Day 5, Sailing toward New York

Jo Haley’s morning show is definitely must watch TV. It’s on every morning looping from 6 am until noon as she presents an overview of the day’s program, interviews the evening’s entertainer (usually) and one or two other people, either from the ships company or someone making a special presentation.

Fern Mallis, creator of New York Fashion Week, was the guest this morning. Not being familiar with the fashion business, I had never heard of Fern Mallis, but she expanded a little on her background with Jo Haley and previewed her lecture later today about the origins and background of NYC Fashion Week.

In addition to the normal birthday announcements, Jo interviewed one of the dancers from the Royal Singers and Dancers cast.

I checked out the Kings Court for breakfast and found that they had a huge selection of breakfast eggs, including Eggs Benedict, meats (including link sausage and American bacon), pastries and pretty much anything you could imagine being offered for breakfast. Up in the forward part of the Kings Court, they had a section with waffles, French toast and pancakes. I am now thinking that anything that is set out for the Kings Court is probably available for room service breakfast. Some ships have a separate kitchen for room service, but I don’t know if that is the case on the QM2. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a kitchen tour as an option on the daily program as you see on many other ships. There are still a few days left, so maybe it is yet to come. Tonight I will write in French Toast on my room service hang tag and see if those get delivered.

I didn’t see anyplace in the Kings Court that cooked eggs or omelets to order. Maybe you simply have to ask, don’t know, but there wasn’t a location that was marked or where you saw people lined up putting in egg orders.

Fern Mallis was the guest lecturer at 11:15 in the Royal Court Theatre. Fern discussed how she started in fashion as an intern for Vogue magazine which lead to a job with Mademoiselle. She described how New York fashion shows back in the early 90’s were uncoordinated and often held in unseemly locations with every designer reinventing the wheel year after year. Many of the big names in fashion at the time realized they needed someone to help and coordinate their common interest so they formed an industry association and hired Fern as the director. She went on to create Fashion Week in NYC which later spread to many other cities around the USA and now Fashion week as come to the QM2.

Her story was extremely interesting and she went on the discuss the recent changes in the industry and how the internet and peoples’ changing expectations has altered fashion shows and how cutting edge clothing is created, marketed and sold. I had no previous interest in the fashion industry but found her lectures fascinating as well as the entire Fashion Week. I will be attending my first fashion show tomorrow.

We stopped by the Carinthia Lounge (formerly known as the Winter Garden) for a mid-day snack where they have a small selection of paninis, flatbreads and pastries. Beverages are available from the lounge bar or you can go to the nearby Kings Court and get something from one of their machines. The Lounge was crowded, but we were able to find a couple of open seats fairly easily. Note: At 2:30 daily, all interested knitters, needleworkers, crocheters, etc, meet in the Carinthia to socialize and work on their various projects.

Colin McDowell’s “Drawing the Line” Illustrative Workshop was at 2pm. We signed up at midnight the night before for two of the twenty class seats. The class was held in ConneXions classroom number 5. Each seat had one sheet of 8 x 10 watercolor paper along with a single fine point retractable Sharpie marker. Colin started the workshop by reviewing a series of fashion illustrations from various artists over the years. He asked us to write the words “think elegant giraffe” and made the point that fashion illustrated was not intended to be a literal depiction of an outfit, but a drawing of the outfit that captures its essence. After he showed a photograph of Marlene Dietrich he paused and asked us to try and recreate the photograph with our sharpie. After we all made attempts to capture this image Colin drew a example of other techniques and allowed us to experiment on our own. Judy’s result is shown here. The class was very popular and they decided to add another workshop due to the high demand.

We enjoyed the afternoon tea so much earlier, we decided to stop by again today. We arrived 10 minutes early, but today, the Queens Room was never completely full and there were always a few seats open. Once again the tea service was outstanding, they served different sandwiches and cakes, but the same scones with clotted cream. The string quartet, this time dressed in white, provided a wonderful accompaniment to a delicious and elegant service.

Once again I stopped by the Boardwalk Café and once again it was closed due to the high winds. For most of the crossing, many of the open decks have been off-limits – the forward observation deck was open and you could walk around deck 7 promenade but only select doors were available for access to the promenade.

Tonight was the second formal night of the three scheduled and was also the night of the Captain’s welcome aboard cocktail party. The Captain’s cocktail party for second seating was held from 7:45 until 8:30 in the Queens Room. There was a receiving line on the starboard side that stretched outside the room down the hall leading into the Britannia Restaurant. The end of the line was by the elevators and we were told that the wait would be 30 minutes before we would meet the Captain, but it turned out to only take 10 minutes. Once we reached the front of the line, the hostess asked for our names so we could be introduced to the Captain, and then we posed for a photograph after exchanging a few pleasantries.

The Queens Room was packed and waiters were passing snacks along with glasses of champagne, wine or juice. The dress was formal and once again 95% of the men were wearing tuxedos and the room was quite elegant. After the final guests had their pictures taken, the Captain was introduced by the Entertainment Director and he opened with a few remarks and thanked us all for being on the voyage. He provided the home countries of the guests: 1000 from the UK, 600 from the USA, 400 from Germany, about 70 each from Switzerland, Canada, and Australia, and the rest scattered from about 35 other countries. Captain Oprey then introduced his senior officers and then he offered one final thanks before wrapping up. Before we left a German-speaking officer summarized the previous 15 minutes in about 30 seconds in German. We have learned from others that the QM2 is very popular in Germany and she always sails with many German passengers.

Tonight’s dinner was the best so far. I had the Chateaubriand which was outstanding. We had a wonderful time once again with all of our tablemates and the time seems to fly by.

Tonight’s entertainment was a production show by the Cunard Singers and Dancers called Apassionata which was an exciting, high-energy show demonstrating the dance styles from various countries around the world. We enjoyed the show very much.

• Cunard Singers and Dancers