THE GREEN DIARY: Rate Your Stay! Take A Survey!

Does your heart sink when you get those emails?

Mine does.

Step out of any hotel, restroom, petrol station, restaurant, supermarket, ATM, NHS, you name it, and the emails chatter in, ping, ping, ping : rate our service, what did you think, feel, loathe, love, out of 5, 10, 50, 100. Trustpilot one, two, three, four, five?

Maddening. But if you fail to reply they go on and on, don’t they?
But, after all, what are departure lounges for but to pick up the next John Grisham, buy a bottle of gin and catch up with those emails! Are bells ringing?

So in the end I do complete the wretched survey.

I never give 10, though. Never! That is always reserved for the surprise perfection which never is.

Until Queen Mary 2.

Queen Mary 2 berthed in Brooklyn.

Barely down the gangplank before the pinging started and while we were waiting for the 3pm slot to check into the Soho Grand Hotel in NYC, I looked at the survey Cunard asked me to fill.

Friends, for the first time, I gave them 10 in every of the 50 categories except on board entertainment which got an 8.

The fact is our experience of this beautiful ship was simply brilliant. The service was impeccable, the food was of the highest standard, their wine lists enormous, their cocktails supreme. The ambience was stylish, relaxed. There was space. You did not for an instant think that there were 2,343 passengers on board. Our stateroom with its balcony was gigantic – more than a mere nod in the direction of old fashioned cabin trunks with more storage, cupboard, drawers and hanging space than our tiny Easyjet-sized luggage needed.

Everything you could possibly want or imagine was catered for from Wellness centres and gyms to libraries and shops. A veritable floating town.

The “peeps” were nice too; and I can tell you that is unusual. We have been on some terrible cruises and many of you have heard our stories I think, Friends?

Nothing like that here and, to top it all, we got to travel with two of our dearest friends, Judith Krummeck and Husbando Douglas Blackstone.

That we were all prisoners in a gilded cage makes none of this matter and it was very entertaining.

Were there any downsides, Friends. I’m afraid so. The weather was not good. No sunshine and cold temperatures but fairly calm seas. We were late arriving in NYC;  our Captain needed to plot a course much further to the south, off the circle route, to avoid bad weather and this meant adding several hours onto our arrival with the advantage that we were able to pass under Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and glide past the Statue of Liberty with that famous view of Manhattan, to our berth in Brooklyn, at 10 rather than 5pm.

And COVID.

Oh dear, Friends. I mentioned in my last blog that this crossing with Cunard was planned in 2019 only to be ruined by COVID in 2020. We are in effect re-running an old plan.

extended family all in Michigan for a reunion. I mean……..what is it with this nasty little monster?

The combination of the dreaded virus and the heat having seriously compromised her.

Everything had to change. We went to the ballet, which we hugely enjoyed; they were in the hospital until 1am having decided that they would return to Baltimore immediately after breakfast by train and we would end our Cunard Fellowship early.

All a bit of a dampener. But it was lovely that they could be with us most of the way and even more special that on board I was able to read Judith’s latest book, The Deceived Ones published only in May and brought as a signed gift specially for us.

Friends it is a beautiful book. Judith is one of my finest friends; she is gentle and considerate; in everything she does there is a delicacy. Like Ikebana,  every piece is placed with thought and care; minimalism is all. This story, The Deceived Ones, is a comedy in the Shakespearean mould. There are moments when the slightest wrong move could turn the story ugly and tragic. I will not say more, though its leitmotif  will be easily evident to you, it is fascinating how the story resolves. I am of course, partisan but, hey, why not?

So they whisked off to Baltimore and we discovered ourselves in the midst of Gay Pride in NYC on my 72nd birthday. It was hot, humid and overcast. Millions of colourful souls everywhere of every shape and form. Our walk from Soho up and across town to the Whitney and the Hi-Line found us swept up by the parades right through The Village, Christopher Street and to a clogged little triangular square outside Stonewall where it all happened all those years ago.

Made it through the press to the Whitney Museum, where Whitney Biennial 2024 : Even Better Than The Real Thing is on until August. We were not quite sure what to make of it actually. Its theme is the acknowledgement that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is complicating our understanding of what is real, “and rhetoric around gender and authenticity is being used politically and legally to perpetuate transphobia and restrict bodily autonomy.” 

