This was our main holiday for this year and although shorter than we normally take the quality of the package more than made up for the time spent on holiday.

We travelled out to New York on a direct flight from Glasgow with Continental Airways. This was arranged through Cunard as part of the overall package. This is not a good idea. The aircraft is cramped and service on board is not wonderful. try to get a flight with BA, which although through London would be much more comfortable. Terminal 5 is great.

We arrived on time at Newark and quickly passed through immigration and customs and were promptly met by the Cunard representative who directed us to our transfer, a city car, which took us to our selected hotel in Manhattan, the Waldorf Astoria. This iconic hotel sits on Park Avenue and is ideally situated for everything a tourist would want to do in New York. 5th Avenue shops, Broadway, Times Square, Central Park were all within an easy 10 minute walk. Taxis are plentiful and inexpensive when returning from a long days sightseeing. The hotel was great full of character and the rooms are typical of an American hotel, big, clean and all the amenities you would need for a short stay. One word of warning, prices in the bars were high reflecting the status of the hotel. Buy water and wine elsewhere and drink it in your room! At the end of our stay we were ready for the QM2 and again the transfer arrangements to the berth in Brooklyn went to plan. We arrived at 2.30pm and I would suggest if you are making your own way to the ship to go earlier as the queues to check in were lengthy and we had to wait aroung 45 minutes. Read more