}

Saturday, February 17, 2007

A Big Queen Arrives

The largest cruise ship ever to visit Auckland, the Queen Mary 2, arrived early this morning as part of its 80-day round the world maiden cruise. It’s huge—the world’s longest cruise liner, second-biggest overall and weighing around 114,000 tonnes. It’s too tall to fit under the Auckland Harbour Bridge, and too long to dock at the international cruise liner terminal at Princes Wharf. Instead, it docked at the container terminal, with passengers taken into town by bus. The ship's captain is a Kiwi.


Thousands of people went to watch the ship arrive around dawn this morning. I wasn’t one of them—it was a bit too early for me. My man went to see it arrive and took these photos.


The New Zealand Herald had writer John Roughan aboard the ship and writing a daily blog (see the blog here). The paper also published a story on a 20-year-old NZ-born cadet who was on watch as the ship arrived.


The Queen Mary 2 leaves tonight, sent on its way with a fireworks display.


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