by Chris Harris
Day 5 of a week aboard Cunard’s Queen Anne, sailing from Southampton to Norway and back. This is not a cruise review so much as a diary of what actually happens when you put 3,000 passengers on a floating hotel, give them unlimited food and, in our case, a drinks package. The good, the bad, the ridiculous and why, despite everything, I’d probably do it all again.
We begin the back half of the cruise. Three full days completed, three full days remaining.
Unbeknown to me, last night whilst pissed, Eloise had ordered breakfast in bed. We had done that once before on a previous cruise, and it was awful. Competition-wise, this one smashed that particular awful breakfast. It was a hodgepodge of melon, segments of melon which were, shall we say, not very watery and very dry on the outside, one bowl of some form of muesli and yoghurt, which I wouldn’t touch because it looked so awful, and a tiny croissant. The coffee was fine though, and for the Queen Anne, relatively hot. Heaven knows how they managed to pull that one off.
But breakfast isn’t really something you wake up and feel the need for on a cruise, because you’ll generally feel pretty grotty. And as night follows day, halfway through a cruise things do start to catch up with you. The appetite for food remains, but drinking copious amounts becomes not so much a struggle, but less enjoyable, because the amount you drink on a cruise that would normally have you swaying from side to side at home, you get so used to it that it hardly touches the sides.
Let’s be honest, cruises aren’t really my thing. I don’t drink that much now and, frankly, mainly drink to pass the time, for fun, obviously, and to not be woken at night by all of the various noises. We were undecided about getting the package, but an offer came through, and what would have been four or five pints a night morphed into a week-long bender. The appetite for drink goes, but in cruise world, somehow that is a state of mind and physical block that is only too easy to overcome.
So off we go into Oslo by foot, walking around the port area and the waterfront. Absolutely beautiful. We pass the eight chairs, the eight chairs of shame of Norway, although I researched yesterday and Norway was the most proactive country fighting the Nazis in WW2.
As ever, the thing of most interest to me was these weird little, almost crustacean-type boats that we kept watching going across the bay. It looked like the hardest-working boat in Scandinavia, but we discovered there were actually five of them, and they’re electric water taxis that take everyone around the islands.
We make our way round to the Oslo Opera House, which we’d seen on the sightseeing bus and were determined to check out. Without any doubt, the highlight of the holiday. It is a vast building made to look a bit like an iceberg, and it’s only when you get near that you realise it’s just huge slabs of marble, all in symmetrical but abstract shapes, and you’re basically allowed to walk right up to the top of the roof, such is the design. It is outstanding.
I really liked Oslo; delightful and unassuming, a classy place.
Returning, we had our traditional coffee with another beef open sandwich. We thought we had found at least somewhere where the food was quality, but alas, the highly commendable open sandwiches we had yesterday, as displayed at the counter with luscious red beef, were just for display, as a rather grim and perfunctory discoloured one arrived. Never mind, we’re getting used to this. Some laps of the deck to build up an appetite for fish and chips, followed by cod and sweet potato fries, and a pudding which escapes me. I think this was my most disgusting lunchtime of gluttony, albeit small portions.
Of course, more walking around the deck and trying to get over the ignorant, piss-poor woman who was on her iPad during lunch, one by one talking to members of her family. We should have moved, but it was like a car crash, listening in, a glorious display of ignorance that, at the Trough, where everything moves quickly, you knew you would soon move away from. We left before she started talking to her gerbil.
Overall, people on the cruise are very conscientious about their impact on others and polite. Table manners are generally atrocious, but the politeness is good.
So we go back on deck and hit the alcohol, ciders and gin and tonics, as the boat leaves. It was beautiful going up the fjord and seeing all of these mesmerising islands with lovely huts and houses stretching for miles and miles and miles. It must be a really beautiful place to live. I’d love to stay on one for a couple of weeks, although I wouldn’t live there because it’d be so boring.
One of the treats of having time on your hands and a pint of beer is people-watching. In front of us is a beautiful American woman. Next to her, a strikingly rugged and handsome partner. She was reading one of the ship’s information pamphlets and trying to engage him about it. He simply looked out to sea and was very pissed off; it went on for ages. They were obviously having a tough time with her as the appeaser, and briefly you are dragged into someone’s personal difficulties, and your mind runs wild thinking about why, because on a cruise you are not stuck with your own reality; you escape it and briefly get dragged into other people’s worlds.
To the Trough. We’ve established that the restaurant’s not worth the aggro. It’s black-tie night again tomorrow, so I’m hoping I can wing it and not go. I know Eloise likes going to the restaurant, but missing two for me has been brilliant. I have Thai prawns and noodles, which wasn’t really big enough, so I had a great big bowl of prawns with rolls. And we skanked some ramekins of chocolate mousse, which we took to the room.
We went on our normal bar crawl as it got darker and you couldn’t see outside. Eloise elected to go to the theatre. I told her not to because she would just fall asleep, and I went back to the room and watched the telly, for the first and last night.
Having been to one of the nearby bars to get a whopping great double Malbec in a suitably enormous glass, I tried to find some videos about the Queen Anne and how it was built. I located some, but after much faffing around, couldn’t actually get YouTube to play them.
An hour later, Eloise returned, very embarrassed, as she had indeed fallen asleep and, as she can sometimes snore, was mortified at the possibility that she’d been sitting in the theatre snoring her way through the performance.
I didn’t need the Malbec, two glasses’ worth of Malbec, but I drank it anyway, and it was enough to see me off to sleep. The ramekin of chocolate mousse was good, until you discovered some sort of gelatine lumps at the bottom. Yuk!
