Finding Joy in Snarkville

Yes, I mean it.  I am proposing that all time zones be instantly abolished right now.  Yes, I realize that this means that the work day will be in the dark for half of the Earth, but seriously, haven’t we advanced enough to allow those people (because of course, I’d keep the US — the center of the known universe — on its current daylight/nighttime schedule) to have lightbulbs and blackout shades.

The sole reason for doing this of course would be so that I might return from the OTHER.SIDE.OF.THE.EARTH. without spending 4+ days waking up in the middle of night and drooling from lack of decent sleep.  Oh yes, it is all about me, why do you even ask at this point?

Back to reality and less about my sleepless dream world.  I have returned from the amazing trip.  There are few times I can say that this was a trip of a lifetime, but this in fact was.  In case you are not in the know, we were on the QE2 for her LAST trip around the British Isles.  We went to Ireland, England, Northern Ireland, and Scotland in that order.  At every port call there were thousands of people meeting the ship and even more to see her leave.  (There were about 60,000 in Greenock, the port town for Glasgow, alone.  Greenock is on the River Clyde where she was built and the QE2 was the LAST Scottish built ship.)  I quickly began to believe that the crowds were there to see me (I am the Queen of Snarkville afterall) and thus this trip has ruined me for all travels unless there will be grand welcomes, photographers, interviews, and well, fireworks.  I’m nothing if not realistic.

I have so much to share about the trip.  So many things about how I was the picture of poise and grace (hold on, I’m choking on something). So many photos that we took.  So many experiences that blow me away and the tears I cried as we departed.  We will get there, but lest this post take years to read, I’m forced to break it up a wee bit.

What I will tell you is that the QE2 is old, in ship years.  She was built at a time of multi-class travel.  There are stairs and lifts that don’t seem to go to the same places and she isn’t easy to get around.  She is, thankfully, smaller than the newer ships, so her odd stairs were easier to learn over time.  I want to say she has smaller cabins, but our cabin was rather large, though oddly laid out.  She did offer the last true single cabins on the seas — and those were, um….TINY.  She was unique in so many ways and they will never build a ship like her again (thankfully in some ways and sadly in others).  But I was there.  She has two more cruises left — one from NYC to Southampton and then from Southampton to Dubai where she will become a 5 star hotel.

Many onbaord spoke of visiting her again in Dubai, which is a lovely thought — I think.  But of all the places in the world I have on my list to go, Dubai isn’t all that high, so I’m glad I saw and sailed her in her natural habiat.

But today, I’m back to real life.  Real life that includes laundry and dishes and dinner and such.  Yet, I’ve begun to think about it.  My daily life isn’t so different than my life on a cruise ship.

Every night on board the ship, the cabin steward leaves a chocolate on my pillow.  Every night at home, a cat leaves a hair ball on the floor by my bed.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 10:07 am and is filed under On the Road Again. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.