Friday, September 23, 2016.
Visiting Newport, Rhode Island.
Our first port of call in our newly inaugurated cruise is at the ritzy harbor of Newport. We visited this same spot about five years ago, when we found the town very pleasant just to walk around. Newport this time isn't as charming as I remember, we get a nice long walk in. The weather is quite warm, but that will not last much longer. We have seen hardly any trees with fall colors. "A warm, dry summer" opined a nearby Yankee about this.
The cafes we pass have a 1970s flower-child feeling to them. We stop in one of these for an enormous hamburger with boursin cheese (a garlic-flavored fromage that is good with the burger). I order a crab soup which does not come to the table. Lynn has an offbeat deli-style sandwich with avocado, a couple of slices of turkey and several cheeses.
We stroll past an office for sales and repairs of Metro wireless phones. I have one of those, and I had them enter a code for five dollars that will allow the phone to funtion in New England and Canada. I also have my old re-tooled Windows phone. Between the two of them, most of the time I can come up with a phone that actually works.
Tom's Pre-Dinner Cocktail Club requires all the tables and chairs at Crooners. Problem is, the chairs are hard to move around, and the tables are actually are attached to the floor and immovable. We will have to find another venue foor our afternooon drinks.
At dinner, I have an unusual entree: barramundi, a fish which I understand comes from Australia. It's a slightly off-white fillet that's longer than it is wide. It comes with buttery sauce and it better than most cruise ship seafood.
Once again, the pastry department in the Coral Room (one of the three large dining rooms aboard the Caribbean Princess) has a hot soufflee for dessert. It's made with Grand Marnier, and is even fluffier than the wonderful soufflee we had yesterday. The kitchen's offering for my entree is a veal chop. When will I learn that there is nothing succulent about veal chops?
One of the Eat Clubbers who knows how I like to sing in public alerts me to a talent contest tonight. It begins with a song in the karaoke lounge, which makes me a finalist for "The Voice Of The Ocean." Ultimately eight singers give it a whirl. We would come back three more times each to choose and practice our songs. Professional musicians from the ship's very large staff act as our coaches. I sing Cole Porter's superb "Night And Day," which makes a big impression on the listeners and the coaches. That alone puts this cruise on a new level of interest from me.
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Saturday, September 24, 2016.
Boston.
Today I am visiting Boston for my third time. My sister Lynn and I decide to refrain from following the historic line that runs through the oldest part of the city and its wealth of historic places. Instead we walk though the markets in the middle of town. These a jammed with food stands loaded with almost every known American casual food, from hot dogs through lobster rolls to a great variety of ethnic dishes. Also here is a fresh vegetablle market, which strikes me as being more an enormous collection of standard grocery-store produce department than a gourmet offering. If Mary Ann were here, she'd try to buy some of the produce and bring it home.
In the middle of all this is a guy bouncing up on what looks like a gigantic industrial-strength pogo stick. He adds to the pain and skill of his act with a tennnis racquet that he wraps around himself somehow, while continuing to balance himself on the pogo stick. It's hard to explain, but I'll bet his parents are proud.
Lynn remembers having gone to an Italian restaurant in the North End of Boston, which has many to choose from. We wind up at the same restaurant where about eight Eat Clubbers and I had a great dinner five years ago. We had a pretty good one there today. I started with a bowl of pasta fagioli soup, followed by a much-too-large bowl of linguine al pesto. Lynn had an equally oversize portion of pasta puttanesca. Missing from the scene was the waitress with the solid Bostonian dialect and a let's-get-this-done attitude we had back then. Now the service comes from much younger people.
We work our way back to the ship, passing the big market from the prepared-food side. We make a stop in Ye Olde Union Oyster House. That seafood specialist claims to be the longest-open restaurant in America. They have been there since 1826, longer than Antoine'shas been in New Orleans. However, there is some question as to whether the Union Oyster House has been under one continuous family's pwership since it opened. Antoine's has, since 1840.
I bought a Union Oyster House baseball cap last time I was through these parts, and I wore it as we toured. I told the hostess at the Union that I wasn't staying for dinner, but that my hat wanted to revisit its home. She didn't get it.
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The Princess Caribbean, the Eat CLub's home for ten days in September 2016.[/caption]
During our cocktail hour this evening, someone reports that the stateroom television has an all-Love-Boat format. That sitcom from the 1980s is credited with reviving the cruise industry. Lyn and I agree that this is at best a lot more corny and simplistic than we remember. The ship apppears to have a staff of only ten or so people. The bartender, Isaac, seems to have been the only mixologist on the staff. No matter what kind of alcoholic beverage you want, no matter time of day or night it is, and no matter where on the ship you're thirsty, Isaac is there, pointing his trademark two fingers at you.
I know more about
The Love Boat than I would like to admit. When David Letterman began hosting his own show, Channel Six inserted The Love Boat as a time-killer between Johnny Carson and Letterman--my two favorite TV shows of all time. I would catch parts of the Love Boat at the beginning and te end. Then I got a crush on the cruise director Julie McCoy, and I found myself watching the whole thing every night.
So, dumb as the show could be, it was nostalgic to watch it again. Amazing how anyone got lured into cruising when the ships depicted in the show were so much smaller than the ones sailing today.
