Sunday, May 24, 2015.
A Foggy Flight To London
Today begins the Eat Club cruise for this year. My plan was to publishing the Dining Diary almost daily from wherever we are. That would prove nearly as difficult as the email delivery of the NOMenu Daily to subscribers. So did pulling together the photos. The combination of these problems with only two off-days through the more than two weeks of the trip made me give up and ask readers to permit me the time off, with a promise that ultimately we will publish even more than usual about this grand tour in Europe.
Long-distance travel of the kind we are doing in the next two and a half weeks makes me tense. I find that even after I check all the items necessary to hit the road several times, I lose track of many of them. Passports, for example. I thought I’d lost two of them today. But it was only my daughter’s deciding that she will take care of her own passport from now on. She’s certainly old enough, and so is my wife, who tells me that I’m more likely to lose her documents. She is probably right. So my long stint as custodian of Everybody’s Passports is over.
This morning, as we prepare for this year’s Eat Club cruise in Europe, I do something that engenders even more stress than getting ready to leave town. I give a solo performance of the Pentecost Sequence–the Song of Joy in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but with new words. I start on the wrong key, and then goober up a few of the words. That was enough to make me shake. But once it was over, the preparations for our flight to London today seem trivial.
Not that we are without loose ends. As of this morning, the plan for getting the dogs fed while we’re gone is not solid. The lady across the street has the job, but she is afraid of the dog Susie, who is very protective. Especially when we are in residence. We work out a scheme that keeps the dogs inside the large fenced area, with big plastic trays on the inside of the fence. Our neighbor will just reach over the fence and fill the trays with food and water. That should make Susie like her fast enough.
The Marys begin on a theme they will follow throughout the adventure. They say I always want to show up or leave earlier from any event. I like having what Dick Brennan used to call “uh-oh” insurance.
By the time we are across the lake, we have lots of time. (But what if. . . ?) The Marys are hungry, and would especially like hamburgers from Atomic Burger. It’s not really out of the way, so why not? We get what I think is the best slider I’ve ever eaten. The meat is fresh and hand-formed. The fries are fresh-cut. The service at the drive-through window may be the slowest in the category, but they could use that as a promotion. It takes a long time to get a made-to-order burger cooked properly.
We still have an hour to kill at Moisant. That’s Long enough to give a feeling that we have already left New Orleans. When we board the smallish Brazilian-built airplane, we are told by the captain that no beverages or snacks will be served, because he is expecting a rough transit to Houston. I had noticed this at home as a big, red swath of radar thunderstorm is square in our path as we go from New Orleans to Houston. But the turbulence is minimal and we land on time.
We now have three hours to kill in Houston, whose airport is enormous and good-looking. The kind of place that convinces one that we do indeed live in a great time in a great land. Like many major airports, it has rethought its food services, getting rid of most of the anonymous servers of the most ordinary food with restaurants that you might well visit in the outside world.
We have three hours to kill in Houston, whose airport is enormous and handsome. It’s the kind of place that convinces one that we live in a great time in a great land. That’s an interesting thought as we head to the centers of two much older but no less successful nations: England and the Roman Empire.
Back to Houston. Like many major airports, it has rethought its food services, getting rid of most of the anonymous, ordinary eats. It the place of such stuff, the new airport restaurants are much like those outside the airport.
Pappadeaux, where we have supper, is a large chain of regional restaurants around Texas, managed by the Pappas family. I have never found any of these especially good. The worst of them is the Mexican-themed Pappacito’s; the best is Pappas Steak House. I’ve only been to Pappadeaux once, some ten years ago. It reminded me a lot of Copeland’s then, but not that good. In the times since, it has upgraded its act, with an emphasis on seafood.
But most of the seafood species offered at Pappadeaux are exotics: tilapia, farm-raised catfish, Chilean sea bass, scallops and the like. On the other hand, they do have an oyster bar.
The food is better than I remember. The servers are friendly but not especially adept. Somehow, in an airport, this seemed appropriate. The back of the house also had its problems. The entree that appeals most to me includes a crab cake, a skewer of blackened shrimp, crabmeat in a buttery sauce, and seared scallops. But the place was out of scallops, and the waitress offered more shrimp in lieu of the lack. I ask, “How about giving me another crab cake?” To my surprise, not only did they go along with this plan (which certainly raised their food cost for the dish), but the food was pretty good. Even the crabcake.
