[title type="h5"]Thursday, May 28, 2015.
London To The Queen Victoria. Settling In Easily. [/title]
The Marys head out in the morning to give their London shopping endeavors a final go. The urgency is more about not having given up any shopping just for the sake of being on time for the bus that will carry us to Southampton. That's the port for London, and for the Queen Victoria, which will carry us through the Bay of Biscay to seven Mediterranean cities en route to Rome.
My job is to hold off the driver--who has only such silly tasks like a schedule to meet on his mind--from leaving without us. He is not swayed by the Mary's need to put the period to the end of their London needs. He knows what lies ahead, and it's not pretty. Traffic exiting London through its narrow road grids is tremendous. It's hours before we are on a free-flowing highway.
The ride is so long that the bus driver pulls into a rest area and its Burger King, KFC, Starbucks, and other canteens for the desperate. It looks as if it could be in northern Alabama.
We still have a bit over an hour's drive before the road begins its descent through the chalky hills of the southern British coast. It reminds me of West Texas, but with more greenery.
Like every major port, Southampton is frankly industrial. So what are pleasure palaces such as the ships operated by the Cunard Lines doing here? It's just a fact of life. We check in and board the ship in a breeze. That's a big contrast with our earliest cruises over a decade ago, when the lines to get checked in were long and exasperating. Back then everything was done by hand on the spot. One could hardly wait to board and grab a quick drink before taking a nap.
Another miracle: en route to our stateroom, we find all our luggage waiting in the elevator some fifty feet from our room. The porters are along a few minutes later to bring them exactly to our door. Never before has our luggage beat us to the ship.
Still, we're not on board until well after four. Then there is the unpacking, followed by the emergency lifeboat drill. By which time I'm ready for a shower and a nap. I have no time for me to write and deliver my daily on-board newsletter to the Eat Clubbers. Mary Ann volunteers to call the Eat Clubbers to invite them to join me for cocktails in the Chart Room. As per Eat Club tradition, I buy the first round of drinks for everyone, thereby running up a tab well into three figures. This deficit will repair itself as the cruise goes on. With luck, I will not have to buy myself another drink for the duration.
To dinner in the tri-level Britannia dining room. For the first time this trip, I encounter Marilyn and Carroll Charvet, who have accompanied us on many cruises and even one train trip over the years. I'm relieved to see that they have made it onto the ship with no problems.
The dinner is pretty bad. I start with a tomato and pumpkin soup. It desperately needs Tabasco. Which, the waiter tells me, is available on the ship. There is a bottle of it downstairs. He duly fetches it. In a few days, I will begin to see evidence tat only one bottle of Tabasco is in service in the entire Britannia dining room. And that one is a two-ounce job.
A few cruises ago, I bought a box of those teeny bottles of Tabasco sold in tourist shops in New Orleans. I gave one to everybody cruising with me. I think I might need to revive that practice. Certainly if the cruise involves British culinary influence.
Back to dinner: After the soup comes a salad of much better greens that we would have seen ten years ago, with not quite enough dressing. My entree is a sirloin strip steak that appears to have been braised rather than grilled or broiled. It comes out with a light demi-glace with mushrooms. I don't know why, but I almost always have a steak on the first night of a cruise. I wish I had forgotten that tradition this time around.
In lieu of a dessert, I have a cheese plate with four offerings: something like Brie, something like Roquefort, and sticks that seem to have been made out of several variations of Cheddar. It came across as a processed cheese, and not good enough to get again. Drat! Cheese plates on cruise ships are usually pretty good. Especially among Brits, cheese at the end of a meal is considered a touch of elegance.
The wine is a Carmenere from a Chilean producer I don't know. It's a good buy at $30. There are few such finds on the wine list, which strikes me as rather expensive. They are playing a common restaurant illusion. Many restaurants load up their lists with three or four bottles each of many very expensive wines, making it look as if the floating wine cellar is distinguished. In fact, the bulk of wine sales are of what people drink most the world over: inexpensive wines.
