Tag: food

Speciality Restaurants…one is truly special

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences4 Comments

Vista has four specialty restaurants. Unlike most cruise lines, you get to eat there for free. No charge! But you have to make a reservation—in advance. Everyone gets four guaranteed—one in each restaurant. Unlike Viking, where you could get into one of their two specialty restaurants almost any night you tried. We tried to get another reservation for Toscana, but we couldn’t. We really wanted it, but all they could offer us was 8:30 p.m. on the last night of the cruise. We were not doing that one. So the message here is: if you want to eat in a particular restaurant on a particular night, be online on the day you can make reservations at midnight EST and make them. I was lucky enough to get ones that worked well for us.

Before telling you about the four of them, I want to reiterate the Steve Test from yesterday’s post.

The Steve Test

After our disastrous Celebrity Millenium cruise in May of 2022, my brother Steve came up with a way to rate food and restaurants on a cruise better than I have ever been able to do it myself. From then on, I have called this the Steve Test. Here it is: If you eat in a food venue on a ship, be it the main dining room, buffet, grille or a specialty restaurant, and that restaurant were near you once you got home, would you go there again?  

That’s pretty simple. I think it is the best way I have ever heard of to rate food on cruise ships, and I will rate each venue (and, in the case of some of them, by the dish or meal) using the Steve Test.

Ember

Ember (I keep wanting to put an S on the end of it and name it EmberS) is a new restaurant that is only onboard Vista. On Marina and Riviera, you get the French Bistro, Jacques, named after Oceania’s menu-planning chef, Jacques Pepin. So we didn’t get high-end French food; we got slightly higher-end Applebees food. Check out the sample menu on the Oceania website , which will give you an idea of what we ate that night. I had the lobster roll appetizer (mostly bread, very little lobster), salt-crusted beetroot salad (it was “fine”), the pork chop (Mine was OK but the sauce was watery, Mike’s was tough), a side of “potato dippers” with no dip??? Not sure what that was about. I finished up with the fried Beignets (dry as a bone with very little sauce underneath them). All-in-all, it was a very unimpressive meal.

Even though it wasn’t my favorite meal on board, I do want to thank the maitre’d Raja (also the head of house in the Aquamar Cafe during the day) for taking such good care of us. When I made the reservation, I could only get a table for five and another for two. When I saw Raja in the Aquamar in the afternoon, he came up to me and addressed me by name and told me he would have a table for seven ready for us that night—that is service!

My Steve Test Rating: Not a chance. Worst of the four specialty restaurants. Just not impressed at all. Would I go again—nope, I don’t eat at Applebees. Never have, never will. How bad was it? I didn’t even take a photo. Go down and eat at almost any American restaurant. You will see just what the food looks like. I can’t wait to try Jacque’s on Riviera. They should replace Ember with it as soon as possible.

The Polo Grille

This is Vista’s steak house. I need to say upfront that I am not a steakhouse person. If I want a steak, I will grille my own. We don’t eat that much beef—balsalmic ribs on Christmas Eve, etc. But I can count on one hand the number of times I have ever ordered a steak in a land-based restaurant…in my life.

I thought this was the most impressive restaurant, ambience-wise. High on deck 14, with wrap-around windows and low lighting, it is beautiful if you come in pre-sunset. We barely got here in time to see the sun disappear. We didn’t appreciate that this was the only restaurant where they didn’t have a table for seven for us. They basically just pulled up another chair to a table for six. This made eating a little painful. The number of dishes they brought to the table would not fit on the table. Sides had to be quickly scooped onto entrée plates. And don’t stick your elbows out, whatever you do. Here’s a link to the menu on Oceania’s website. I had the escargot, no soup or salad (None of the selections appealed to me), the rack of lamb (they were “fine” as rack of lamb goes), the truffle parmesan fries and the roasted asparagus spears. For dessert, I had the Polo Quartet. This is a small sample of all their best desserts. It included their chocolate fudge brownie, key lime pie, Bailey’s cheesecake and Granny Smith Apple Crumb Pie—the best part of the meal.

Here are some quick pics of some of what we ate.