We adjourn to our gate. Mary Ann extolls the virtues of the Boeing 777, particularly those with “pods” in first class. She has at times–as in the Marys’ trip to Germany a month and a half ago–finagled her way into these very comfortable. . . well, the word “pod” about captures them. You can lie down in it and stretch out. “The whole airplane is magnificent and comfortable,” she says. “It’s the best in the world, except maybe for the 787. But I don’t think the 787 has been around long enough for me to feel good about it.”
Little did she know that this very night, too late for her to back out of it, we would fly on the selfsame 787 Dreamliner. It is indeed a fine airplane, with creature comforts extending well beyond any other in my experience. Two matters in particular impress me. Overnight flights across the ocean typically turn off most of the lights a couple of hours after dinner, to give passengers a fighting chance of falling asleep. But the next morning, a few people start opening windows, flooding the cabin with sunlight. The attendants then snap on the bright main lights. It jolts you right out of your sleep.
But on the Dreamliner, some sort of shading in the windows keeps the early morning sun from washing through the plane. Sleepable dimness continues. When it’s really time for breakfast, the few blue lights are slowly replaced by a nonviolent orange, then to a yellow. No irises are roughly squeezed down to dots.
In addition to that, the plane flies at over 40,000 feet, above the tops of all but the most aggressive storms.
Unfortunately, we had just such storms most of the way across both the eastern half of America and the Atlantic Ocean. But it wasn’t as bad as it would have been at, say, 35,000 feet. (One of the several retired airline pilots who read this may now point out that heading east, planes fly in an odd number of thousand feet. Or do I have that backwards?)
This Dreamliner flew at Mach .84. That’s five-sixths of the way to the speed of sound–which would make it impossible to talk, right? I’d never been on an airplane that came close to flying that fast. Anyway, even the landing was smoother than I’m accustomed to.
Monday, May 25, 2015.
Our Overnight To And Day In London
It takes until almost noon before we hit the ground in London. We walk a very long trail through Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe for passenger traffic and the third-biggest in the world. My guess is that we walked four or five blocks en route to British customs. Never for a moment was it less than obvious which way to go.
We are about to grab a taxi when we see a man from the Cunard cruise line standing there with a sign. We don’t get on the ship until three days from now. Could it be possible that he is here to pick us up and take us to our hotel? Not only possible, but already paid for. (By us.) Our travel agent Debbie Himbert was really on the ball with this one. As far as I know, we’re the only people in our group staying at the Langham Hotel in London.
The Langham dates back to 1865, and has always been a classy hostelry. Mary Ann is a regular at the Langham in Pasadena, California, staying there whenever she visits our son Jude. She loves the West Coast Langham, and suspects that the flagship hotel here in London must really be something.
That thought is a setup for disappointment. How could the near-center of London compare for beauty with the hilltop views of the mountains and valleys around Pasadena? From the London hotel, all we see outside our window is an alley full of utilities. It’s plenty enough hotel for me. Mary Ann says this is evidence of my low standards for hotels.
She goes out to scope out the neighborhood, and finds a number of attractions she will revisit later. I do a little writing of this stuff, and Mary Leigh–who is still not feeling perfect–konks out in her separate room for hours. I shortly follow suit in the adult room, and get a delicious two-hour nap before Mary Ann returns with the results of her reconnaissance.
Her main find is a restaurant called the Criterion. It’s approximately the same age as Commander’s Palace, having opened in the late 1870s. The dining room walls are mainly constructed of marble in a Roman style. It was a favorite of Winston Churchill and other famed Brits. In the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Criterion is mentioned here and there.
Mary Ann reports that the Criterion’s menu is rather hip, despite the antiquity of the premises. She thinks it’s the perfect place for a person with my tastes. So we go there for dinner.
She is wrong about any au courant quality here. The cooking is good but very traditional. What looks at first like a menu of British specialties is revealed to be more French in style. It all still needs more salt, pepper, and Tabasco for my palate, but I have encountered much worse.
We start with a salad that Mary Ann likes a lot, and a Caprese salad made with house-made mozzarella cheese and a very tasty, pureed pesto sauce. I have a refreshing and interesting version of gravlax, nicely cured to a big, slightly tart flavor. Funny thing: all these dishes will turn up repeatedly during the cruise that begins in three days.
Mary Leigh’s plate of pappardelle pasta with greens in a buttery sauce is something she likes. Mary Ann has a beef sirloin roasted to medium-well (her idea, not the chef’s). It comes out with a gravy that suggests prime rib. It even comes with Yorkshire pudding, the variation of popovers made with drippings from the roast beef. They are terrible. Popovers absolutely must be sent out immediately after emerging from the oven. For a few noments afterwards, they are a major thrill. But, that’s why hardly any restaurants serve them.
