More of final days

        Since we have more pictures to show, I will continue to post more pictures.  You may or may not choose to view them.  You may have had your fill of our journey's account by now.

 Jim and Cheryl also look nice in their formal wear.  We had three formal dinners, two semi-formal which required neckties and jackets, and two elegant casual nights which required a jacket for men but no tie.  No shorts or jeans were ever allowed in the Brittainia Restaurant.  A LARGE stylized painting of the QM2 at its launch filled one end of the restaurant.

Sharon went on a galley tour which showed how the meals were prepared and all that is required to provide 16,000 meals per day.

Jules and Monica were a couple from Canada who really liked to play Mexican train dominos with us.  Monica, an opera singer, was the grand champion on our final game.  Jules is a Catholic school chief administrator.  Don, the fellow in between, was a friend of theirs who had been upgraded to the exclusive Queen's Suite and had a special dining area of their own but came with his wife Nan to eat lunch with us.  They had made multiple voyages on the QM2 and QE2 as had many people we met on board.  Many use the ship as a means to travel between the USA and Europe because they don't like to fly.

         Is this Queen Mary?  No, it is actually Queen Sharon in her elegant chair!

Sharon liked to take pictures every time we set down to eat, so here are our dinner companions Jim and Cheryl Carlton of Atlanta, GA
who accompanied us on a trip for the tenth time.   This is an elegant casual night for our last dinner aboard.

It was a rather foggy early morning as we entered New York harbor and viewed the Statue of Liberty in the distance.   Some had risen at 4:00 AM to view the entry under the Narrows Bridge, but we preferred two more hours of sleep since it was so dark and foggy at that time.  The fog finally lifted about 9:00 AM as we had finished breakfast and were ready to disembark.

We  soon had to say goodbye to people we had met at lunches, breakfasts, and dinners.  This British couple had moved from Yorkshire to France five years ago and live there in their retirement years.  They had twice participated on our quiz team in trivia contests.  We did not win any of the competition; the questions were very difficult and somewhat biased towards the Brits.
Anyway, we had fun.





Another view of a very foggy New York skyline as we waited for time to disembark.

 The Queen Mary 2 is a huge, huge ship which cannot be viewed in its entirety close up.   Here we have disembarked and are waiting to board the bus to take us to La Guardia Airport for our flight to Chicago

A tree grows in Brooklyn...........  A view from the bus as we head to LaGuardia Airport.

We had a very smooth ride back from New York to Chicago on the airplane.  Our ride from the airport downtown was not so great however.  We thought the Airport Express van would be easier & quicker than a combination of train and taxi to downtown.  WRONG!  Our ride on a very slow Interstate took 2 and a half hours before we were
dropped off at Sarah's.

We reclaimed our car and headed for Pekin.  We did make a stop in Dwight at the 50's Diner since we were not served anything on the airline or by the drive of the slow van.

We arrived home at 10:43 PM last night.  Today is involved with laundry and clearing things away.  Sharon is very busy while I am blogging!

This was the end of a trip of a lifetime.  This Titanic was an unsinkable ship!