My escargot. They were pretty good.
My brother’s steak.
My lamb chops
The Polo Quartet

My Steve Test Rating: Since I don’t eat at steakhouses, I am not the one to ask about the Polo Grille. My brother loves steakhouses and often orders a good steak. I will let him give the rating on this one—I just texted him. He said he would go back, but it would depend on how much it cost. So I asked him if he had to choose between the Capital Grille and Polo, which would he choose if the prices were close. He said Captial Grille—hands down. Maybe compared to Sizzler 🤪?

Red Ginger

Red Ginger is Vista’s Asian restaurant. Before we went, if I told someone we were going on Oceania, they would tell me that I would LOVE Red Ginger. That it was the best Asian restaurant they had ever eaten in. Having eaten there, I wouldn’t say it was the best Asian restaurant I have eaten in, but it was very good.

The ambiance in Red Ginger and Ember (located on Deck 5) is nowhere near as good as in Polo Grille and Toscana. Mainly because you can’t see the ocean. But that’s OK. The food made up for it. If you have been to Red Ginger, you know that their most loved dish is a watermelon and duck salad. I am sure it is wonderful but I despise watermelon, and Kathleen is highly allergic to duck, so we didn’t even try the dish everyone raves about. And I am not a big soup fan, either. So that meant I got to try three appetizers instead of a soup and salad course. Yummy! Here’s a link to the Red Ginger menu. So you can see what I didn’t eat.

I started with a special appetizer that isn’t on the sample menu featuring my favorite food—octopus. I followed that with the spring roll and then the crisp ginger calamari. I think the pic of the ahi was Steve’s, but I am not sure. My entrée was an easy choice as they had soft-shell crab on the menu, a dish I have loved since I had it in Bangkok. Theirs was excellent. I finished it all up with a steamed ginger cake. All-in-all, a wonderful and tasty meal. Here are a few photos from around the table.

The Octopus Appetizer
Spring Rolls
Calamari
Ahi Tuna
Lobster Pad Thai
Soft-shell crabs
Steamed Ginger Cake

My Steve Test Rating: I would eat there on a monthly basis if this place were nearby. Just about every dish was better than what we get when we go out for Asian food. The local place has much the same type of menu, but Red Ginger just seemed to up the game on every dish. For example, instead of calamari, they gave it a slight twist and added a bunch of ginger. Nice touch.

Toscana

Way up on Deck 14 aft, on the opposite side of the ship from the Polo Grille, sits one of the best Italian restaurants I have ever been to. Usually, we don’t go out for Italian food. That’s because I make a lot of Italian food. So I went to Toscana expecting another great Oceania meal. What I got was a wonderful Italian dining experience. One that I would put up against any place we have eaten in our four trips to Italy.

It wasn’t just the food (which was amazing) but also the service and the bread and the olive oil and balsamic pairings (by the wonderful Massimo from Milano) and so much more. This was more than a meal; it was the way I want to be treated at every restaurant I ever go to. Viking Ocean has an Italian restaurant called Manfredis. Toscana and Manfredis should never be mentioned in the same sentence (shame on me for doing it here).

They will blow you away from the moment you arrive. You sit down; they bring you one of the most amazing bread services I have ever seen. Then they put bowls of superb parmesan cheese (big hunks of it) on the table for you to share. Massimo comes by to pair any of seven or eight incredible olive oils with any of five or six balsamic vinegars to dip your bread in. Then, the wonderful sommelier comes over and recommends some great Italian wine. While you are sipping that, your server takes your order. When you tell him that you would really love to try the lasagne, but you don’t want to eat an entire order of it, and a few others around the table say the same thing, he says he will take care of it. Later in the meal, four entire orders of lasagne show up for the seven people. We all say we will try a bite, but when we finish dinner, there is very little left.

Let’s get on with the rest of the food, though. Click here to see the Toscana menu. I started with the stuffed artichoke. It was just fine, but it was the only thing I had that night that I wouldn’t order again. Then I sampled (devoured) the lasagne and topped it off with my entrée—the best dish I had on the entire cruise on Vista, the Agnello Arrosto.