I like my entree, but it gave me much to think about. The Criterion calls it “British Isles Seafood Stew.” Like a bouillabaisse? Not really, even though mussels, scallops and various fish are in a stock. Is it Brit gumbo? There is a roux and even some of the Creole trinity, but this tastes nothing like any gumbo I’ve ever had. Not something I will likely encounter again.
The Marys are not up for dessert. But that course comes with the twenty-pound sterling (thirty-dollar) dinner, so I claim the assortment of cheeses. One of these is Mrs. Montgomery’s Cheddar, one of the most famous cheeses in Great Britain, where cheese is liked very much. I also lay claim to ML’s dessert, a sort of bread pudding made from croissants. Pretty good, with whipped cream where we would have the whiskey sauce.
Did I say twenty pounds for three courses? I did. Add fifty-five percent for the exchange-rate difference between pound and dollar, and the fifteen-percent service charge, and it’s still a better deal than I expect from such a venerable restaurant. It could be called the Antoine’s of London.
Mary Ann breaks away from me and ML, to do more looking around this crowded, hip part of London. ML–tired after a weekend of baking three enormous cakes for people’s weddings–joins me as we return to the expensive hotel that Mary Ann spends so little time in, even though it’s her idea.,
We talk with the taxi driver about his work, which he likes, along with his hometown. “When you get tired of London,” he says, “you’re tired of life.” That would be a good slogan for New Orleans.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015.
Shopping For Two Bags Of Cookies. Indian Dinner @ Gaylord’s.
LONDON–I get nine and a half hours of lovely sleep, despite Mary Ann’s knocking around the room. She is eager to get out into London and start shopping, and doesn’t bother waiting for the rest of us.
Our daughter–still not feeling well–is still abed when I get back from breakfast in the Palm Court, the all-day restaurant of the Langham Hotel. (Strange coincidence: the Hassler Hotel in Rome, which will be the final hotel on this trip, also calls its restaurant the Palm Court.) The restaurant is busy all the time. Even the break between lunch and dinner is a long afternoon tea, accompanied by a good pianist. I considered having dinner there last night, but MA talked me out of it. She says that it would be a disservice to you, dear subscriber, for me to waste a dinner opportunity on a hotel restaurant.
We finally begin our walkabout, First we pass in front of the world headquarters of the BBC. I wish I had known. I would have asked whether they’d be interested in interviewing a guy who was on the radio during the approach of hurricane Katrina ten years ago, and who can talk cogently about the food of the affected area. We almost go in there to offer this opportunity in person, before it hits me how many kooks wander in with what they consider a good story.
Our wanderings take us into a very touristy part of town, centered on Carnaby Street–the center of style during the hegemony of the Beatles. Mary Ann tells me to take note of the many hamburger specialists we come across, each of which claims to make the best hamburgers in the world.
We slowly make our way to Piccadilly Avenue, where a great deal of really serious shopping is found. The Marys enter just about all of them, inspecting everything from fabrics to dresses to shoes. The latter market seems to be dominated by rubber boots. Do they go crawfishing around here?
The girls buy nothingeven as they proclaim London to be the most interesting city in the world. But they are saving their main effort for a store called Fortnum and Mason. F&M, as their bags call the place, occupies some seven stories with more or less traditional department store merchandise. But my antennae tuned the way they are, I find myself spending most of my time on the three floors where fine foods are found.
We are talking here about a serious emporium for gourmets. It starts with a full-fledged butcher shop, a charcuterie, a fish monger, and a cheese shop. All of these are as comprehensive as can be imagined. Not beef wrapped in vacuum packs, but actually cut to order from primal roasts. Whole fish and shellfish on ice.
Lots of rare goods, too. Beluga caviar comes from Iran, where roe from this nearly-extinct sturgeon is continually taken despite the effort to close that market. (It’s illegal to sell it in the United States). Real Kobe beef sirloins, so heavily marbled that there is more fat than steak visible. This is something else that the governments involved keep out of the U.S. Here is goose foie gras in a can at £75. (I am tempted.) There’s a big wine and liquor section, in which the F&M house brand of wines like Margaux are found. Lots of Bordeaux, enough to demonstrate that the Brits still have a preference for claret.