The friendship at our table keeps dinner going until almost ten o'clock. But overnight we will enter a new time zone and lose an hour of sleep. I'm bushed. The girls are already in bed, trying to sleep. An incredible racket penetrates our stateroom. It's a combination of the whistling of wind under the doors to the hallway and the balcony with a banging of the door separating our balcony from the one next door. It sounds like a crazy man with a bad, wheezing cough, whanging away on the steel walls with a ball-peen hammer.
I find I can eliminate most of the cacophony by pulling the door to the balcony closed and locking it. But the problem won't be completely ameliorated until tomorrow. Then our room steward comes in with wooden shims and a tool I've never seen the likes of before. Whatever its original purpose, the steward uses it as a hammer to whack the shims into the balcony latch until it no longer moves. Peace follows immediately.
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[title type="h5"]Friday, May 29, 2015.
Sea Day #1. Throwing My Newspaper Route. A Better Dinner.
[/title]
The day begins with the usual disagreement as to where the Marys and I will have breakfast. The usual outcome: they don't eat (or so they say), and I have breakfast with a group of strangers. I find that entertaining. But today that doesn't happen, because when I walked up to the front door of the Britannia dining room, the maitres d'hotel don't agree right off as to whether they are still open. (The time change overnight is the culprit.) It is decided that I can be the last breakfast customer for this day, but that I must sit alone. My standard menu: fresh melon and pineapple slices, a croissant, some orange juice and coffee.
Today is one of only two days at sea. We have another one tomorrow, but after that it's seven days in the various ports. Those who want to relax must do it today or tomorrow, unless one is willing to give up a port's attractions. For the Marys, even one day at sea is a waste of time, and to miss anything in a port is a lost opportunity, never to be regained.
The Marys go up to the spa for exercise. I write a bit to the accompaniment of cappuccino. The waiter in the gourmet coffeeshop sells me on what I later decide is a terrible deal. I pay for nine cups of specialty coffee, and get the tenth one free. A voice in the back of my head predicts that I will not get around to my free cappuccino, even if I always have my club card with me. The voice calls the outcome accurately: when I leave the ship nine days from now, the ship will still owe me four cappuccinos.
I spend most of the morning trying to figure out how to print out the newsletter I deliver most days to the Eat Clubbers. By the time I solve the puzzle, I have used up $40 of my internet time. Which is not only expensive but unbelievably slow. Remember dial-up? That's how bad the web is on a moving cruise ship.
But I make up for this by discovering that I can move a pdf of my Cruiseletter into the internet cafe's workstation with a thumbdrive. And then I can print out the twenty-two newsletters I need for nothing. This has got to be a loophole. I'd feel bad about it if it weren't for the certainty that ML and I will use at least $150 of web time.
I never had a newspaper route as a boy. I make up for that by walking around the ship and delivering my daily bulletin to our travelers. It's a long walk, and I force myself to use the stairs instead of the elevators. But I always like doing this.
Our nightly pre-dinner cocktail club convenes at seven. Will people show up if I don't buy the first round? They will, and they do, about half the crowd from yesterday. This is the friendliest group we've ever had. Already a few passengers have told me how much they've enjoyed the friendships.
Dinner tonight is much better than last night's. I begin with a soup of peppers and tomatoes. The waiter once again has to go two floors down in the dining room to find a little bottle of Tabasco. But the soup is good either way.
Next a cold confit of duck, which would be better described as a rillettes. I am no fan of rillettes (yet another dish that you and I would consider a pate, but that the French deem as deserving of its own word). The best dish of the night follows: five sea scallops in a butter emulsion, with a few vegetables in morsels.
At some point on every cruise, a hot soufflee shows up as a dessert option. Tonight is the night. It's a little soufflee with a lemon flavor, but its fluffy texture is just right. The sauce is a little unusual: it's a creme anglaise, which is sort of a liquid version of custard. This one had set a little, but that took nothing away from the enjoyment.
After dinner, Vic and Barb Giancola--longtime Eat Clubbers--say that they have found an exquisite place for after-dinner drinks. The Commodore Club is up on the highest deck, all the way at the front of the ship, with a 180-degree view. A woman plays piano and sings in a style reminiscent of Diana Krall. This is my kind of music, and we stay for well over an hour, listening and telling jokes. Another excellent day with the Eat Club.
