So I suppose I'll have to begin at the beginning... It was a sunny day, Saturday the 19th of June, and having gotten only five hours of sleep, was a little groggy from our early-morning departure. Driving down to New York, where the Queen Mary 2 was docked was unremarkable -- until we arrived. Our driver was under a time crunch, and getting more stressed out by the minute. Traffic was at a complete stand-still, and all of us were a little cranky from the ride. After over an hour in traffic, we managed to find our way to the drop-off point (which, frustratingly, we could see the whole time we were sitting in the car, in the traffic), only to be told "Sorry, the ship arrived five hours behind schedule, so we're busing you over to the Sheraton for lunch. We should be able to begin boarding the ship around 6pm." It sucked! But makes for a good bit of trivia, anyway. Get this -- turns out on the previous leg, somebody jumped ship in the middle of the night. They found his (or possibly her, but I was led to believe it was a guy) suicide note, and promptly turned around and spent over 11 hours trying fruitlessly to find the body.

And it gets better! Or worse, depending on where you're standing... Right after that, there was a medical emergency, and they had to head the boat toward San Juan so that a helicopter could come out and pick up that person, which took up even more time. But it just goes to show you how fast that baby can truck -- they said they averaged 33 knots after that, and considering they were only five hours late, they made damn good time. Too bad for the people who had to catch flights that afternoon...

But anyways. After sitting in one of the ballrooms in the Sheraton for many, many hours, they started calling numbers of buses (theoretically so that all 2000 passengers boarding the ship wouldn't show up at the same time). When we walked in, we were handing number 27. Yeeeeeeah. It took the almost two hours to get to number ten. So we decided screw that, we're walking. It was only about ten blocks, and a gorgeous day, and the end to that long story is that we made it onto the ship at about 8pm.

I'm going to give you the abridged version of the week, mostly with my personal observations/opinions/experiences:

This ship is freakin' huge. I have a pretty cool shot of our passageway outside our room, and it looks like it goes on forever. After a few days, we got accustomed to it, though, and it didn't seem quite so long. It never did cease to feel big, though.

The best part of the trip for me -- well, okay, it was a two way tie:

Number 1: The food. Absolutely unbelievable. I actually had escargot (just because I could!). The only thing I had that I didn't like was the pico de gallo one night, and that's only because it had cilantro in it. My mom said it was excellent...

Also Number 1: The socializing. We happened to have lucked out, we were told -- there ended up being somewhere around 50 young people on the ship, and about 20 - 30 of us ended up spending every night together hanging out. We were told that it was the first time that there had been anything resembling a significant number of young people on the ship; it was such a rarity that even the staff were excited about it. Keep in mind, people, the average age -- average age -- of the population of the passengers on this ship is 65. Seriously, I was sure we were going to have our own medical emergency at some point.

The ONE SINGLE THING that sucked (aside from having to leave it) was that we lost an hour of sleep every night except the last. By Thursday, it had caught up to me. I was staying out every night until 4 (or 5 or 6 or, um...) with everybody, and even getting up at noon, which was totally reasonable, became very difficult. Naps by the pool were a necessity. One day, a couple of the girls that we were hanging out with didn't even get out of bed until 6pm. So I think I was doing pretty well. If I had to do it all over again, which I would in no time flat (I was trying to convince one of the staff I met to keep me on board as a stow-away, then decided that wouldn't be as much fun), I would fly over to England and do the westbound crossing.

Aside from that, though, it was magical. A thorough departure from my day-to-day life. Once in a lifetime (until I do it again... anyone want to join me?!).

A couple of notes of interest, it just so happened that as we were sailing out of the harbor, passing by the Statue of Liberty, with the fire boats saluting us as we went by, that the city was putting on a fireworks display in honor of the Olympic flame passing through the city. (Oddly enough, when Will and I arrived in London the following Friday, it was there, too -- following us...) It was spectacular.

Two celebrities on the ship with us: John Cleese and Booger! No kidding -- Booger was there with his wife and two daughters, just a regular old passenger. We saw him all over the place (he was actually sitting on the deck chair next to mine at the pool one day), and I would have said hello, but I didn't know at the time that his name was Curtis Armstrong. I'm sure he's sick of people coming up to him and calling him Booger. He is 53 now, after all. Seemed like a nice guy, though -- very sweet with his little girls.

Hmmm... What else... Partied with some new friends, that work on the ship, down in the crew bar on the last night. Generally frowned upon, but I guess I blended in well enough. My story was that I worked for Canyon Ranch, if anyone asked. I hadn't realized how much I missed the company (read energy) of throngs of young people after six days.

The musicians on the ship were great, too -- my brother, Brendan, quickly became friends with the hot Ukranian trio, Viva Expressia (two violinists, one pianist), and I got to know the roaming quartet, Royal Flush. The jazz band was amazing, and there were several other solo pianists that played in different places at different times of the day.

There were two things that I didn't get around to that I'm sad I missed out on -- high tea, and the theater shows that they put on at night. I did make it into the planetarium for a show, and that was really cool.

The other thing that was really neat was that I got to see my parents totally loosen up. Seriously. Wednesday night they were running around like teenagers dancing with us in the club, G32.