I discover a menu’s room on the fifth floor, where also are men’s furnishings. I consider buying a tie, but I am deterred by the £130 price. I find something more amenable to my budget: a straw hat that comes close to matching the one MA is wearing. This hat–amazingly, it fits me perfectly, although it’s the last one they have–is £70. Okay. That’s it for my shopping on this trip.
When I rejoin the Marys, they tell me that my hat makes me look like a rube. Which should make it perfect for me.
They are each carrying a basket of F&M goods. They will soon find a small grocery cart, whose capacity will be strained by the volume of their selections. These are mostly cookies, with a good bit of chocolate. When they check out, the clerk says that they may want to have all this stuff shipped back home. But when they go to the shipping window, they are told that the many items in glass jars can’t be shipped. We will be lugging this hoard around not only London but the ship, the hotel in Rome, and the airplanes bringing us home. It’s $131 worth of cookies and chocolate. How can these women not love me?
We head back for the hotel. I am pleased that I have done more than my quota of walking for the day, with one of the bags of cookies and chocolate serving as my weight-lifting exercise. It’s so much that it requires being packed in double bags. The only thing I have ingested since breakfast is half a cookie and an espresso.
One of the restaurants we pass is Veeraswamy, a famous old Indian place. I remember a 1970s French Quarter restaurant whose manager–a Brit–added shimp curry to the menu and the surname “Veeraswamy.” Maybe we should return here for dinner tonight. Eating Indian food in London is a popular habit. I remember that on the back of the Beatles’ second album in 1963, in a Q&A the Fab Four said that they liked to eat curry.
When we get back to the hotel, I stop at the concierge’s desk and ask what he might recommend for Indian dining nearby. He is enthusiastic about Gaylord’s, a name I have heard in connection with Indian food for a long time. (It has nothing in common with the long-extinct discount store on the corner of Airline Highway and Labarre Road in Metairie, but that’s the first thing I think of.) The concierge says that the food is spicy (no problem there), and that it is very popular among the locals.
I interpret that last comment as meaning that the food is great but the premises are less than glitzy. And I make the mistake of passing along that idea to Mary Ann, who cares more about what a restaurant looks like than she does about the excellence of the cooking. She tells me that she wants to take a look inside before committing her supper to Gaylord’s. Mary Leigh, who is shy about trying any new cuisine, adds to the dubiousness.
But when we approach Gaylord’s door four blocks from the hotel, we find a handsome restaurant and a wide-ranging menu. Indeed, they sell me right off the bat with a three-course table d’hote menu that starts with three kinds of tandoori-roasted meats, followed by lamb rogan josh (a spicy stew) with lentils, then Indian rice pudding. The girls take a bit longer and require more explanation of the menu. (I try to explain it all, but they don’t believe a word I say.)
A stack of light, very thin poppadums comes out with some chopped onions and peppers and three chutneys. Mary Ann surprises me by finding the chutneys–particularly some very hot pickles–delicious. And they are indeed.
We get some garlic naan from the sides of the tandoor, and some vegetables with an extremely hot red sauce. The girls have butter chicken, with its different tomato-based sauce, and lamb korma–yet another variation on curry sauce with a large tomato component). Until they are quite full, the Marys dine enjoyably. So do I, with the added pleasures of a Bombay martini and a pint of Kingfisher beer from India. A copious cold beverage is essential with these pepper levels.
I will have to cross the concierge’s palm with silver for this fine recommendation.
Back at the hotel, the girls take themselves to bed at around ten. I want to slide my sleep period a bit later, and I stay awake watching the BBC on the telly. One show is a game whose rules I can’t quite figure. The feature is a competition called “Pointless,” but the contestants indeed get 1250 points by figuring out something that makes no sense to me. (It has to do with soccer somehow.)
Then a news program with a feature on Bulgaria’s new iron curtain. The Brits take more interest in world affairs than we do. A talking-head interview show has a member of the House of Lords engaging a member of the House of Commons, both egged on by the moderator. None of these people have television good looks. Their teeth, for example, are gappy and dull, instead of the perfect white choppers comparable Americans would have. It is refreshing for me to see this, given my own looks, which are made for radio.
LONDON–I get nine and a half hours of lovely sleep, despite Mary Ann’s knocking around the room. She is eager to get out into London and start shopping, and doesn’t bother waiting for the rest of us.
Our daughter–still not feeling well–is still abed when I get back from breakfast in the Palm Court, the all-day restaurant of the Langham Hotel. (Strange coincidence: the Hassler Hotel in Rome, which will be the final hotel on this trip, also calls its restaurant the Palm Court.) The restaurant is busy all the time. Even the break between lunch and dinner is a long afternoon tea, accompanied by a good pianist. I considered having dinner there last night, but MA talked me out of it. She says that it would be a disservice to you, dear subscriber, for me to waste a dinner opportunity on a hotel restaurant.
