Finally—another post!

Thank you to those who signed up for our blog, and who have been patiently waiting for another installment.

Here we are in the Marriott Pompano Beach Resort sond Spa. We spent last night here as it was included with our balcony cabin. At noon we will be transferred to the ship by motor coach—in other words, a bus!

The hotel is quite nice and has recently been redone. It is right on the beach, which would be lovely if the weather was more like Florida!

For those of you who have seen my Facebook page, you’ve seen a photo of the luggage we are taking. (I will post a photo as soon as I can figure that out!) as you can see, we travel lightly! Although most of the space is mine (I mean, how many pairs of shoes does a guy need?) despite rumors to the contrary, David does have some suitcases of his very own!


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Actually, we do need a lot of clothes. There are 3 or 4 formal nights per week, plus special themed balls like: Robbie Burns Night, a Hawaii theme, an Aussie night, an Asian night, an East Indian theme, etc, plus the Black and White Ball, an Ascot Ball, a Masquerade Ball, a Roaring 20’s, etc.

So there are evening gowns and fancy dress. David has it easy—a tuxedo, and a white dinner jacket for below the equator.  Additionally, we go through several climates: Warm and hot in Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the Seychelles and like islands and Africa, but cool to cold in San Francisco, China, Japan and South Korea.

People have asked how we store the luggage onboard. There is some room under the bed, and some of our cases nest. If we have some that don’t fit, the steward will take them away for storage.

We are excited to see the Queen Elizabeth! It will be our first time onboard her. We have loved our crossings on the Queen Mary 2, so we are hopeful the experience is similar.

We have requested a table for 8 late seating, in Britannia, the restaurant for our category, as well as most of the ship. Hopefully, we will have good tablemates. We have generally had good luck with congenial, fun people, so here's hoping that is true this time. Just a note, if you are on a ship with fixed dining, and you are unhappy with your table mates, see the Maitre d' as quickly as possible after dinner to request a new table.  Don’t suffer!

We enjoy the sea days as much as the ports, and I’m looking forward to the art classes offered every sea day.  There are always two to three lectures a day, and many of the speakers have been on Crystal, our most favorite line.  I am way behind in reading, and the Queen Elizabeth has a huge two story library, so I won’t be without options. Lus, I have my Kindle and a few books from home.

In our category, we get 20 free pieces of laundry a week, which is thrilling to me! I will still have to use the laundry room, but not as often.  There is always wonderful drama in the laundry room, and those two stories were going around on the Crystal World Cruise we did in 2016.

A attractive woman, who had a wardrobe failure at the gala ( both fell out!), went into the laundry room occupied by two men and my friend who witnessed it. She exclaimed "Look! An empty machine!" And proceeded to take off her dress and toss it in the machine.  She left in her underwear and over her shoulder she tossed "You don’t mind, do you?"

The other story involved a man waiting for his laundry to dry, and another friend. A woman came in with a basket of damp clothes, went to a dryer occupied with the man's clothing. She removed his still damp clothing and put in hers. He waited until she left, dumbfounded by her inconsiderate behavior. And then stopped the dryer and distributed all of her clothes, a few pieces at a time, into all other 7 dryers!

On that note, I will stop for the now, but hopefully will have time to add photos and more later!