I suppose being swept into the museum on the tide of Gay Pride  might have heightened the effect but I am afraid I was left rather underwhelmed.

The pouring rain stopped a Hi-Line walk in its tracks.

By now Tony is showing signs of wobbling toward COVID exacerbated by a nasty, septic finger nail infection, paronychia, which neither boiling water nor antibiotic cream seems to help.

On our last morning, cooler with clear sunny skies, we visited MOMA, a favourite, especially to see the Isaac Julian Installation which was worth every drop of sweat and to which we had been alerted by an installation of his the day before, at the Whitney.

Eating, drinking and merriment?  Rather thin on the ground with all the illness about; but we met our dear friend Ira Silverberg at The Odeon (oysters and lobster-macaroni-cheese – sounds horrendous but hit the spot) over dinner and he regaled us with stories I could not print here! Naughty man!

For my birthday? Martinis at Shade Bar – albino python present (don’t ask) – and spectacular dinner at Manetta’s Ristorante just off Washington Square.

We managed a stagger across Central Park past Trump Tower to Columbus Circle in the heat. No sign of him though we have heard opinions. I fear he will win if the man in the Uber is correct. (Since writing this of course we have had an assassination attempt and Kamala Harris is now on the stump. So perhaps things are not so clear cut anymore – let’s hope.)

And on the 4th day, to Penn Station, newly vamped, since we were last in it, to Amtrak it to Providence Rhode Island there to meet daughter & son Sarah & Ivan, making the eight hour road trek from Ottawa to arrive when our train exactly drew into the station there.

The AirBnB at Sandwich

Tony’s finger looking bad, our lovely AirBnB hostess, Lyla, pointed us in the direction of an extremely efficient clinic which administered antibiotics quick-sticks to stop what Walter Mitty would call “choreopsis setting in”! Or septicaemia to you and me. 

Then to Sandwich for the beautiful, clapboard AirBnB near the ocean on Cape Cod. 

We didn’t go to Martha’s Vineyard but to Nantucket by ferry from Hyannisport instead. Mainly because it was ‘happy 4^th July’ Independence Day weekend and the traffic was horrendous. It took ages to get anywhere; so no Provincetown; nor Martha’s Vineyard as they would have meant spending hours in the car.

Nantucket was beautiful but again, very crowded. We managed to have lunch there and some walking in the heat and humidity.

Our whole time in New York, Cape Cod and eventually Boston was indescribably hot and humid. With Covid in tow it made it all the more intolerable so that when Ivan and Sarah dropped us at our hotel in Boston it was my turn for the lurgy and I collapsed into bed and didn’t move for a day.

I never got to meet our friend Amit, at Harvard doing cutting edge oncology research, long in the planning. Sorry Amit. But at least Tony got to see you!

The weather, our health and loss of mojo rather short circuited Boston; but we managed to see a few things and had at least one special meal, ubering everywhere rather than our usual MetroTransit habits.

Starting with the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, an extraordinary, eccentrically eclectic collection of European, Asian and American art set in a purpose built museum of the kind common in America where there is always a desperate hunt for historical connections and cultural relevance. Interesting this one but rather reminiscent of an ordered junk shop surrounded by a few imported European ruins. It reminded me of  San Simeon in California or the infinitely superior The Met Cloisters in Washington Heights. There is not a small whiff of Disney in these venues!

I was languishing in airconditioned splendour when Tony went by himself to the Boston Museum of Fine Art which he enjoyed. It has a substantial collection of “all the usual suspects”!

We managed a well conducted hop-on-hop-off  trolley tour which hit the spot under our circumstances and, in fact, as we get older, we resort to more often. It got us comfortably round the old town with all its historic sites giving an excellent overview despite the oppressive heat and humidity.

And of course no visit to Boston would be complete without a visit to the spectacular – in all senses – John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.   

Designed by the architect I. M. Pei, the building is the official repository for original papers and correspondence of the Kennedy Administration, as well as special bodies of published and unpublished materials, such as books and papers by and about Ernest Hemingway.

underpin the whole American dream are vaunted, while millions of Trump supporters are moving in the opposite direction towards the very forces that are inimical to the thrust of American history.

Sad.

Back to Blighty then. With some relief I may say as neither of us seemed much in touch with out usual energy.

And at home? All change……but that is another story.

Pedro