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| Your Hosts, Chuck and Lori, Passing Time In Queen Mary 2’s Chart Room Lounge |
When it comes down to it, our week aboard the Queen Mary 2 was all about passing the time. If we were in a hurry to get home, after all, we would have flown. It was relaxing–and completely devoid of jet lag–to cross the Atlantic by ship. And while there were plenty of activities to occupy our minds, sometimes the best time spent is…doing nothing in particular.
One of the obvious ways to pass some time is to read. The Queen Mary 2, in fact, boasts the world’s largest library at sea, so Lori picked up a book and managed to finish it just in time to turn it in on our last day. For his part, Chuck did another editing read-through of his newly completed novel: making that time spent, I guess, a bit of work as well. Everywhere you looked on the QM2, as with most cruises, people had books, Kindles, or iPads in hand.
Probably our favorite time-passer was our morning hour or so spent in and around the Queen Mary 2’s hot tubs. We’ve had a hot tub back home for the past few years, and we’ve missed it these last six months. If you don’t have a hot tub, you don’t know what you’re missing. It was a splended way to pass time on the Queen Mary 2 soaking in a hot tub chatting with each other and fellow passengers.
One way cruise companies love for you to pass time is by hanging out in the bars and lounges buying drinks. And while it’s true that cruise ship drinks are a little more pricey than what you’ll pay at your corner pub, we found the Queen Mary’s prices generally acceptable and on par with what you might expect to pay in a major city like New York or London (as in $8). Our favorite spots on the Queen Mary 2 were next to a window in the Chart Room lounge (as shown in the picture at the top of this blog) and in the forward-facing Commodore Club.
Everyone on a cruise becomes amateur navigators for a time. Each day at noon on the Queen Mary 2, the captain reports the ship’s position and heading (and discusses the weather and sea floor features). You can mark your progress on one of the souvenir charts for sale on board. In case you miss the captain’s noon report, or if once every 24 hours isn’t frequent enough for you, a live navigation channel is available on the ship’s television system. Interestingly enough, Google Maps on Chuck’s iPhone was often able to pinpoint us in the middle of the Atlantic: apparently the ship’s onboard cellular service reports the latitude and longitude from the ship’s navigation systems.
Finally, one of the best ways to pass time on the Queen Mary 2 is by playing games. Tables are thoughtfully provided here and there, and we saw people utilizing them for playing cards, dominos, and backgammon. We even took a bridge class on our first day at sea, but decided it was too complex a game for us to master in one week. And though we bought a deck of cards, we never found time to actually sit down and play. There’s always next time.
