davethegrinch.net

Dave Says:

We promised ourselves that if we were going to spend time, and therefore considerable expense, touring the USA then we must work hard to treat it with the same bug-eyed wonderment we did with the rest of the world. Well, promises are made to be broken and although this one is relatively intact at the time of writing, it will soon enough succumb to the return of the familiar, erosion of the novelty and ridiculousness’ death march towards the norm. So, before I am sucked back into the vortex of the US here’s a quick stream of observation and, of course, gross generalization of 300 million people.

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Dave says:

The Atlantic Ocean is pretty darn big. We’re two days in and have just left the coast of Ireland. But then, we are going only about 25 miles per hour. As I look out the window it seems faster but who cares ‘cos we’ve stepped back to a time when most things didn’t go much faster than 25mph anyway. The airplane is a flash-in-the-pan novelty and the train, although essential, has become a tedium and best suited for the lower classes. It is impossible for one to drive a newfangled automobile across the Atlantic so an ocean liner is the only reasonable and, let’s face it, civilized way to reach New York.

I’m writing this whilst comfortably ensconced in the aptly named Chart Room, toasting the return of the decent Gin and Tonic and listening to the string quartet do a fair rendition of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. So please, join me as I throw journalistic balance overboard, and tell you about the more quirky side of this most civilized nautical pastime.

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Sarah says:

I always felt that in order to maintain any shred of backpacker credibility, I was obliged to apologize for our having purchased passage aboard the Queen Mary 2. Our laundry list of justifications were all, in fact, true statements. We did, over a year ago, make an earnest effort to book passage across the Atlantic on a freighter. All freighters that make the iconic route, Southampton to New York (a necessity for many symbolic reasons) were already booked even back then and much to our astonishment, freighter fare would have been nearly double what we would pay for the worst cabin aboard the QM2. In order to keep our overland dream alive, we begrudgingly booked the cabin. At the time, it sincerely did not fill us with joy and we certainly never considered paying the nominal upgrade fee for the 2nd to worst cabin on the boat much less a window cabin. We were backpackers through and through and wanted our circum-ambulation of the globe to be bohemian, in the spirit of Jack Karouac. Jack would never have crossed on the QM2, probably even if he had had the money, and we felt as though we were committing some sort of betrayal.

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