by Chris Harris
Day 8 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.
I managed to buck the trend of diminishing returns on my drinks package investment on the final night and got myself quite drunk. It was actually quite a sombre evening. The cruise was coming to an end for most people and the ship seemed unusually quiet, with a lot of passengers apparently having given up for the night and gone back to their cabins. I, on the other hand, was fairly jolly, partly because I’d had plenty to drink and partly because, as much as I had enjoyed the cruise, I was glad it was coming to an end.
When I woke up the following morning, I opened my eyes just as we were sailing into Southampton. We went upstairs for breakfast and I had an omelette. In fairness to the Queen Anne, the breakfasts at the Trough had always been above average, which was more than could be said for some of the food during the rest of the week. Everyone was noticeably quieter that morning, understandably enough, as the holiday was over and people were preparing to return to normal life.
One thing I did find strange was how everybody suddenly seemed to have dressed up again. All week people had been slopping around the ship in shorts, trainers, fleeces and whatever else was comfortable, and then on the final morning they suddenly became respectable again. Perhaps it was partly because most of their clothes were already packed, but there was something slightly theatrical about it, as though everyone was preparing themselves for re-entry into the real world. We didn’t bother. As far as I was concerned, we were walking out of a floating hotel rather than attending its closing ceremony.
I had assumed getting off the ship would be a logistical nightmare, with perhaps two thousand passengers trying to disembark within a relatively short period. Once again, though, the organisation on the Queen Anne was breathtakingly good. The whole process was seamless and remarkably quick. Not long after waking up, having breakfast and finishing the packing, we were back on dry land and locating the car. Even with so many people leaving at roughly the same time, the car parking arrangements were handled just as efficiently.
Of course, one of the things I had occasionally craved while sitting on the ship bored stiff was a little bit of normality and challenge returning to life. The allure of that wore off fairly rapidly. Traffic diversions on the A27 were followed by what looked like a bloody awful accident in Worthing, and a journey home that should have taken an hour and a half ended up taking two and a half.
After a week aboard a ship where almost everything seemed to work with extraordinary efficiency, we were firmly back in the UK.
