We are on board the Queen Elizabeth and it’s a sea day.
This is the view from my bed where I’m writing this.
A slow start this morning after valiantly trying to consume enough alcohol yesterday to make my outrageously expensive drinks package worthwhile. I don’t think I’ll bother from now on as my husband is perfectly capable of drinking for two. Also, we promote responsible drinking in this blog. He is honestly a marvel. He tipped the waiter at the Commodore’s Bar last night and when I left to go to bed, he was complaining that his gin and tonic had at least three nips in it. And yet, now he is off jogging around deck 3 while I am writing this, having already brought me a flat white to reinvigorate me.
Everything has continued to go very smoothly on our holiday. We had a brief stroll around Yokohama yesterday before boarding, having a look around the beautiful waterfront gardens and also the local Chinatown. Oops, just got distracted by something jumping around in the water. Couldn’t see what it was, but caught silvery glimpses – some sort of big shiny fish? Anyway, Chinatown. I’ve seen many of these around the world, and they’re always worth a look.
I’m sure there is tragedy in their origin stories but they feel like a positive force now. This one was mostly food places rather than shops, but with a number of places where you can get your palm read, future told, astrology charts consulted, etc. As a step above the usual menus with photos in them, the restaurants here have mock ups of their food offerings in the windows.
After checking out of our hotel, we had time for brunch in their cafe. I had a sandwich. I’ve certainly failed so far at trying the local cuisine. Our first drink on arrival at the airport in Tokyo was a Frappuccino from Starbucks (not recommended! I would have preferred a bubble tea, but at least they had somewhere we could sit down.) Then for room service on our first night I had a club sandwich. And now we’re on board ship, it’s cultureless “International” cuisine. Must try harder once we get back to the mainland!
We took a taxi to get to the area of the port where our boat was parked. Moored? Once again, Japanese efficiency was to the for. Efficient, but friendly and polite with it. We were cheerfully guided through every step of the embarkation process, and less than half an hour after getting out of our taxi, we were sitting in our state room. And that included a (somewhat perfunctory) personally administered RAT test.
We didn’t head out to sea until late at night, so Simon took advantage of his access to the internet via data to catch up on his work emails. He sat in a faux English pub to do it. These big cruise ships have all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies to visit, bars and restaurants and shops to suit whatever mood you’re in. It’s great. After dinner I went to see the variety show they put on in the theatre. Last night’s show was a spectacular of singing and dancing, very professional apart from a technical hitch with the sound, and then later the ships engines started a deep thrumming right in the middle of a song. But, the show must go on!
The vast majority of the other guests on the ship are Japanese. Most are considerably shorter than me, so I feel like an Amazon, striding around, especially with high heels on. Quite a novel sensation for someone who barely scrapes 165 cm with a following wind, as you can well imagine.
Have had a good sleep, after a slow start I’m going to do some exploring of the ship today, maybe some gentle shopping, and then just read my book. Time to chill.