Between unpacking and waiting for the Emergency Drill on embarkation day, I took a quick walk from D at the aft of the ship (my preferred location actually) to the A stairs. The Queen Mary is so long it is almost 300 steps. My fit-bit loves this life on board. She sends me congratulatory messages when I reach 10,000 steps and then tells me I am an overachiever when I am 6,000 steps over that. Guess I should re-define my goals.

This transatlantic leg of my Southampton-Baltics-New York dance cruise is the first time I am cruising as a solo traveller. All my previous dance cruises have been part of a group of dancers or with a dance partner. So when readers of my travelblogues have emailed me to ask how the onboard dancing is for people traveling alone, I have not really been able to answer from personal experience.

Intermingled sequence dance with ballroom to recorded music, and dancing to the big band sound of the Queens Room  orchestra

This post is specially for all my friends at Dale Neale Dance in  White Rock where we are getting sequence dance going to complement the American smooth, rhythm, ballroom, Latin and club dances that Dale teaches.

It’s been two years since I sat with the Future Cruise agent on Cunard’s fabulous Queen Mary 2, figuring out that I could follow a Baltic Cruise on the Queen Elizabeth with a westbound Transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary 2, that would get me back to New York. And today we’re off to the UK to board the ship.