Queen Mary 2 (QM2) Review

Queen Mary 2 (QM2) - Northern Europe

Review for the Baltic Sea Cruise on Queen Mary 2 (QM2)
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cruise44
First Time Cruiser • Age 20s

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Sail Date: Jul 2004
Cabin: Standard Inside

I traveled on the Grand Northern Europe voyage on the Queen Mary 2 from July 5-28, a total of 23 days made up of two transatlantic voyages and a cruise in the middle. This was my 27th cruise and 6th on Cunard line. The ship made inaugural calls at all the ports which I will mention later. The Queen Mary is a very beautiful ship, with a lot of open deck space, and large public rooms.

Ports: The ship made inaugural calls at all its ports of Edinburgh, Scotland; Geiragner, Norway; Aalesund, Norway; Bergen, Norway; Hamburg, Germany; and Rotterdam, Netherlands. It was very exciting going up the Scottish coast with the a Royal Airforce helicopter landing men on the bow on the ship. The ship was followed by boats from local towns most the way up the coast. In both Queens Ferry (Edinburgh) and Geiranger there were many small boats that followed the ship out to the ocean but nothing prepared all of us for Aalesund, Hamburg and Rotterdam. The QM2 arrived at Aalesund late at night during the day we were at Geiranger, but because of the Midnight sun it was still light out. A whole flotilla of boats were waiting for us at Aalesund with a navy boat, helicopters, and a fireboat. You could see flash bulbs from the shore, and the cars stopped on the streets. And this was at 11 o'clock at night! We had made the front cover of the Norwegian Newspapers the next day. Bergen was the same way with hundreds of boats welcoming the ship, along with news helicopters. The bridge the ship just barely fit under was crowded with hundreds of people spanning the whole way across. What Norway had for boats, Hamburg made it up in people. We arrived at the mouth of the River Elbe at around 4am. Going down the river there were thousands of people, all you could see were the constant flash bulbs. Excursion boats followed the ship into the pier. When the ship docked there were a thousand more people crowded on the pier looking at the ship. News crews came onboard and interviewed many passengers. When we returned from the shore excursion we all felt like celebrities with the people waving at us when we came in. The thousands of people stayed all night. Hamburg then gave an excellent fireworks display for the ship. The ship stayed over night, and the next morning departing there were hundreds of people watching us depart. we had a quiet arrival in Rotterdam, but the departure was as good as Hamburg. Our shore excursion buses got a police escort on the way back to the ship because of the crowds. It was truly worth going to these inaugural ports and was a once in a life time opportunity.

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