We finally begin our walkabout, First we pass in front of the world headquarters of the BBC. I wish I had known. I would have asked whether they’d be interested in interviewing a guy who was on the radio during the approach of hurricane Katrina ten years ago, and who can talk cogently about the food of the affected area. We almost go in there to offer this opportunity in person, before it hits me how many kooks wander in with what they consider a good story.
Our wanderings take us into a very touristy part of town, centered on Carnaby Street–the center of style during the hegemony of the Beatles. Mary Ann tells me to take note of the many hamburger specialists we come across, each of which claims to make the best hamburgers in the world.
We slowly make our way to Piccadilly Avenue, where a great deal of really serious shopping is found. The Marys enter just about all of them, inspecting everything from fabrics to dresses to shoes. The latter market seems to be dominated by rubber boots. Do they go crawfishing around here?
The girls buy nothingeven as they proclaim London to be the most interesting city in the world. But they are saving their main effort for a store called Fortnum and Mason. F&M, as their bags call the place, occupies some seven stories with more or less traditional department store merchandise. But my antennae tuned the way they are, I find myself spending most of my time on the three floors where fine foods are found.
We are talking here about a serious emporium for gourmets. It starts with a full-fledged butcher shop, a charcuterie, a fish monger, and a cheese shop. All of these are as comprehensive as can be imagined. Not beef wrapped in vacuum packs, but actually cut to order from primal roasts. Whole fish and shellfish on ice.
Lots of rare goods, too. Beluga caviar comes from Iran, where roe from this nearly-extinct sturgeon is continually taken despite the effort to close that market. (It’s illegal to sell it in the United States). Real Kobe beef sirloins, so heavily marbled that there is more fat than steak visible. This is something else that the governments involved keep out of the U.S. Here is goose foie gras in a can at £75. (I am tempted.) There’s a big wine and liquor section, in which the F&M house brand of wines like Margaux are found. Lots of Bordeaux, enough to demonstrate that the Brits still have a preference for claret.
I discover a menu’s room on the fifth floor, where also are men’s furnishings. I consider buying a tie, but I am deterred by the £130 price. I find something more amenable to my budget: a straw hat that comes close to matching the one MA is wearing. This hat–amazingly, it fits me perfectly, although it’s the last one they have–is £70. Okay. That’s it for my shopping on this trip.
When I rejoin the Marys, they tell me that my hat makes me look like a rube. Which should make it perfect for me.
They are each carrying a basket of F&M goods. They will soon find a small grocery cart, whose capacity will be strained by the volume of their selections. These are mostly cookies, with a good bit of chocolate. When they check out, the clerk says that they may want to have all this stuff shipped back home. But when they go to the shipping window, they are told that the many items in glass jars can’t be shipped. We will be lugging this hoard around not only London but the ship, the hotel in Rome, and the airplanes bringing us home. It’s $131 worth of cookies and chocolate. How can these women not love me?
We head back for the hotel. I am pleased that I have done more than my quota of walking for the day, with one of the bags of cookies and chocolate serving as my weight-lifting exercise. It’s so much that it requires being packed in double bags. The only thing I have ingested since breakfast is half a cookie and an espresso.
One of the restaurants we pass is Veeraswamy, a famous old Indian place. I remember a 1970s French Quarter restaurant whose manager–a Brit–added shimp curry to the menu and the surname “Veeraswamy.” Maybe we should return here for dinner tonight. Eating Indian food in London is a popular habit. I remember that on the back of the Beatles’ second album in 1963, in a Q&A the Fab Four said that they liked to eat curry.
When we get back to the hotel, I stop at the concierge’s desk and ask what he might recommend for Indian dining nearby. He is enthusiastic about Gaylord’s, a name I have heard in connection with Indian food for a long time. (It has nothing in common with the long-extinct discount store on the corner of Airline Highway and Labarre Road in Metairie, but that’s the first thing I think of.) The concierge says that the food is spicy (no problem there), and that it is very popular among the locals.
I interpret that last comment as meaning that the food is great but the premises are less than glitzy. And I make the mistake of passing along that idea to Mary Ann, who cares more about what a restaurant looks like than she does about the excellence of the cooking. She tells me that she wants to take a look inside before committing her supper to Gaylord’s. Mary Leigh, who is shy about trying any new cuisine, adds to the dubiousness.