Seriously it was that good. Here’s the description from the menu: “roasted stuffed lamb loin, spicy soppressata sausage, spinach, aubergine stiletto, tomato jam.” That sounded amazing to me when I read it, but to be honest, it was all about the sauce. I would give my right arm for the recipe for that sauce. But everything just came together for that dish. I can’t say more great things about it.

How good was it? I didn’t even have dessert. I didn’t even think about dessert. What I really wanted for dessert was another serving of roasted lamb, which was beyond amazing. When you do another Oceania cruise, forget the other specialty restaurants. I will book Toscana for four nights and order the lamb. Maybe the photos will make you even hungrier.

The amazing bread basket
Kathleen’s wonderful white bean soup
My artichoke.
The shared lasagne
Kathleen’s veal. So much of it.
The AGNELLO ARROSTO. The best thing I ate on Vista.

My Steve Test Rating: If this restaurant were within 100 miles of here, it would be our “celebration restaurant.” It is the kind of place you go for your birthday or anniversary. If it was within 30 miles, I might go once every other week if I could afford it. I have to try and find out how they make that sauce. But it was more than just than just that one dish. It was the entire experience. I would sail on Vista again to have that Toscana experience one more time. 

I think that about covers food on Vista. If you have any questions about the food or the restaurants, please ask away.

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.
—Elsa Schiaparelli

 

 

 

 

It’s All About the Food

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences7 Comments

As is the case on so many cruises, it’s all about the food. There is something about being able to eat out at a restaurant every single night during a vacation, and they never bring you the check (except for drinks).

Within the cruise industry, it is common knowledge that Oceania is known to have the “best cuisine at sea.” Is this true? My judgment is that I expected too much and that 90% of their food is better than 90% of the food on other cruise lines. Other lines we have been on have had some dishes or meals that have stood out over the years. The original United States Dining Room on Celebrity’s Infinity was amazing, as was Qsine before Celebrity ruined it with their stupid Petit Chef. Some meals in Club Orange on Nieuw Statendam were as good as anything we ate on Vista. The grille on Viking Sky is better than the Waves Grille on Vista. But all in all, Vista has better food overall.

The Steve Test

After our disastrous Celebrity Millenium cruise in May of 2022, my brother Steve came up with a way to rate food and restaurants on a cruise better than I have ever been able to do it myself. From then on, I have called this the Steve Test. Here it is: If you eat in a food venue on a ship, be it the main dining room, buffet, grille or a specialty restaurant, and that restaurant were near you once you got home, would you go there again?  

That’s pretty simple, right? I think it is the best way I have ever heard of to rate food on cruise ships and I will rate each venue (and, in the case of some of them, by the dish or meal) using the Steve Test.

Please keep in mind that the Steve Test Ratings below are my ratings. Steve will (I hope) chime in with a comment about what he thinks passed his test.

Editor’s Note: Since this is about the food, I struggled to figure out how to cover it. I didn’t want just to list things we ate. So let’s take it venue by venue. And sorry, but I don’t have the menus for every restaurant, but my buddy Mike will when he does his review. I am more about taking “pretty pictures,” and Mike is about remembering that you want to read the menus. I will post a link as soon as his review is up. Is it done yet, Mike?

The Grand Dining Room

This is the best place to start. We ate dinner here our first three nights and never went back. It wasn’t that we didn’t like the food. It was because they had just about the same food in the buffet, and when we went to the buffet, we didn’t have to dress up and put on hard-sole shoes. We also found that dinner took so much longer there. If we went to dinner when the dining room opened at 6:30, we never got out of there before 8:30. Sometimes that is fine, but when you are going to bed at 9:00, it leaves you stuffed and feeling bloated when you are trying to sleep. We also found that we ate too much. We would be seated; they would bring out some bread to keep us going while we went over the menus. They would take our order and bring more bread. We would eat it. They would bring the appetizers…and more bread. Then the same thing through the salad course, the soup course and finally the entrées. The only course without bread of some kind was dessert. And yes, I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to bread of any kind. So we switched to the buffet for dinner.

I will say here that the dining room food and ambiance were far superior to Viking Ocean or pretty much any cruise ship dining room we have eaten in for quite a while. Here are some of the dishes we had in the Grand Dining Room. I tried to remember what they were, but it’s been two weeks. I will mention if they were either exceptional, bewildering or just bad. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping.

