QV Russian Rendezvous II - Southampton Departure 22 Jun 08

9th August 2008

Well, it hardly seemed like a year since we disembarked from QE2 in Southampton, but it wasn’t far off it. For all sorts of reasons we decided that this year’s cruise would be on Cunard’s latest ship, Queen Victoria and, by a long distance, the best itinerary we could find was presented by Russian Rendezvous II from 22 June to 6 July. The cruise took in eight countries (none of which, strangely enough, Id ever visited before)and included two days in St Petersburg, a place I’d wanted to visit for a long time. The full itinerary was: Soton, Zeeburgge, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, St Petersburg, Tallinn, Gdynia, Soton. In ship photography terms the pickings weren’t quite as rich as the Med; there was nothing to match Piraeus or Gibraltar in terms of numbers. However, there was some quality and, although I don’t yet have the final figures, there were a fair few sightings (and quite a few old friends from Goole popping up here and there!). As usual, I’ll be posting updates as I manage to complete the work but, to get things started, here’s what I saw on departure from Southampton.

Queen Victoria	Queen Victoria	Queen Victoria	Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria - Funnel	Queen Victoria	Red Jet 1	Red Jet 1
Red Falcon	Sir Percivale	Sir Percivale	UKD Sealion