Postcard from the Queen Mary 2: Holiday Cruise to the Caribbean

My husband, Llewellyn King, and I chose a Christmas-to-New Year’s cruise on the Queen Mary 2, titled Caribbean Celebration, because there were so many days at sea. We love the feelings of lethargy, languor and disengagement that fill us on those days.

But the sea days — and there were three since we left New York on Dec. 22 — were an irritant to the few children on board who couldn’t wait to get to our first port of call, Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas, the capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands. I think the prospect of visiting Blackbeard’s Castle on the island was beating out the visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads.

There have been no shortage of sugarplums on the QM2, both edible and inedible. For this cruise, the pastry pros in the galley have rolled out some inspired creations.

On Deck 3, as you walk to the Britannia, the main dining room, there is a corridor-long gingerbread village. Look but don’t pinch off a piece of the white icing-covered picket fence, passengers are gently asked.

At lunch in the King’s Court Buffet on Christmas Day, passengers’ eyes popped at the festive dough decorations and ice sculptures, and shirt buttons popped after eating many helpings of the desserts. They piled plates high with thick slices of cakes — including Black Forest and Bûche de Noel.

I stopped an English lady before she tried to cut into a square cake frosted with royal icing. It was part of one of the buffet decorations.

“That is a fake cake,” I said.

“I saw a German cake, a French cake, but no Christmas cake,” she sighed.

I love that traditional British cake, too. It is packed with dried fruit and plied with brandy or rum for weeks, then covered with a layer of marzipan and royal icing.

I sighed for a second, then I spied mountains of colored marshmallows on a nearby table. I hoped there would be piles of Turkish delight for which I have a passion. Sigh, no. In consolation, I snagged a couple of Quality Street toffee pennies.

The galley chefs have accommodated passengers’ varied tastes and dietary restrictions admirably. But in keeping with The Cunard Line’s British heritage, every day they have offered a full English breakfast (fried eggs, back bacon, Cumberland sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, black pudding and toast — sigh for some, no fried toast. At lunch, there has been a carvery table with two kinds of roasts, a meat or vegetable stew, various curries, battered cod and chips, even Cornish pasties and small beef and mushroom pies. Sigh for my husband, no beef and kidney pies.

On Dec. 26, Boxing Day, Llewellyn and I met the Chef de Cuisine Willy Guilot. He is a Filipino and has worked on the Queen Mary 2 since she entered service in 2004. We complimented him on the quality of the meals. He said the work had been “crazy” in the galley over Christmas, but he high-beamed at our recognition of it.

For Christmas Day dinner in the Britannia, I chose the traditional turkey with chestnut stuffing and Mrs. Beeton’s Christmas Plum Pudding. I think Isabella Beeton, the Victorian journalist and author of “Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management,” which is more commonly known today as “Mrs. Beeton’s Cookbook,” would have ordered it. She might even have licked what was left of the pudding the custard sauce on the plate.

On my way out of the dining room, I passed by a table where the English lady I had met at lunch was sitting. She smiled at me and pointed to her dessert plate on which there was a crumb of pudding and a drop of custard sauce.

Rudolf Nureyev, the ballet superstar, said, “You live as long as you dance.” Judging from the median age on the elegant Queen’s Room dance floor every night at 9, he got that right.

Last night, the QM2 band played swing music and the floor was alive with pairs of agile ancients dancing all the styles, including the Lindy Hop and the Jive. They had all the moves and the clothes, especially the ladies, who wore full, flowing skirts for twirling.

As they walked off the floor, my husband and I thought they would return to their seats and order a belt. But no, they did about-faces when the band leader said, “You may not want to take your seats, because we’re going to play Benny Goodman’s ‘Sing, Sing, Sing.’ ”

We saw a Chinese couple from Toronto, who we have watched dance other nights in the Queen’s Room, and have gotten to know, return to the floor.

At lunch today, the 86-year-old husband told us that he and his wife have taken ballroom dancing for 14 years with a Russian teacher. His wife said, “She is very strict.”

Six months ago, they both had a fall, but they were determined to dance aboard the QM2 this Christmas and New Year’s. So they danced gently for rehabilitation, but were told not to waltz.

I saw them waltzing one night and assured them, “What happens on the Queen’s Room dance floor, stays on it.”

He said, “My grandmother said, ‘When you are 60 you live in terms of years. When you are 70, in months. And when you are 80, in days.”

I added,“When you are 100, in minutes.” They laughed a little.

They said they want to dance their 80s away — and next Christmas and New Year’s on the same cruise.

Quite unlike cruises we have taken on other lines, the many Chinese couples, young and old, on the QM2 are on the dance floor not at the gaming tables. Every night, they are in heaven, whether dancing cheek to cheek or in the mood to jitterbug.