A Getaway With My Honey

The last part of our Thanksgiving vacation was our long-awaited Groupon getaway to the Queen Mary. This was only our second time being gone 2-nights from the kids (the first was a Catalina getaway for my birthday when I was pregnant with Holly). My wonderful, kind mother agreed to take the kids and Friday afternoon we drove down to Long Beach. I wasn't really sure what to expect but overall we were both very impressed. The rooms, and basically the whole ship, have been preserved in all their 1936 glory. For example, there were red and green lights outside the rooms (not working now). The switch that operates them is next to the bathtub. They used to push a button for help getting out of the bath and being dried off (so weird to imagine). Red was for a male, green for a female. Attendants sat at the ends of the hallways waiting for the lights to light up. All the rooms people stay in now are "First Class".
The bed/bedding is not from the 1930's thank goodness.Our tour guide Roy (circa 1931) will take you on a mini-tour now. "First off, I don't want to hear a word about the Titanic. This ship is twice the size of Titanic so I don't want to hear anything about it." (Roy has the kind of dry sense of humor I appreciate).
"Would you all like to know what they paid for a First Class ticket back in 1936? $1400 per person! It was built to cater to the rich. The ship was nicknamed "the ship of beautiful woods" because the interior has woods from all over the world- some very rare today." (This was not all said in this order).
Okay, Roy needs a nap and I will be your new guide: Of course many famous people visited the ship. The brother that gave up being king on "The King's Speech" (dubbed The Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII) and his wife Wallis Simpson, referred to as "the American Divorcee" in one photo caption, were repeat visitors.

Dana standing where Fred Astaire stood in photo
The hallways are the longest of any ship. You can't see to the other end. (Particularly when there's a janitorial cart in the way). They are banana shaped as a buffer against the waves. There are four super sized first-class suites but you cannot see one today because they are all reserved. You may reserve one in the future though for $400/per night.
This ends our tour and all the Queen Mary info I can remember.

We had so many delicious meals (yummy restaurants onboard) and got to go to the movies. Unfortunetly, we saw "Breaking Dawn". Unlike the stay on the ship, this is not recommended-especially with your husband. Dana, who's a good sport about chick-flik's was first very fidgety and then frequently verbal about it being the slowest movie he's ever seen. When Jacob saw Renesme for the first time a laugh/snort escaped before I could withhold it. Dana was completely confused not having read the books.
We also did a little shopping :)
And did some more exploring ourselves like the "Isolation Room" where they took stowaways (picture Rose chopping Jack's handcuff's in Titanic) and the Engine which was much bigger then expected.
So there's your little history lesson for the day.

I'm so grateful to be married to my sweetheart who will even sit through boring movies for me. And does so, so many things for me and our family everyday. I'm a lucky girl :)