Parma Ham–on the menu every night
Crab cakes. Just OK.
Beef Carpaccio
Thai Beef salad. Really good.
Really good eggplant appie.
Most salads–unimaginative.
I believe this was a Filipino dish. It was good.
Beef tenderloin but the disk thing next to it was AWFUL!
Sea Bass that Kathleen said tasted “FISHY!”
They had soufflés every night
Tried them twice—not impressed. Sometimes cold.
Rum cake that was delicious.

We also had breakfast in the Grand Dining Room once because they serve lamb chops for breakfast, and we all had to try that—because we all love lamb—at least Steve and I do. Here’s the pics on that.

Kathleen’s berry buckwheat pancakes
Jocelyn’s flat omelette
My lamb chops. Well cooked but tough.

My Steve Test Rating: Nope, not special enough. Nothing really stood out. If this restaurant were next door to my house, I wouldn’t go back.

The Terrace Cafe

In the buffet, we found pretty much the same food as the dining room but in a more relaxed setting, and we also found (much to our surprise) that we ate less. For one thing, a lot less bread. We would all go grab a salad or some sushi, have that, and then instead of eating bread and waiting for the next course, we would just walk back and get an entrée or two. When we were done with that, we went back and grabbed a dessert. And all of it was excellent food.

We did have a couple of quibbles. First, the desserts were always cold. Even cobblers and bread puddings that should have been served warm were kept cold on purpose. It ruined a bunch of very good desserts. Second, sometimes, they would repeat menus/theme evenings. The last two nights had the exact same menu, and we actually think that some parts of what was available that evening were just leftovers from the night before. Sadly, this is what their parent company, Norwegian Cruise Line, is doing with their top-tier Haven product. They have the same menu every night in their Haven dining room, so why not migrate that idea to Oceania? It would also be nice if they had a couple of other large tables. With seven of us, we had only two tables in the buffet where we could all fit. Steve and Jamie would often go up and save one of those two big tables so we could all eat together. Other than those three rather minor things, we loved the Terrace Cafe.

The thing I really loved the most, Terrace, was the service they gave our buddy Jocelyn, who was walking with a cane. Almost every time she would go to get some food, she would come back to the table with no plate in her hand…but she would be followed by a server or maitre’d with her plate in their hand. I loved how they took such great care of her—heck, of all of us.

My Steve Test Rating: I would go back…for certain items and for the amazing selection of things. There was never a night (not even when we had the same menu two nights in a row) that I couldn’t find something I really wanted to try.

I also need to mention one amazing meal that we ate in the Terrace Cafe. Other than our night at Toscana, this was the most memorable food I had on board. I wish they had done this menu again and again. I would have eaten there every day. It was a Mexican-themed lunch. And the Chocolate Mole’ Braised Short Ribs were the second best dish I had on the entire cruise…from any Vista restaurant. It is really hard to get a chocolate mole’ sauce to work. So many chefs try it but Vista’s chef hit the ball out of the park. That plus there were a lot of other great Latin-American dishes as well.

The aforementioned Mole Sauce.
Superb quesadillas
Empanadas and Flautas!!
An incredible chocolate dessert. Put a little chili powder on it and it is award winning.

My Steve Test Rating: If I could get this dish at home, that would be the only restaurant I would ever eat in again. Well, maybe not the only one, but I would get really fat if I could drive to this within an hour.

The Aquamar Cafe

My incredible Poke Bowl

This is a new eating venue for Oceania (or so I think–please correct me if I am wrong) and other than the design (open-air to the outdoors) it is one of my favorites. The idea is healthy alternatives for breakfast and lunch. We never ate breakfast here but I can tell you, when these guys do healthy lunch, the knock it out of the park. We ended up eating lunch here at least eight days out of 15. Maybe more. They had a poke bowl that knocked my socks off. Easily in the top three things I ate onboard. They also had some of the best sweet potato fries with chipolte mayo. Only problem was, you had to order them again and again because they never brought enough 🤪. The crispy chicken burger was Kathleen’s favorite. I had it once and really liked it but it was really hard for me to eat there without having that Poke Bowl. Here’s a few pics.

