I had an  early start to the day,  a little bit of fine tuning in order to get yesterdays blog published. The wifi connection to the ‘Britannia Club’stateroom is good which means I can work in peace as and when….

First thing though was a call to room service and a nice pot of tea promptly arrived…

Breakfast was taken in the Britannia Club Restaurant, an altogether very civilized affair, particularly as my allocated table is well positioned next to a window.

The first post breakfast serial of the day was at 10.15 when I joined the many other passengers in the ‘Connections’ Room for the complimentary  seminar on Apple’s  iOS 7 update…

Unfortunately there was an activity clash and it’s only the first sea day. I had to make the decision to miss the first ‘Insights lecture’  in Illuminations…

…a lecture by airline pilot captain Chris Roberts whose talk was on the history and formation of the Red Arrows.

Lunchtime again saw me in The Golden Lion  where my naval friend Rick and his wife Lizzie had kindly saved me a seat at the bar…

Now this was something new to me on Cunard: this was the first lunchtime that the clocks were put forward as we proceeded eastwards so all of a sudden there was an hour’s drinking time gone. The pub entertainment today was a pianist. We all decided on a ploughman’s lunch at the bar was a unanimous choice…

…before we headed off for the Planetarium for the afternoon show, ‘Passport to the Universe’.

Tonight was the first Formal evening and was also the Commodore’s Cocktail Party for Grills and Britannia Club guests. As always I found this a great social occasion made all the more interesting when a fellow forum member introduced himself. We had often chatted but had never met…

Interesting  to hear the Commodore list the passenger figures, 2,600 plus and of those 1,600 British. The lowest representation was 4 each from Finland and Mexico.

It was good to have a full table for dinner with  nationalities almost mirroring the overall guest list: 4 Brits, 2 American and 2 Australian. Food was excellent as was the Chianti.

I chose to go to the evening show, an American comedian, Rondell Sheridan, who milks the audience in an amazingly comical manner and easily appeals to all nationalities.

I managed to catch the last 45 minutes of the ‘Black and White’ Ball before ending the night, well actually well into the morning really,  with Rick on a boys night bash in the G32.

A full and satisfying first sea day on Queen Mary 2 as she crosses the Atlantic

The Commodore had earlier warned that we could expect deteriorating weather conditions overnight and into the next day. Just what QM2 was built for. Goodnight