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Famous Ships That Did Not Sink: The 'RMS Queen Mary'

April 18, 2012 at 11:15 AM | by | Comments (0)

As you already know, this last weekend marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Though yes, the sinking is a huge part of history, it's also not indicative of how ship travel actually was in the early 20th century. Not every ship sank. This week, we'll show you some notable ships that managed to stay afloat and still make their mark in history.

Today's ship that didn't sink: the RMS Queen Mary of Cunard Line.

Let's consider something a moment. When the 100th Anniversary of the Titanic sinking rolled around last week, it became apparent that the younger generations were filled with kids who though the Titanic was a fictional tale made up for the James Cameron movie. It was only the news coverage of the anniversary that made them realize that—whoops, hey—over 1,000 did actually die when a real ship hit a real iceberg and really sank.

Now think about the fact that a transatlantic liner of the same style, though much younger, is currently still afloat as a hotel, museum and event space in Long Beach, California. This ship is the Queen Mary and she's not a stage set or a fauxboat; she's a real ship with a really impressive history and, lucky for her, a real future still afloat.

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The Way We Once Traveled: 'Orchestral Selections' on the Queen Elizabeth

January 18, 2012 at 9:50 AM | by | Comments (0)

We'll fully admit that we save our ticket stubs even sometimes our bag tags. Of course travelers of decades ago were no different; in fact, they were worse. Sometimes we dig up vintage gems that deserve to be shared. All week, we'll look at a few lost pieces of ephemera that continue to inspire.

Water Aerobics. Mixology. A lecture on wildlife photography. Hairiest Chest Contest. These are just a few standard daily activities you'll likely find listed on the schedule of a modern cruise ship. However, it was back when passenger ships were called "liners" that schedules focused on the social, rather than the active and educational, advantages of the journey.

It's within this schedule for the old Cunard liner RMS Queen Elizabeth—her third day of a crossing from New York to Cherbourg/Southampton—that we see this for sure. Where iPad classes would be listed on a 2011 cruise shop activity list, the 1949 version favors watching horse racing or listening to the news broadcast.

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Blast from the Past: Real Photo Postcards

November 10, 2011 at 1:35 PM | by | Comments (0)

Walk through Times Square and at almost any of the cheapie souvenir shops in the area, you'll be able to score 10 postcards for $1. A steal for sure, but a closer look at the cards reveals that they're often outdated, faded or—worst of all—boring.

Travelers from the 1900s through the 1960s would have had a heart attack over this, since back then sending a postcard meant something. It was almost required of you to mail postcards from your destinations to your family, friends and neighbors, and the quality of the card was important.

Real Photo Postcards were popular for this reason. Printing on photo paper meant the picture would be solid, with no printing dots or gradients; it was as close to actually being there (except it was black & white). We were recently presented with this photo postcard from the heyday of the first Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth. At 724 feet long and 85,000 gross tons, she was the largest ship in the world and sailing on her meant you'd be sending a slew of photo postcards.

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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of First-Time Cruising

Where: Norway
August 12, 2011 at 4:21 PM | by | Comments (2)


And now a personal dispatch from uncharted waters...those of a virgin cruiser...

As I mentioned on Wednesday, my trip to Norway on Cunard was my first ever cruise. I was ignorant enough to think that a cruise was a good place to go to escape alcohol. What's more is that I was tagging along with a seasoned cruiser and there was obviously a lot I had yet to learn.

Here’s what stood out as the good, the bad and the ugly to a first-timer:

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How to Stay Sober on a Cruise: A Firsthand Lesson

Where: Norway
August 10, 2011 at 3:20 PM | by | Comments (0)

And now a first-person dispatch from a special Jaunted contributor (and first-time cruiser):

Not only was my Norwegian cruise last month the first cruise I’d ever been on, it was also the first trip I’d done since I stopped drinking a couple of months ago. Awesome, I thought as I stuffed my suitcase—a week cut off (literally) from the temptation of bars and clubs. This will be the perfect bridge between America, land of every-other-person-is-in-AA (where I’d traveled from), and England, land of if-you-don’t-get-hammered-on-a-Monday-night-you’ll-be-deported (where I was going to).

But the cruise wasn’t quite as expected, mainly because there was booze at every turn (duh). Thwarted! Luckily, I battled through and emerged from the Queen Victoria unscathed. Want to do the same? These are some ploys to staying sober that worked for me:

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Norwegian Postcards Show Off Scandinavia's Finest Ass-ets

Where: Norway
August 8, 2011 at 4:05 PM | by | Comments (0)


Norwegian postcards: a victory for sexual equality

Postcards: we may be too digitally-inclined and the postal services may be too expensive to mail them anymore, but we still buy them in droves. And while we loved the beautiful images of fjords and cutesy clapboard houses that we found during a Norwegian cruise on Cunard's Queen Victoria last month, the postcards that most captivated us displayed a very different type of Norwegian assets.

Yes, in Fjordcountry—Flåm and Geiranger, to be precise—along with the pretty landscape pictures were a shedload of pictures of naked men in picturesque places. Enjoying the view, showering under a gushing waterfall, strumming a guitar in a flower-filled meadow, skiing...all in various states of undress from shorts to full frontal nudity.

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In-Flight Cocktail of the Month Goes to Sea with Cunard's 'Michal's Cocktail'

August 5, 2011 at 5:09 PM | by | Comments (0)

As many already know, we have a serious obsession with airline cocktails, and so much is our passion that we've created a whole first-Friday-of-the-month feature called In-Flight Cocktail of the Month, which highlights the special concoctions that flight attendants whip up with only a cocktail shaker, some tiny liquor bottles and a whole lot of hope that it won't make you drunk and unruly.