My Steve Test Rating: I could eat lunch at the Aquamar Cafe every day for the rest of my life. If it were next door to my house, I might never go anyplace else. Oceania hit it out of the park with this restaurant for lunch.

Waves Grille

On the opposite side of the ship from the Aquamar Cafe was the Waves Grille. They were really two restaurants in one. At lunch, they served burgers, paninis, one specialty dish (paella, chili, BBQ chicken, etc.) and had an ice cream counter. In the evenings, they turned into a great little pizza place with some pretty great pizza.

As a grille at lunch, I wasn’t impressed. Nice place (very crowded), burgers were OK. Paninis were “fine.” Fries (thick steak fries) couldn’t hold a candle to the sweet potato fries in the Aquamar Cafe. You could get the ice cream at the buffet, and the two times I had the specialty dish, I was unimpressed.

But at dinner, their pizzas were excellent. They do New York style, but the crust was a little too thin for me. But the choices were excellent, and one of our favorite parts was that you could order a pizza and have it delivered to the buffet next door. One night, we decided to do a pizza night, but there is not a single table that would hold seven of us in the Grille. So we took up our regular table in the buffet (just inside the door to the grille) and ordered one of every kind of pizza they made. They gave us a number, asked where we were sitting and brought us every pizza…and a BBQ beef flatbread that was WONDERFUL!

The complete menu
Pizza
Pizza
Pizza
Pizza
Pizza
Pizza
Did I mention…Pizza
The really great BBQ Beef flatbread.

My Steve Test Rating: For lunch—FAIL! I would not go there for burgers. The grille on Viking Sky was far superior. But for dinner, their pizza was really good and that night was one of the most fun meals we had. That said, I probably wouldn’t go back there either—I make better pizza 😁.

That’s going to be it for today. What’s left here are the four specialty restaurants on Vista. I have some work to do today, and I want to get this post online. So tomorrow morning, I will hit those and then the final review and comparison.

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
—George Bernard Shaw

Vista’s Culinary Center—two of us took a class

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences1 Comment

This is a short bonus post for anyone who, like me, likes to cook. Vista has a culinary center on deck 14 forward that ranks with any facility that I have ever taken a cooking class in.

Prior to the cruise, I signed up for the only cooking class available in the online reservation section for our cruise. I had hoped to do a few classes, but the one I ended up taking was all that was available for pre-cruise booking. We later found out from the instructor that there are usually spaces left for some to book on board and that there are cancellations as well. So, if you aren’t able to reserve the class you want or as many classes as you want, check with the reservations desk on Deck 5 when you are on board. Happily, the one class I signed up for, Cathy, signed up for as well—so I had a cooking buddy.

The cost for the class was $79, and that included two hours of instruction by our amazing teacher, Noelle, cooking and having fun, as well as eating what we made. To say that this class was well organized, that the facility was impressive and that the instructor was excellent would all be a gross understatement. All those things were true.

Our class was called “Lovers Together” or something like that. Cathy and I kept teasing Mike and Kathleen that they better come up and keep an eye on us. But the “Lovers” the class description referenced were the wine pairings—when wine and food are “Lovers.” I know—stupid marketing speak. Just say Wine and Food pairings.

I would guess by now you get the fact that this class and facility were top-notch. Forget the fact that we are on a ship; I would take classes here (at a great price) at sea or on land—just an amazing experience. If you like to cook, take a class on an Oceania cruise. You won’t be disappointed. Another great thing about these classes is that Noelle had three assistants who would set us up with everything we needed for the next course and clear out our refuse from the previous course while Noelle would have us come forward for instruction.

Here are some photos I took (with my phone) of the culinary center, the food we made and the class itself. I put captions on these so you will know what you are seeing.

Culinary Center class starts
Culinary Center
This was our Individual set up.
Great view to be able to see.
Everything was set up for us.
Our instructor was awesome.
She would gather us around to teach and then send us back to cook.
We did five courses. Four were paired with wine.
First stuffed prunes wrapped in prosciutto.
Followed by crostini with caramelized onions.
Watching Cathy cut up her watermelon. YUCK (I hate watermelon)
If you forgot to take pics of your food, they kept the chef’s copy for photos at the end.
We made dessert first so the cake could bake.
The food and wine pairing.
A watermelon and duck salad. I passed because I hate watermelon and Kathleen can’t eat duck.
Finished with a Croque Monsieur.
Dessert was a cake full of Bailey’s.

