Tuesday, August 7, 2012

“3 Queens” review–with some pics


At long last, after a very hectic seven weeks away from home, I am able to gather my thoughts enough to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and place some belated pics of our journeys in this journal.
I have been dreading it, as I have been dreading talking to friends and relatives, because everybody wants to know what we did and what we saw, what the three Cunard ships were like, did we like Germany, etc – and the truth is that we saw and experienced so much that it is almost impossible for me to know where to start and finish. As for photos – well we each had a small pocket camera each – and we came home with a total of 4500 images. Some are rubbish – and the best of them cannot truly capture the wonderful things that we saw. How can anybody take photos of the fabulous buildings in St Petersburg – such that they give even an infinitesimal idea of what they are like. Maybe somebody can, but not me.
So, this retrospective blog entry will only scrape the surface. I have created 3x 10 minute Youtube videos to show friends a little of our experience

Essentially, we were able to do all of the shore tours and private visits as detailed earlier in this blog. One thing I do recommend is that people take shore tours in these places - you may never return and any money you save by doing your own thing everywhere will soon be forgotten - but the tours will not.

They are 3 Queens part 1  - Queen Victoria to the Baltic/Scandinavia.
                            part 2 – Queen Elizabeth to western Mediterranean
                            part 3 – Queen Mary 2 to English Channel ports – plus 2 weeks in southern Germany