Life on board the Queen Mary

Friday, April 15th

Our first morning on the ship. But of course we basically started traveling on Tuesday, after we received our negative COVID test results (whew!) We headed to Tucson late afternoon, meandering through a back highway to avoid all of the truck traffic on I-10. A slightly longer journey, took about an hour and 3/4 instead of just over an hour. That was fine though, we weren’t in a hurry.

I’ve been striving for that feeling “no hurry, no stress” on this holiday. But in this age of COVID, and at our age (so we are discovering,) the second part, the “stress,” is difficult to avoid. Our hotel in Tucson was quite close to the airport as we were meant to be at the airport at 4 in the morning! Ulp!! Richard is still of the mindset that we shouldn’t have had to be at the airport more than an hour before flight. I am my father’s daughter, be at the airport as early as you can.  And get up at least an hour before you have to leave. He usually gives in to me about this, otherwise, again like my father, I will drive him crazy pacing. 

So I was awake at 3 in the morning while R was trying to sleep on the couch (he said the bed was uncomfortable.) Which meant, of course, that I looked at my emails and saw Cunard’s “travel advisory” about there being COVID on board the ship. The email said that if we were worried about our health, about getting very sick, we could cancel and have 100% monies refunded. Which I reported to R. The slight “buyer’s regret” he had been feeling about the trip last weekend became more pronounced. Maybe it wasn’t a great time to be traveling. Maybe it would be better to have that money back, to perhaps spend on house renovations. Hmmm . . . The desire he’d had a few weeks ago to go away, to see English gardens and be on the sea seemed to evaporate. Of course, having sent the email, Cunard’s phone lines weren’t open yet, wouldn’t open until 6:00 am. Which meant we couldn’t call to find out what this 100% refund might mean (what about our second voyage on the Queen Elizabeth, back from Southampton?)  

But when we arrived at the airport it turned out that Delta was offering financial reimbursement plus rescheduling flights if people would give up their seats on the early flight for a later one. We decided, hey, yeah, that works for us. Gives us a chance to check with Cunard. Long story short (because, really, I could go on for PAGES) we rescheduled on a noon flight and I spent an hour and a half, first on hold, then talking with someone from Cunard. She at first tried to minimize it—oh there’s very little COVID—and then said, well we would give you the money back on the Queen Mary cruise but not the Queen Elizabeth because its departure is too far away and much can happen between then and now. So, off we went, flights were crammed but uneventful, we landed at Fort Lauderdale, hotel was very comfortable and yesterday we arrived at the Port Everglades Terminal to be told we would be testing again.

Ironic thing about that. While we were waiting at our hotel for our taxi to take us to the Terminal, a couple of women in the room (more than 6 feet away) mentioned they were taking the same cruises as we were. And they said they had been traveling all over Florida, visiting relatives on their car trip down from Atlanta. An inner voice said to me “Better mask up.” They took the airport shuttle ahead of us and when we arrived and were going through the testing, they were told that one of them had tested positive. How awful for them! I don’t know what happened after that but I hope that they somehow got on. Even if they are isolating like many people apparently are. No one knows exactly how many but I have heard that it’s a goodly amount.

And tomorrow we have to take our third COVID test in a week. I have worked myself into such a state of nerves that I am self-checking—do I have a fever? Is that a sore throat? Am I aching? Richard is completely calm, just says, well it will be what it will be. Which of course is all we can say, right?