Thursday & Friday, May 19-20
Days at sea begin to blur together quickly.
Time passes, but not much more. The view out the windows of the ship is of a
truly endless sea. Weather has been grey with a low ceiling. Far out at the
horizon in all directions it looks to clear up. Occasionally the sun has broken
through. We had arranged for a room service breakfast Thursday and were
surprised when a knock came to the door 15 minutes early. We scrambled for our
robes to have the steward put the tray down on the coffee table in our cabin.
The table is adjustable so we could raise it up to dining height at our sofa.
We had a lovely breakfast, Laura with streaky bacon and eggs and me with a bagel,
cream cheese, lox and capers. And a small pot of coffee.
Sitting here now, I don’t recall much of what
we did Thursday, which means it was probably pretty uneventful. I remember
Laura taking a nap in the afternoon, so I went down to Deck 3 to the coffee
shop to get a large Americano and read a book on my iPad while watching the sea
go by while she slept. I went for a mile and a half walk on the deck track on
Deck 7. It was gale-force winds (according to the Captain) so the front open
decks were closed to passengers. We were heading straight into the wind which
was coming at up at 60+ knots. With our speed it meant the winds were over 70
knots.
Our lunch:
Later, after Laura was up, we hunted down our
photographs taken on the first formal night, unhappy with any of them and
vowing to take more.
It was our second formal night that night, so
I got on my tux and Laura got on her beautiful Tom Ford dress in magenta from
our wedding on Mackinac Island and we headed to dinner.
We had prepaid on the Cunard website to go to
dinner at Todd English, the British celebrity chef’s fine dining upcharge
restaurant aboard ship, but the company had changed it to a generic “Verandah”
restaurant without notifying anyone. Thursday night was the first night it was
operating on the cruise, so we went with some trepidation (restaurant opening
nights are never a good thing). Plus, I was frustrated we had paid for one
thing but were going to get something else entirely.
The meal started okay and the menu seemed
good and the mushroom soup was delicious, but the 40-minute wait between soup
and our mains was frustrating. Add to the frustration the fact that my pork was
so dry and flavorless that I pushed it away virtually uneaten and that left a
bad taste on our mouths, no pun intended. By dessert we had been in the
restaurant for two hours and Laura wasn’t feeling well, either because the ship
was rocking more than it had been previously on the trip (felt even more
noticeable at the front and back of the ship and this restaurant was on the
stern) or perhaps because the filo dough pastry with our soup quite possibly
could have had HFCS in it.
Here's our dinner, step by step.
I'm not sure if I can remember any of the specific dishes.
Above is a really good mushroom soup with a puff pastry on top that is likely the culprit for Laura's bad evening.
Pork so dry and flavorless I ate two bites and ended it.
These fries were better than the main dishes.
An ice of some sort to palate cleanse.
Laura slipped away to our stateroom while I
took care of signing the check and I went back to make sure she was okay. She
sat on the deck to get fresh air, cuddled up with her Kindle and a blanket. I
kissed her goodnight and went forward to the Commodore Club, a very nice bar
with a panoramic view at the front of the ship, and the Churchill Room, a
sealed off cigar lounge. There, I met the author of a post-apocalyptic book I’d
enjoyed called One Second After. His
name is William Forstchen and he writes historical fiction and nonfiction. When
we looked him up the next day when I had internet access, I learned he’d
published dozens of books. He had seemed genuinely pleased in the cigar lounge
that I was familiar with and a fan of his book.
Late and stinking of cigars, I came back to
our cabin, isolated my tux in a closet where it couldn’t “infect” the other
clothes with the smell, brushed my teeth (and tongue!), showered, and went to
bed.
Friday we went to breakfast at our table of
six alone, watching the power walkers and the grey skies. We went back to
search for more photos from the second formal night and found a few that we
were quite pleased with, appalled at the prices for a few simple 8x10s.
Noontime ushered in another hour advance in our slow trek across the Atlantic,
adding a second hour to EDT. We were now +5 hours from Los Angeles.
Lunch in the dining room was quite good, and
after lunch we grabbed our passports to clear immigration on board. Then we had
scheduled a wine tasting to learn more about French wines, Appalachians,
terroir, and more. We had one champagne, a sauvignon blanc, two reds, and a
dessert wine. I liked only the more robust of the two reds and the dessert wine
while Laura only really liked the dessert wine.
Laura enjoyed the wine tasting (can you tell?).
Friday was a “casual day” which means that
men are in jackets (at minimum) and women in cocktail dresses or pant suits. I
wore a tie and we went to dinner in the dining room and had another excellent
meal. I ordered a bottle of the dessert wine from the sommelier, but I think he
might have misunderstood me because it never came.
After dinner we went to hunt down the disco
to see if perhaps a little dancing would be fun, but the place was dead with a
rather awful cover band. We ended up in the Commodore Club for a nightcap
(Laura getting a “liquid dessert” of some chocolate concoction while I enjoyed
a Sazarac). With Laura fading fast we returned to the cabin to go to sleep.
The ship was rocking quite a bit more than it
had been earlier, though not alarmingly so in any way, and I think that, plus
the fact that I had napped a bit myself earlier, caused for a long wait before
sleep came. When it did, I slept really fitfully, as did Laura. The ship’s
creaking and noise from the rocking—akin to someone moving furniture in an
apartment overhead—was not conducive to a good night’s rest.
A mural from the ship. There were many, each invoking a different
continent/country the ship travels to.
Can you spot the Homer Simpson the artist hid on the "America's" bas relief?
No comments:
Post a Comment