The way to travel…

July 18-26

In preparation for our travels, we looked at many different options trying to find the best and least expensive ways to get to Ukraine.  We searched every different airline website and tried every different combination of dates to fly.  Everything was so overpriced, so we started looking at a different mode of transportation.  We looked into cargo ships, which sounded like a great, cheap way to go, however, that was not the case.  It was very expensive and you have to book at least 5 months in advance!  So, as a joke at first, we looked into transatlantic cruises and, to our surprise, a 7 day cruise on the Queen Mary 2 was the same price as a one way ticket to Ukraine!  Since we were not on a strict timeline, we decided to do it and WOW was it a great way to travel.  And, on top of going on the Queen Mary, Andy found a deal to use hotel points and stay for free at the Waldorf Astoria in NY the night before we boarded the cruise!  What an amazing experience.  Check it out…

Our lives in 5 bags! This is all of our luggage to move to Ukraine. We also shipped 1 box each with all of our winter clothes.

New York street meat...YUM!! Eating in Central Park (one of our favorite places)

Entertainment in Central Park - check out the guy playing 2 trumpets. Awesome!

Carrying snacks back to our room in the Waldorf! CRAZY!

Pretty cool view from our room!

Our last 2 meals in the USA included street meat in Central park and Outback Steakhouse!  Time to board the Queen Mary.

HUGE!!

Yay!

Picture from our room on the ship.

NY from our ship - AWESOME!

Last time we will see land for 7 days and the last time we will see the USA for 5 months! BYE - WE WILL MISS YOU!

Can't see land anymore, but we still have my sunsets...this is from the very back of the ship (you can see our wake)

Cruising on the Queen Mary 2 is very formal.  We had 4 formal nights and a semi-formal night.  Moving to Ukraine, we did not plan on bringing formal things with us, so we had to rethink our packing strategy a little bit.  I packed 2 formal dresses that I borrowed from a friend (thanks Meredith) and a semi-formal dress that I just wore in a wedding!  Andy packed 1 suit and 3 ties.  We just had to rewear!

Our second night on the ship - our first formal night

Semi-formal night - this picture is taken in the main lobby of the ship.

Third formal night on the grand staircase.

Last formal night in our favorite pub.

Probably the coolest thing for us on this cruise was our rendezvous with the Artemis Investment boat.  This is a 23 foot row boat with 4 men rowing across the Atlantic Ocean trying to beat the world record of 55 days which was set 114 years ago!  One of the men on the boat used to be an engineer on the Queen Mary 2 and knew our captain.  Our gps was able to find them, so out of the fog came this tiny boat bopping along the waves of this great ocean.  It was an amazing sight.  They were on day 36 of their journey and they had already capsized twice and two of the men had fallen out at different times.  Also, one of them had an ingrown toenail that another man on the boat had to cut out with a pocket knife!  You can check out their journey HERE.  UPDATE-They shattered the record!

The Artemis Investment boat and our rescue boat that went to say hi and take pictures.

You can really tell how small it is when you see the 2 men start rowing.

We made some awesome new friends on the cruise…

Andy, Nick and Sven

Us with Melissa and Sven

This was our favorite place on the boat. We spent a lot of time sitting here reading and watching the ocean.

WOW, huh?!

Every day they would update or location...this is the last day - almost there.

This was the sunrise outside our room on the morning we got to England. The sun is rising over France. Gorgeous!

Just a couple of things to add as little bonus -

1. We had a sommelier every night for dinner who was from Odessa, Ukraine.  So we got to practice what little of the Ukrainian language we know!

2. The following video is part of a karaoke performance by Andy and I will point out a couple of things to watch for… number one and most obvious is the guy dancing with Andy.  We made friends with him later and he is in a picture above (Nick), but we had no idea who he was when he was doing this dance!  Hilarious!  It was like he could not stop – he even puts on his coat and shoes like he was finished and then keeps going.  He was awesome.  Another thing to watch is the woman you see sitting at the table behind where Andy is singing.  I am not sure if that song went over too well with that crowd!!!  HAAA!  Listen to Andy’s words.  Especially at the beginning.  He is trying so hard to get the audience involved, but it is not working!  Close to the end of his 7 minute song, there are 2 times that the crowd tries to get him to stop and he doesn’t realize it.  They try to cheer him off and then they turn the lights off.  He didn’t realize they did that until he saw the video!  One last thing is if you want to watch the whole thing, make sure you keep it running after he finishes singing. Enjoy

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