The arrival of Cunard’s newest vessel, the Queen Elizabeth into Alicante last Monday became very much a Torrevieja affair. Captain Chris Wells used to have a holiday home in Rocio del Mar until very recently, entertainer Simon John is performing onboard and yours truly used to oversee the entire video operation for the cruise line. On the visitor list were over thirty regulars from the Freewheelers, Phoenix Car Club and Club Torrevieja Classics and Specialists Cars plus the dignitaries included representation from Torrevieja’s Town Hall through Pedro Valero, the councillor for Foreign Residents and New technology and Graham Knight, Director of the Foreign Residents Office.
Although boarding the vessel was fraught with difficulties, names missing from lists, different lists that didn’t match up and lists that were just, missing, most but not all those that came to visit eventually made it onboard and were treated to a tour of the ship. It should be said that local Shipping Agent Mundomar, did not come out of the visit with flying colours.
Queen Elizabeth herself christened the ship on October 11, 2010 and this was only her third cruise. She is 92,000 gross registered tons, 294 metres long, 33 meters across (beam), has 12-decks above the waterline, can cruise at 23.7 knots an hour and has a capacity of 2,092 guests. In relative terms, the ill-fated Titanic was about half the size of the Cunard’s newest vessel, being 46,328 gross registered tones but almost as long at 269.1 metres, had nine-decks, held 3,547 passengers with 860 crew and a top speed of 23 knots per hour. The Queen Elizabeth is the length of three football fields, as high as the tallest apartment building in Torrevieja and offers more hotel beds than is available in the entire city of Torrevieja!
At 1100-hrs, President of the Port Authority of Alicante, Miguel Campoy, presented the ship's captain, Chris Wells, with a miniature replica of an air compressor used in the past to supply oxygen from the surface to divers working under the sea, because the site of the Cruise Pier is the former headquarters of the local institution. In return, Wells presented Campoy with a plaque while posing in front of a silver scale model of ‘Queen Elizabeth 2’. Wells thanked the President for his gift and noted that “the Queen Elizabeth is the most modern cruise ship in the world and so our gift to you is a modern plaque representing the new era or Cunard.”
The ship was built at the Fincantieri shipyard in Monfalcone (Italy) to replace the QE2, which made its last voyage in 2008, before being sold to Dubai. The ship, although with modern furnishing throughout, features a lot of artefacts and design elements which hark back to the 1930’s era, the days of the former Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, before Jet Travel, when the ships carried celebrities, presidents and royalty across the Atlantic and around the world.
The interior decor evokes a feeling of 1930's Art Deco, dominated on one deck by a flowing staircase topped by a huge clock. One of her outstanding features is the Theatre, which has a capacity for over 800 guests, complete with a balcony and boxes, with plenty of leg room and comfort, while the ship has a dozen bars and restaurants, library, reading room, a smoker’s bar, spa, gym, hospital and even an Apple Computer store, complete with iPads, iPods, iMacs and everything Apple!
For more information about the Queen Elizabeth or her sister ships the Queen Victoria or Queen Mary 2, please visit www.cunard.com. There are no plans for her to return to Alicante for 2011 but her 2012 Calendar is still being worked on. For a few lucky people out there, still wondering what to do with themselves in the new year, there still are places available on her 103-day World Cruise, so if you have between €15,000 and €50,000 to spend on a three month vacation, you now have one more option to consider to spoil yourself with for the New Year.
