Queen Mary 2, New York to Southampton 14th July 2023

The final leg of our journey was sailing from New York to Southampton on the Queen Mary 2 which took seven days.  Despite Paul's warnings of it being rough seas and Atlantic storms, for which we had prepared by carrying an assortment of sea sickness medications with us, the sea was incredibly calm the whole time and we barely felt the ship moving.  Helped by the fact that this is an ocean going liner, so designed to cope with the worst that the Atlantic can throw at it.

Sailing out of New York was spectacular as we passed by the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge with a backdrop of New York City skyline.

Cunard has old fashioned traditional values and high tea was served by white gloved waiters accompanied by a string quartet and there were two gala evenings with a strict dark suit and black tie dress code and ball gowns for women.  As you can imagine we didn't partake of the gala evenings as our "wardrobe" didn't run to the required standard having been squeezed into a backpack for the last nine months.  But we enjoy the afternoon tea on one occasion and the scones were particularly delicious.  We both found the formality and old fashioned values a little out of place in the 21st century.  However, it was a pleasant way to travel, arriving back home without jet lag, relaxed and refreshed.

The majority of this trip we have been travelling east and have had many 23 hour days.  On the Queen Mary for five of the seven days, the clock was moved forward one hour at midday which we found easier to adjust to as opposed to when we were on the Eclipse where the clock moved forward at midnight.  The only problem was that lunch ran into afternoon tea with barely a digestion break in between!  We now have to get used to full 24 hour days.

 It's been a great trip.  We didn't know how we would feel about travelling for nine months; whether we would miss home or become travel-weary and fed up with living out of a backpack for so long.  We travelled home from Southampton by National Express which made a stop at Stansted Airport and it would have been so easy to have jumped on a plane and continue our journey.