But when we approach Gaylord’s door four blocks from the hotel, we find a handsome restaurant and a wide-ranging menu. Indeed, they sell me right off the bat with a three-course table d’hote menu that starts with three kinds of tandoori-roasted meats, followed by lamb rogan josh (a spicy stew) with lentils, then Indian rice pudding. The girls take a bit longer and require more explanation of the menu. (I try to explain it all, but they don’t believe a word I say.)
A stack of light, very thin poppadums comes out with some chopped onions and peppers and three chutneys. Mary Ann surprises me by finding the chutneys–particularly some very hot pickles–delicious. And they are indeed.
We get some garlic naan from the sides of the tandoor, and some vegetables with an extremely hot red sauce. The girls have butter chicken, with its different tomato-based sauce, and lamb korma–yet another variation on curry sauce with a large tomato component). Until they are quite full, the Marys dine enjoyably. So do I, with the added pleasures of a Bombay martini and a pint of Kingfisher beer from India. A copious cold beverage is essential with these pepper levels.
I will have to cross the concierge’s palm with silver for this fine recommendation.
Back at the hotel, the girls take themselves to bed at around ten. I want to slide my sleep period a bit later, and I stay awake watching the BBC on the telly. One show is a game whose rules I can’t quite figure. The feature is a competition called “Pointless,” but the contestants indeed get 1250 points by figuring out something that makes no sense to me. (It has to do with soccer somehow.)
Then a news program with a feature on Bulgaria’s new iron curtain. The Brits take more interest in world affairs than we do. A talking-head interview show has a member of the House of Lords engaging a member of the House of Commons, both egged on by the moderator. None of these people have television good looks. Their teeth, for example, are gappy and dull, instead of the perfect white choppers comparable Americans would have. It is refreshing for me to see this, given my own looks, which are made for radio.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thursday, May 28, 2015.
From London To The Queen Victoria.
The Marys plan to give their London’s shopping endeavors a final go before it’s time to head out to the ship that will carry us from Southhampton–the port for London–to seven cities in their turns along the Mediterranean shore.
I know before the day starts that it will drive me nuts. For Mary Ann, if the carriage is leaving in one minute and there’s an interesting shop twenty seconds away, she will go there, if only to wring one more experience our of London. My job is to hold off the driver, who has only such silly tasks like a schedule to meet and a few dozen people to pick up from several other hotels.
The traffic exiting London is tremendous. It’s a couple of hours before we are on a free-flowing highway. Our sympathies extend to the traffic heading into town, which is blocked by a bad traffic accident. The line of cars is backed up for over five miles.
The ride for us 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 an hour’s drive before the road begins a clear descent through the chalky hills of the southern British coast. It reminds me of West Texas, but with more greenery.
Like every major port, Southhampton is frankly industrial. That a pleasure palace of the kind that Cunard Lines operates appears here is 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 so long and exasperating–everything was done by hand in the spot–that one couldn’t wait to get on board to grab a quick drink before taking a nap.
One othe miracle: en route to our stateroom, we find our luggage–all four overweight bags–waiting in the elevator to be rolled about fifty feet to our room. Never, ever 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 drill. By which time I’m ready for a shower and a nap. 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 the Charvets, who have accompanied us on many cruises and even one train trip in the past. They are getting up there in years, and I’m relieved to see that they have made it 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. Not so back home.
The wine is a Carmenere from a Chilean producer I don’t know. This was a good deal at $30. Otherwise, I am surprised by the loftiness of the prices. The bargains that were typical in cruise ship dining rooms on our first ten or twenty voyages are not to be found on Cunard. The earlier prices probably came from a tax loophole enjoyed by vessels operating under international laws, like the casinos do.
The friendship at our table keeps dinner going until almost ten o’clock. Overnight we will cross into a new time zone, and suddenly it’s eleven o’clock. I’m bushed. The girls are already long sleeping, or trying to sleep. An incredible racket penetrates our stateroom, a combination of a whistling through the door leading to the balcony, and a banging of the door that separates our balcony from that of the passengers next door. It soulds like a crazy man whanging away on the steel walls with a ball-peen hammer. I find I can eliminate most of this by pulling the door to the balcony closed and locked. But it won’t be completely ameliorated until tomorrow, when our room steward comes in with some wooden shims and, with a tool I’ve never seen the likes of before, and wacks them into the door gap until it no longer moves. I’m glad that’s done with.