Day 13 at sea

Let's do a tour of the ship.

Decks A and B are below the waterline and staff only.

Deck 1 is staff mostly: their sleeping quarters with a cabin each, 3 dining rooms where they are waited on,  a pub called Pig and Whistle, storage, medical centre and passenger disembarking into tenders.

Deck 2: the Queen Mary Ball Room, lower level of Britannia Dining Room, Golden Lion pub, art gallery,  photo hard-selling, purser's office, Royal Court Theatre lower level, Illuminations lecture theatre, freezing cold bridge rooms and a maze of rooms of unknown use.

Deck 3 is the most opulent looking as it is the main entrance: on shore days a line of small men wearing page boy suits and white gloves decorates the entrance looking awfully like well-trained monkeys. It would be nice if they held trays of free champagne... Here are impossibly elegant shops including a branch (more of a twig) of Harrods, Sir Samuel's coffee shop, the upper entrances to theatre and dining rooms at opposite ends of the ship, the Chart Room Bar, the Veuve-Cliquot Champagne Bar and round SPACE with nothing in it.

Deck 4 is where our stateroom is - number 4164 aft (at the back) on the port side which means the Australia side as we go around anti-clockwise. We get plenty of exercise traversing the loooong corridors to the bow (front, pointy end) and up and down stairs. There are only staterooms on 4,5,6 and those on the outside all have balconies which leaves an awful lot on the inside without balconies or portholes - ghastly. I like the balcony for drying our washing rather than sending it to the ship's laundry at $40 per bag.

Deck 7 is where it all happens: a promenade deck runs right around where 1.9 circuits = 1Km for walkers or you can annexe a deck chair and look at the sea.  Inside is an endless stretch of buffet dining called King's Court where you can always find a table.  Not quite endless: at the aft is the Princess Grill reserved only for Princess passengers who have paid double what we did and hence have exclusive dining and sole occupation of Deck 11. The class system is alive and well on the QM2. The usual spa and gym takes up a lot of area and there is a swimming pool.

Deck 8 contains the all-important library at the pointy end but to get there you have to walk endless corridors past staterooms.

Decks 9, 10, 11 reserved for Princess passengers,  12 has another swimming pool and open space for Poms adding to their sunburn.