Saturday, February 11, 2012.
Twenty-Three Years. Cruising Down The River, Coldly.
After a couple of miserable, drizzly, cold days, we awakened to a brilliant, high-pressure blue sky morning, nippy and windy. That is exactly how the weather was on this date in 1989, when Mary Ann and I were wed.
Today Mary Ann was up well before I was, long enough for her to take in the beauty of the dozen long-stemmed roses on the counter where I knew she would land first thing. They worked, warming and softening her. Our anniversary-Valentine-second honeymoon is off to a good start.
We each had the usual pile of work to finish before we could set out. We had it all done by a little after noon. But Mary Leigh wants to have lunch with us before we go--at Dat Dog. We picked her up and went there to find a long line on the sidewalk. So much for that idea. No time for anything else.
However, the ship had its own delay, giving us more than enough time to check in. One person returning from the last sailing of the Voyager of the Seas was sick with something suspiciously like norovirus. This meant shutting the ship down for an antiseptic cleaning. One sickness among three thousand people? That's the healthiest demographic in the world. But the ship has no choice but to be ridiculously diligent.
The same watchful eye disapproved of Mary Ann's surprise plan for our anniversary. She dug out of my wine pile one of the last remaining bottles we served at our wedding reception. But at the check-in was a new (to us) regulation: no bottles of anything could be brought in. We relied on the label's clearly being printed with our names and our wedding date, and managed to get it on board and to the dining room. The servers not only went to the great trouble of extracting the crumbling old cork out of the bottle, but surrounded us to sing the familiar anniversary song in the usual off-key. We shared it with the four New Yorkers with whom we shared our table.
The thing I liked about our one previous Royal Caribbean sailing--a Mediterranean cruise in 2004--was the food in the main dining room. It was the best of any cruise before or since. I was looking forward to more of the same this trip. I will not judge it by tonight's dinner. The first night is always a bit slack, both in terms of attendance and quality. Most passengers have been traveling all day and are too tired for anything more complicated than a light supper in the buffet.
I started with an onion tart that was more like a quiche. The entree was a pan-sauteed pork loin with a red wine sauce and mushrooms. This was very good--enough that I will try to figure out the sauce. I asked for half-portions of two vegetarian entrees to serve as sides. One of these was the inevitable Indian dish that appears on every cruise ship menu because most chefs on most cruise ships are Indian. This one was aloo gobi, a very peppery stew of potatoes, cauliflower, and a couple of other vegetables. It was very tasty, as was an equally spicy bean soup that came with it.
On the other hand, the linguine with truffled Alfredo sauce was congealed and cold. I didn't have to taste it to know it was terrible (although I did anyway). Can't understand why the waiter would even bring such a thing out.
Our assigned dining time is eight o'clock. That was a relief. Back on the 2004 trip, our group was scheduled for dinner at nine-thirty, which made for many no-shows and nearly total non-participation of Mary Ann, who hates eating late. Still, it was late enough that by the time we were finished there was nothing to do but go to bed. Mary Ann, who worried that she would get no sleep at all between worrying about ship motion and my snoring, slumbered for ten sweet hours.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.