Day 1 - Southampton
Wednesday 2 May 2012
I arrived at 11.30 at the Queen
Elizabeth Terminal. Grand Princess, Independence of the Seas and Queen
Elizabeth were all in port as well as Adonia and as I was walking to check-in I noticed a
car with all the luggage unpacked and a CPS car sticker for QE on the
windscreen!! They had to reload it all
and drive to Ocean Terminal. I bet he wasn’t very happy. (On my return I
noticed they had put a big sign on the luggage hole-in-the-wall that this was
for Adonia NOT Oriana or QE, which were in port that day.)
I
was first to check-in as I was able to use the Caribbean desks and then there
was a short wait in the terminal, where I picked up a couple of the free
magazine to read on board. My friend soon joined me. There was a separate area
with drinks and newspapers for Ligurian members. The two top levels and suite
passengers were called first, then Caribbean. It was lovely to be back on a
small ship. We headed for the Curzon Lounge for the free champagne etc! It was
nice to find that instead of the plate of dry sandwiches and crisps, there was
a hot and cold buffet with canapés (including smoked salmon with salmon mouse and
caviar), hot and cold wraps, delicious pies and pastries (eg. Scottish pie) as well as deserts. They are still smartening up the ship and on boarding day
two people were measuring up for new carpets in the Curzon Room - which looked
fine to me!
When
the cabins were ready we headed off up to Deck 6 and to C36. We had an outside obstructed cabin. In fact it
was between a lifeboat and a tender so we could see the view quite well. The
layout was long and side-ways on so the two beds had the heads forward with our
feet pointing aft. The storage was OK, but was mostly cupboards and quite a lot
of it was low down. There were two bedside cupboards with one shelf inside and
a lamp fixed centrally on top. This was a good height for reading in bed
though. The flat screen 19 inch TV was in a corner unit with two cupboards
below (one with a safe inside). There was one large wardrobe with full height
hanging and a small wardrobe with half height hanging and four small drawers.
The dresser had a fridge one side and another cupboard with single shelf the
other. There was 10 inches clearance under the beds so our cases fitted under
opened out in half. The bathroom had a corner cupboard with mirror door and
three shelves, there were three corner open shelves and two corner racks in the
shower. A full length shelf was under the basin but this held the bin as well.
There were the usual free toiletries of Molton Brown shower gel and White Company
shampoo, conditioner and body lotion, a shower cap and Elemis sewing kit. The
hairdryer is in the bathroom and has to be used standing, so I was glad I have
packed a travel dryer. A nice touch is that one of the two UK-style power
sockets over the dresser is mounted upside down – great for some of those those
larger transformer/chargers that won’t fit if the socket is too close to the
surface.
Our
Peninsular Club badges were on the bed together with a free pair of blue
P&O Cruises slippers each – one size fits all – not – and a voucher each
for our free sailaway champagneAfter muster drill we went to the small prom deck for our drink and to listen to the band – yes we had a band! We were going to sail through the Western Solent. As we reached Calshot a large black cylinder was raised on the last to indicate our direction and we stood watching Grand Princess and IOTS having to go the long way round - so for the first time I saw the Needles Lighthouse just as the sailing ship Royalist was coming in under full sail.
It is lovely to see so many ex-Artemis officers and crew on board and catch up with some of them. Our Captain was David Box, not Capt. Perkins as listed in the Peninsular Magazine.
Below is the classic Queen Elizabeth Terminal and the Needles Light
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