Instead of focusing on a drink at 37,000 feet this month, August's special cocktail is firmly at sea level onboard any of Cunard's three ships: Queen Mary 2, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria. It's on the QV that we first discovered Michal's Cocktail, and a conversation with Jason, the man in charge of the ship's cocktail menus, solidified our minor obsession with it.

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Inside a Princess Grill Suite Onboard Cunard's 'Queen Victoria'

July 28, 2011 at 5:35 PM | by | Comments (3)

Have you ever flipped through a cruise brochure (or a cruise line website, increasingly) and ogled the ship deck plans? There in the middle of the ship, on the decks free from slot machines and bars and sun loungers, you'll typically find the big squares on the plan: the suites. On Cunard, the suites are divided into two levels—Queen's Grill and Princess Grill—both enjoying a private lounge, two outside decks and their own restaurants.

Where the rest of the ship's staterooms could fall under the old term of "Tourist Class," and the Queen's Grill is "First Class," then Princess Grill sits in the middle as "Cabin Class." So what's inside a Princess Grill Suite on the Queen Victoria that makes it so special?

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You'll Be Having the Ginger Cosmo, So Says the Cocktails Manager on the 'Queen Victoria'

July 22, 2011 at 4:55 PM | by | Comments (0)

When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one and we'd like to introduce you to them.

Over the last two weeks, we've given exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," the ship's acupuncturist, the actual doctor and the foodie Saucier. For this final installment, we're all about getting our drink on. Cheers.

Cruises are the ultimate all-inclusive vacation...or are they? What you will have to pay for is all that boozing—wine with dinner, gin and tonics on deck and champagne poolside—so there's a man onboard whose job it is to make the cocktail menu as tempting as possible. For the Queen Victoria, this man is James, the ship's Public Rooms Services Manager.

He may be on a boat right now, but James is head over heels for hotels, using his experience in opening both Manchester's Velvet Hotel and Malmaison to evolve the Queen Victoria's bars and lounges into singular experiences for her thousands of guests. He's been at sea now straight since 2004, also stepping onto the old Caronia, the Queen Mary 2 and even some of the smaller Seabourn ships. Thus, you can bet he knows what to drink if you're feeling the motion of the ocean a bit much: the Ginger Cosmo.

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Stavanger, Norway: An Unexpected Destination for Awesome Street Art

July 21, 2011 at 4:45 PM | by | Comments (0)

New York, Berlin, Paris, Rio de Janeiro...Stavanger? it's true; Norway's second city is a hot spot for international street art, and it's something we never would have guessed until we stepped off Cunard's Queen Victoria and into the center of the city, with walls sporting Shepard Fairey and Banksy.

Stavanger seems a sleepy town, but first impressions are usually deceiving as we know all too well. It took about 10 minutes of meandering the (literally) vibrant streets before we found a store called "SHIT" and a bohemian coffeeshop packed with locals keen to tell us where to find free WiFi and where to walk to see the best graffiti.

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Even the Saucier on the 'Queen Victoria' is a Gordon Ramsay-Trained Gourmand

July 20, 2011 at 3:10 PM | by | Comments (0)

When you think about the people who make a cruise ship run, who comes to mind? The captain...maybe the head chef and cruise director, right? Well, with about 1,000 crew onboard Cunard's Queen Victoria, there's so many others in the shadows, all responsible for making your vacation an awesome one. And over these two weeks, we'd like to introduce you to them.

Last week we gave you exclusive peeks into the (somewhat) secret lives of a ship's officer, a "gentleman dance host," the ship's acupuncturist and its actual doctor. Now we're headed into the kitchens with Roberto, the Queen Victoria's Chef de Partie in charge of sauces.

He's just back from a month-long vacation to Bali, where he slept in an overwater bungalow and dined on fresh meals prepared in the rice fields. He's Roberto, and believe it or not, he's the chef in charge of making all the sauces for meals onboard the Queen Victoria, in the Brittania restaurant.

Oh, but it gets better. Roberto is not only a dashing English man of Italian and South African heritage who cuts a fine figure in his tall chef's hat; he's also a Gordon Ramsay-trained chef, with a CV that includes Ramsay's restaurant at Claridge's in London. And like many Londoners, Roberto feels a connection with New York, specifically with Thomas Keller's Michelin four-starred restaurant Per Se, where he comes to dine (and tour the kitchen) almost every time the QV docks in NYC.

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Inside Cunard's 'Queen Victoria' as She Sails the Norwegian Fjords

July 19, 2011 at 5:03 PM | by | Comments (3)

She's 90,000 gross registered tons, 964.5' long, goes as fast as 23.7 knots and up to 3,003 people can call her their temporary home at any given time, but these numbers mean nothing until you're onboard, feeling Cunard Line's massive Queen Victoria smoothly maneuver around lush islands in the Norwegian Fjords. The QV towers over town like Stavanger and positively dwarfs the smaller settlements of Flåm and Geiranger—other stops on her Norwegian Fjords & Waterfalls itinerary—but on the inside, she's a city all her own.

Before you sail on her—or either of her two sister ships in the Cunard fleet, the Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth—you have to understand something. This is no party ship; there's no 3-foot-long plastic "souvenir" drink cups being pushed poolside, no "Hairiest Chest" competition under a hot Bahamas sun and no long buffet lines for chafing dishes full of veal cutlet.

Instead, for every "no" there, the Queen Victoria lays on the class with proper afternoon tea service, tango lessons in the two-story ballroom and formal dining with Baked Alaska desserts individually flamed in front of you. It's more active, aspirational luxury than let-it-all-hang-out vacation laziness and the ship's amenities completely reflect this approach.

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