Saturday, September 22, 2012.
New England-Canada Cruise Journal, Day Two: Newport, RI.
Newport is exactly that to me. This is my third New England cruise, but neither of the first two stopped here. Newport was the place where the earliest super-rich Americans--the Rockefellers, Carnegies, and their like--built summer homes of an opulence that is still startling today. Those, combined with a rustic seashore with lots of restaurants and shops, plus hundreds of private boats at anchor (including some very large vessels), makes it a pretty good place to wander around without much direction.
The Marys did exactly that. They left without me, and before they knew it had walked something like five miles away from the ship dock. I was to meet them somewhere along the way, but they were so far gone it would have required a taxi to get to where they were. And I never saw a taxi.
Wandering around, I found an impressive church which, I learned later, was where John F. Kennedy and Jackie Bouvier were wed. The church was old and beautiful and bigger than such a small town would typically have. A maple tree with emergent fall colors stood a half-block in front of it. I took what I thought was a great photo of the two. I don't know whether I will ever see the photo, for reasons I will explain tomorrow.
By the time the Marys had returned (they failed to find any kind of vehicle to ferry them back), I had shopped the restaurants and found that all the promising ones were on at least an hour's worth of waiting list--and this was at two in the afternoon. We wound up eating in a restaurant that I ignored on my first pass. The Barking Crab is a regional chain of seafood restaurants, but it had outdoor seating, and the Marys went for it.
It was better than it looked. I started with an appetizer of steamed mussels. Twelve dollars bought twice as many many mussels in a broth loaded with savory herbs. I also ordered a cup of lobster bisque. The waiter brought it with the mussels, of course (I cannot escape this scourge). The wind blowing from the water forced me to eat quickly. Other than that (and the fact that both broths needed to be goosed up with Tabasco), all this was eminently satisfactory and a good deal.
"No problem" has replaced "You're welcome" as the default answer to "Thank you!" Our waiter may have moved on to the next stage of this evolution. When I said "Thank you" (as I do at least a dozen times during every meal), he said, "Yep." Maybe this is a variation on the classic New England reply to a declaratory sentence: "Ah-yup." Which we would hear often in the next few days.
The cooks on cruise ships are generally trained according to a very old-style, Continental-style book. Many dishes that haven't been seen in dry-land restaurants in a long time turn up. I hadn't planned on getting steak two nights running, but today's variation (and there would be one every night) was tournedos Rossini. It wasn't foie gras on top of the filet, but some other kind of poultry liver made into a pate. But it wasn't bad, and the Madeira sauce was beyond reproach.
Down to the Chart Room after dinner. An excellent jazz trio played there until after midnight. I'm not sure, but I think these might be the same guys who were on the QM2 during our last trip. They're at least as good, that's certain. I will be in here every night, I expect.
The Marys weren't there. they were so knocked out from their marathon walk today that they didn't even appear for dinner, and were asleep before nine.