After photography, cooking is my second favorite hobby and I love experimenting and taking cooking classes. These were great. The instructor was super helpful and answered all our questions including helping us with possible substitutions. That’s a great teacher—willing to adapt.

Be back tomorrow or Wednesday with my final review.

I’m not a chef. But I’m passionate about food – the tradition of it, cooking it, and sharing it.   —Zac Posen

 

Montreal: Food Tour and Church Show

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography5 Comments

I’m up very early today (our third on the road). We boarded Oceania Vista yesterday, and I haven’t adjusted to the AC in the rooms. With my sinuses, that means I get up when I can no longer breathe through my nose. But enough about me. I promised you more about Montreal.

Following my pre-dawn photo walk (see previous post), we had a complimentary breakfast at our hotel. We had a two-night stay at the Homewood Suites by Hilton Downtown. It sat right at the base of Chinatown, just across a roaring freeway from Old Town. At least we were on the eighth floor, so the noise didn’t bother us that much. The breakfast (we ate there both days) was OK—your typical free hotel food. Which was OK; we had a bunch of food headed our way.

At 10:30, we grabbed Ubers. I wish there was a better way to order an Uber. We needed a larger car because there were seven of us. We knew that we couldn’t all fit in one car, so we ordered two of their XLs. Those are supposed to fit up to 6 people. What we got this morning (for four of us) was a Mazda that barely fix four, and I had to climb over seats to sit in a third-row seat that was designed for a child of about eight years old. Not a grown human. Yet my brother got a full-size van that could have easily fit seven, but they were already gone by the time we got ours. There needs to be a way to see the kind of car you are getting before you say OK.  Maybe there is, but I don’t know what it is.

On to the food tour. We met our guide, Eric, of Secret Food Tours of Montreal, at Guillaume Bakery in the Mile-End section of Montreal. Eric was a great guide and had quite the tour planned for us. We started off with a brioche from the bakery, which was delicious. I might have even voted it the best thing we had. While we ate it, Eric told us all kinds of cool facts about his city and quizzed us to see how much we already knew. Great brioche, fun facts and trivia—I’m in!

Our next stop was Drogheria Fine, where we got to sample some excellent gnocchi. Eric told us what was really important here was their world-famous (or at least Montreal-famous) tomato sauce. The gnocchi were only a delivery system for the sauce. Not only that, the place only does take-away in paper cups with chopsticks. Either way, the gnocchi was delicious, and the sauce was pretty good (I like my Italian grandma’s sauce better).

From there, we were off a long walk to the Green Panther restaurant. This place has a fully vegetarian menu, and we sampled a pita sandwich made with jackfruit. Even though Kathleen and I don’t eat a lot of meat, which means I cook a lot of veggies, the jackfruit sandwich did nothing for me. It’s easily my least favorite food on the tour. And the very long walk it took to get to that restaurant left Kathleen and Jocelyn worn out before we even got to the fourth place out of six.

Our fourth place was St Viateur Bagels. Montreal is (we were told) famous for its bagels, which are not boiled but baked in a wood-fired oven. Eric wanted us to sample bagels right out of the oven, and they were delicious. The ones coming out of the oven when we walked in were sesame seed (again, not a favorite of mine), but my bite was very good. The bakery provided an excellent photo opportunity of the bagels being moved around the HUGE wood-fired oven.

Next up was Poutineville. Guess what the specialty of this place was? If you guessed poutine (Canada’s favorite comfort food), you would be correct. For those who have never had poutine, it is a beef gravy (this one had lots of Montreal Smoked Meat in it) poured over french fries (which, in this case, were kind of wimpy) and topped with cheese curds. As I mentioned, gravy and smoked meat were delicious—the fries were kind of flat.

