, bars and theatre and outlines where the dress code does not apply, but if you don’t enforce your stated dress code then you have no dress code. Anyway after watching the show we headed up to the Commodore Club for a nightcap, Spicy Bloody Mary for me and a Cool as a Cucumber for Jane

Once all the laundry was completed it was time to brave the elements and head off the ship and into Ålesund to do some shopping. The weather seemed to be a lot better than Tromsø, but it turns out that driving sleet is a lot more painful than a bit of fluffy snow. It wasn’t far into town and the shops and the weather came in showers and passed fairly quickly.

I had a plan for lunch but first we needed to get the Christmas shopping out of the way, before I was allowed a nice hot cup of coffee and a sandwich for lunch. My first choice for lunch was full with no free tables, so we ended up in the second choice, Cafe Racoon. It wasn’t a bad choice, the coffee was good and the toasted ham and cheese sandwich was both delicious and filling. We did a bit more shopping on the way back to the ship and then we were back on board clutching our parcels.

We had our best result in the quiz but it was a massively easy quiz. 19/20 with three teams on 20. We wouldn’t have won the tie breaker though, show tunes aren’t our forte. There was an announcement by the Captain while we were having drinks in the Commodore Club. Apparently because Bremerhaven is a commercial port we cannot disembark via the port, the only passengers who can do that were transit passengers and people on organised excursions, we will have to tender off the ship using a port ferry boat which will operate hourly 

We had ordered Chateaubriand for our main at dinner, a very good choice

Jane did a little more laundry, that was the third time we’ve been up there already, so we should have very little dirty washing to take home with us on Wednesday. I spent the rest of the morning drinking coffee in the Concierge Lounge or writing up my blog back in the  stateroom. We visited deck 8 as Jane wanted to book another hair appointment, which will be her 4th in the last week and a half, which to me seems a bit excessive but that may because we have significantly different hairstyles. While we were there we had  a look around the book shop and then the library.. The library really is an oasis of peace in an already peaceful ship. 

Lunch in the dining room was a sliver of pork pie for me to start, and then the chicken and walnut pesto pasta as a main. It was a good job the pasta was a filling dish as the pork pie was the thinnest sliver possible while still being recognisable as a pork pie, a mere soupcon.

We rushed down to the Carinthia Lounge after lunch as Jane wanted to do the music trivia quiz. Music is her forte along with soap knowledge, so armed with the knowledge that I wasn’t going to be much help we took part. It was a bit chaotic with the compere forgetting to stop the music before the lyrics gave the tune away, not that it helped me much. It turns out that Jane’s music superpowers don’t really extend beyond the 1980’s so we were quite pleased to get a mighty 23 out of 40. Taking part in the music quiz must have put us in the correct frame of mind for the Afternoon Trivia because we were on fire. Luckily we were joined, not only by Pam and Max, our usual quiz pals, but also by two of or table mates Dennis and Hazel. We ended up with a winning score of 18/20 which put us into a tie break with two other teams. Our ability to guess things saw us through and we were the proud recipients of 6 stickers for the sticker book which can be redeemed for fabulous Cunard themed prizes. 

After all the excitement, it was Commodore O’clock and we retired upstairs for a well deserved Doombar and Bloody Mary. Jane really liked the Bloody Mary, but complained that it went down far too easily.

Jane had requested Lobster Thermidor for her main course, I’m not a fan of lobster so I asked Osman, our Maitre’d, what he would recommend. He reckoned that I would enjoy a nice fillet steak, flambeed with mushrooms in a Diane sauce and obviously he wasn’t wrong, I certainly would like that. The starters were Brussels pate for Jane’s and I had the prawn cocktail. When asked by our waiter what she would like for dessert Jane started off her sentence by saying she was being good and wouldn’t have a dessert and finished it off by saying Grand Marnier Souffle please. We were, again, the last to leave the restaurant.