Life on the ship and the Scottish border town of Jedburgh

Before I start to talk about our first stop in Jedburgh, Scotland, I would like to take a moment to talk about life on board Queen Mary 2 this time. 

Again, Queen Mary 2 has very slow and very expensive WiFi, so this early hour of the morning is the only time I can write my blog. But that is not the only problem. 

The ship is crossing the Atlantic Sea from Southampton to New York, a famous passage that is known to be very rough at times. It set sail about 5 pm on Thursday 31 August, English time. Most unfortunately, and to my great disappointment, I am yet again in a cabin close to the front, with only a port-hole. The first night and day were quite smooth sailing, but during Friday night we encountered a storm. The rocking - slapping up and down on wave after wave - and swaying of the ship and the regular blaring of the fog horn woke me up and since then I have had to dose myself big time with sea sick tablets. 

Right now it is 3 am (we are now 2 hours behind English time) and I am about to take some more, having been again woken up by the very rough seas at 2 am. The problem with my normal medication for this, which targets my balance organ in my ears, is it makes me sleepy. The ‘big gun’ medication, which I had to resort to yesterday and am hoping to avoid today, is it makes you feel like you have been hit in the head with a sledgehammer. And apart from that you walk around like a drunken sailor. It is very disconcerting when you go to plant your foot down and the floor isn’t where your brain thought it would be! 

However, the upside of the ship, not that I should call it that - here goes my stomach again - is a really delightful French couple I have met on my table.  An American couple also are lovely. I am now doing my best to improve my French, which will please some of you I know. 

Back to Jedburgh . . .

This was a very picturesque, charming town. Like in Paris and England, great baskets of the most colourful flowers were everywhere, even hanging from lampposts, something we do not have on our lampposts in Melbourne. The flowers would bake and wither and die in our summer heat, especially when we have north winds that blow in from some of our desert areas. As I love flowers, I thought I would show you some of the beautiful flower arrangements I saw. In my next post I will talk about the town and the delicious food we had there.