J'Adore: Ships Passing At Dawn; the QE2 Says Hello Before Goodbye

I missed her this morning … the venerable matriarch Q.E. 2 slipping into New York Harbor, performing a curtsy with her four-year-old sister ship Queen Mary 2 at the Statue of Liberty, before drifting uptown to Pier 90 at 53rd Street.

Dead to the world after yesterday’s 2am wakeup, I didn’t hear her shrill blasts from three Tyfon whistles. I was working at 6am, so she must have been a very early tooter this morning, or I was in the kitchen.

Here you go … this is another video on YouTube, to create the experience for you!!! See me waving??

For my new readers, I live in a lovely perch 19 floors above the water but set back two blocks, so I also see the southern Manhattan cityscape. My architectural perspective is one in which I don’t see the water line meeting land.

Sitting in bed drinking French Roast, the waters lap and frolic as if suspended in space somehow.

I always feel like Peter Pan up here … as if I could just drift out the window and land (softly, of course) in the water.

It’s a dull, dreary day and I’m waiting for my turbo modem to arrive. I’ll get out the camera in hopes of capturing a shot of the QE2, as she saiis out into the Atlantic for the final time.

Not to worry, our Queen is not going to the junkyard. Rather, she’s off … where else, but to Dubai … to become a floating hotel, residing at the Las Vegas of the Middle East, Palm Jemeirah … the world’s largest man-made island and beach resort. 

OK, camera. Let’s see if I can pull this off … an AnneofCarversville wave goodbye to the QE2.

Love,

Anne

PS: The NYTimes article tipped me off to the QE2 and also references a terrific blog Peter Knego’s Sea Treks

More Anne reading: Farewell Dear Queen QE2, when she left New York harbor.

J’Adore: Our Queen, the QE2 Docks in Dubai, not Mumbai

Update on Fri, October 17, 2008 by Anne

Hello, friends. Typical for me, I couldn’t get my camera to work and the night sky was much too dark for a cell phone picture.

HOWEVER, I was there at the water when the QE 2 drifted out of New York harbor for the last time. This may be one of those “you had to be there moments”, but when I saw the Queen Mary 2 waiting patiently for the Q.E.2 to make her way down the Hudson, all I could think about was the two ships going on a date together.

The two ‘ol girls in Sydney.I texted my Boy Toy who wrote back that the QE2 just met the Queen Mary 2 for the first time in Sydney this year. He was there for that event.

Writing under a pseudonym for another blog that I own, I ripped into the financial community yesterday, about our pure chaos and irrationality at play in the stock markets. The situation here in New York  is unnerving.

Watching the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth and our Statue of Liberty last night . . . I had one of those “if women only ruled the world” moments.

The two ships, with a historical pedigree not shared by the “dam” boats drifting by my window, exchanged a curtsy and much tooting … paying homage to the Statue of Liberty before ambling out into the Atlantic.  They are somewhere at sea together like dolphins playing in the Atlantic.

The subject for my next Journal article declared itself last night: Two Queens and a Great Dame” … something like that. It was such a sweet moment of Pomp and Circumstance but also reflection about our messed up world and loss of so many institutions.

I did not go home and cry in a glass of British beer. Instead, I shared my impressions and animated talk about the financial markets mess over a wonderful dinner at Gigino Trattoria on Greenwich Street.

Love,
Anne