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Day 7: Saturday, May 30, 2015.
Sea Day #2. Juggling Diners. [/title]
Going to bed past midnight makes it easy to sleep until almost nine. The gentle rocking of the ship, and a kind of throbbing that goes on most of the time, make it even more restful.
We have the second and final day at sea today. The Marys are bored silly, although they do get a lengthy round of ping-pong in. I spend most of the day writing and sorting through my photos, trying to figure out how to publish them online. The satellite internet on board the ship is too slow and expensive for the effort to make sense. I decided to pull it all together when I get home, and create one big document about the entire cruise. I get many requests for that anyway, even years after the cruise in question.
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Fish and chips in the Queen Victoria's Pub.[/caption]
We do have a nice family lunch in the Pub, a space we liked a lot on our first Cunard Atlantic crossing years ago. At lunchtime, they have British food like fish and chips (Mary Ann loves the idea of that, if not entirely the reality). I ordered the steak and mushroom pie, a toned-down version of steak and kidney pie. It comes out in a broun sauce with mushrooms and ale. I have a half-pint of Guinness, and felt very British. ML ate the Ploughman's Lunch, which is more or less a ham sandwich, made with the baked ham they prefer in England.
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A Negroni in the Chart Room.[/caption]The Chart Room is the meeting place for the Eat Club during the hour and a half before dinner. It's already so popular that we have to move a lot of chairs to seat all the ladies, leaving a few guys standing. I have not had many Negroni cocktails lately, but I associate it with cruising, and so I have one in most of these pre-dinner parties.
And then I find myself with one of my least favorite tasks as host of these cruises. Our group has five tables in the main dining room. On most nights the roll call at any particular table is different. Tonight, because some of the diners have gone elsewhere than the main dining room for dinner, two people will wind up sitting alone. I have an obvious remedy: ask a couple of people seated at one of the full tables if they wouldn't mind moving in with the couple sitting by themselves. But I couldn't get them to budge. Luckily, just as I was about to move myself (Mary Ann is not dining tonight) to the sparse table, another couple shows up late and solves the problem.
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An Eat Club table in the Brittania dining room. [/caption]
The only bottle of Tabasco on the ship (my conjecture) has made its way back down to the first floor, but our waiter finds it and brings it to us, the better to flavor the beef consomme. Now there's a soup you don't see often. But it always comes up in every cruise we've ever taken. Old classics live on at sea.
The highlight of the dinner is venison as an entree. It's a bit overcooked, and the sauce could have been more complex, but this makes up for the venison I was hoping to have had in Rules a few days ago.
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[title type="h5"]Day 8:DaySunday, May 31, 2015.
The Rock Of Gibraltar.[/title]
Our first port of call is determined--so the rumor goes, anyway--by the availability of fuel at low taxation in the British colony of Gibraltar. And although Cunard's ships are officially registered in other countries, the line has many British connections.
The time in port is brief. We arrive around ten and depart at three. This gives us barely enough time to penetrate the town, whose 23,000 residents brag about having zero unemployment (indeed, 10,000 people come in from Spain to fill open positions). Also here: the fifth most dangerous airport in the world. A four-lane highway crosses the single airstrip at grade. Sounds like a good reason to go there by ship.
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Strolling through downtown Gibraltar.[/caption]
The Marys and I walk in front of the Catholic cathedral just as Mass is beginning. It's Sunday, so we go in and are blessed by a priest who looks Hispanic but speaks with a thick English accent.
Mary Ann tries hard to find a way to the top of the Rock of Gibraltar. The tramway--like a ski lift--is the most popular way. But a power outage early this morning had it out of commission. As we walked around trying to figure out what to do next. A fellow driving a van pulls over and tells us that for fifteen pounds per person he will take up up to the spot where the tramway would have. Will we see the caves and tunnels? Yes. What about the famous Barbary Apes? the ones that come right up yo you and attempt to steal anything hanging from your body? Yes, I know all the monkeys personally, says the driver.
Who, as we drive up the steep incline, tells us that he is an actor, a singer, and a producer of big musical events. He is also well-versed on the history of Gibraltar the city, the rock itself, and its involvement in a number of wars over the years.
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A cave in the Rock of Gibraltar, where a major opera performance happened a few days ago.[/caption]
The caves in the rock don't look entirely natural, but they predate a time when preservation was on anyone's mind. Now the stalactites and stalagmites are illuminated by eerie electronic lights. Chairs arranged in audience mode can seat about two hundred people, who most recently came here for an evening of opera.
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One of the famous Gibraltar monkeys walks in front of our path.[/caption]
We get as close to the summit as possible in a vehicle, and we meet up with the monkeys. They are not scarce. The rule, we are told, is that the monkeys are allowed to touch you, but you can't touch them without risking a bite. They seem tame enough. But suddenly two of them have a a disagreement with one another about two feet from Mary Leigh, who is alarmed. We give the monkeys a wider berth.
It is very foggy near the top, and there's not much to see. The Singing Driver takes us down the road to the spot where the British built a redoubt during World War II. Tunnels with barely enough headroom for me snake through the very solid rock. Displays tell about how the feat was accomplished (with great difficulty and some loss of life) while tunes from the era play in a peculiar, worrisome way. It's one of those trails that goes downhill all the way, so it's a panting climb back up again. The whole tour is much better than we dared hope for.
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The many thin layers of a feuillete of salmon, cheese and herbs.[/caption]
The ship sails away from the Rock at three. I try to do a little writing, but all the walking gets the better of me and I must take a nap. Then it's dinnertime. The Giancolas join us for dinner in the Verandah, the gourmet restaurant of the Queen Victoria. (Unless you count the restaurants in Queen's and Princess's Grills, which by all accounts shame all other services on this and the other Cunard ships, at a much higher cost.)
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A foie gras terrine and a rillettes of duck in the Verandah, the specialty dining room on the Queen Victoria. [/caption]
Upscale cruise restaurants are usually difficult to reserve. But not only was it easy for us to get a table, but there were hardly any other customers in it. Were it not for the string quartet playing there, it would have been much too quiet in there for comfort.
We took a sampling of the menu, which delivers a four-course repast for a $25 upcharge. The Marys ate the usual variations on steak, their fingers crossed that they come out well done. As usual, one or the other orders something she hates. In this case, it was a pate de foie gras, smooth and rich, with a terrine of wild mushrooms. These get passed to me, and I both enjoy and overeat.
The starter that I actually ordered is a feuillete of smoked salmon, cheese, and a creamy sauce, all cold (intentionally). It is the first dish I've had by that name since Louis VXI was still in business and made an appetizer of thinly-sliced seafood layered between flakes of pastry.
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Scallops and monkfish, the latter wrapped with bacon.[/caption]
The entree made composed of some handsome sea scallops in orbit around a clump of monkfish wrapped with bacon. Monkfish is known for its pearlescent white color and its textural resemblance to lobster meat. This worked for me.
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An offbeat creme brulee in the Verandah.[/caption]
The only real dessert on the table was a warm, somewhat underbaked Grand Marnier soufflee. Even a dismal failure in the browning process wasn't enough to make this less than enjoyable. One of the Marys sends over a creme brulee that the waiter brought for her, since she hadn't ordered a dessert.
I am writing this five days later. We have not returned to the Verandah. We would usually go to the specialty restaurant at least twice more on a cruise of this length. They need to rethink this place, I think.