Our last stop was a tiny Italian deli-type place called Caffe Grazie Millie, where we sampled espresso and some outstanding cannoli. I LOVE cannoli, and they have four different types of filling. I chose the traditional ricotta, and Kathleen had the limoncello. We each took a couple of small bites from our three-inch long cannoli and swapped. I still go with the traditional. It was excellent.

Here’s the food tour pics I promised above. Please don’t drool on your device of choice. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

Guillaume Bakery. Amazing brioche but I want to eat everything there.
Eric doing the Montreal quiz
Eric is a retired college professor so he was used to teaching and thus, very entertaining.
An old firehouse I liked along the way to gnocchi.
First stop, gnocchi.
Folks across the street eating gnocchi with chopsticks.
Our group hearing more about Montreal.
At the Green Panther, our jackfruit pita.
The Green Panther was very photogenic.
Montreal has some amazing murals. They are all over the city. This one is near a software company HQ.
A Polish-Catholic cathedral.
The bagels being flipped in the wood-fired oven.
Apparently the best bagels in Montreal.
The home of all things poutine.
Outside the cannoli place taking orders.
Where to get good cannoli in Montreal.
A little street photography to end the tour
Santa on a tour.

Completely stuffed, we again grabbed Ubers back to our hotel, where I did a bunch of photo-processing, and Kathleen took a quick nap as we had tickets for a performance of Aura at Notre Dame Basilica of Montreal. I would love to show you photos of the actual show, but they don’t allow photos during the 20-minute-long performance. If you check out their website, you will see the kind of laser-light show we got to see. It was truly amazing and very beautiful. Our entire group said they would recommend it to those coming to Montreal. I was able to take a few photos before the show, and they are below. If you come back tomorrow you can see a lot more photos of the inside because Mike, Steve and I went back the next morning for a photo shoot. We were late getting there before the performance so we didn’t have time to really take photos then.

Main Altar of Notre Dame Cathedral.
The massive pipe organ. They used it during the show.
In front of the Cathedral, the Bank of Montreal.
A very cool Art Deco building we could see from our hotel that I shot on the way back from the Cathedral.

Whew! That was one long day. But a good one. We would do just about everything again (other than the Uber rides) and highly recommend it to anyone visiting Montreal. The food tour was a little long for those who aren’t regular walkers. Eric told us it was 1.6 miles, but my walking app said it was closer to three. Just keep that in mind if you decide to go.

I love Montreal. I love the people, I love the history.
—Stephen Thompson

Food! Glorious Food—the Top 5 things I ate this year

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences8 Comments

As the year comes to a close, I have decided to make my Top lists again. Today—the top five things I ate in 2022. Later this week, the top things to remember (good or bad) and finally, the top ten photos I took this year. Let’s get started.

Number 5—The french fries at The Grand Dutch Cafe onboard Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam

One January day on our “Sail with Seth” cruise, we returned after lunchtime from a very nice shore excursion tour of Grand Turk island. We really didn’t want to go up to the buffet because it was less than four hours until dinner, and let’s be honest, buffets are just too tempting. I know, I always say I will “just get a salad,” but then, “Oh, that pizza looks good—I’ll just have one piece,” or “I’ll need a roll with this salad.” You get the idea.

As we were getting back on the ship, we walked by the Grand Dutch Cafe, which is located directly across from the Guest Services desk on deck three. They do sandwiches, croquettes, soups and desserts. We decided that would work best because we could each get one thing, and that was it. Besides, they had a superb selection of Dutch and Belgian beers. So I ordered the veal croquette and Kathleen a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and we sat down at a table (You order at the counter, but they bring the food to you at your table.)

A few minutes later, the server brought out my croquet and apologized to Kathleen that her sandwich wasn’t ready yet, but he wanted me to have my croquet while it was still hot. And to make up for it taking so long, he thought we should try their French fries, so he brought us a dinner plate full of nothing but fries. Well, we really didn’t want to eat that much, but we had to try them, so we each bit into one…gave each other looks of incredulity, and then ate another…and another…and another. In the meantime, Kathleen’s sandwich came, and we finished her sandwich and my croquette…and all the fries.

A few minutes later, our server came back over and asked if we would like something for dessert, and we looked at each other, smiled, and I told him, “YES! Could we have another order of those fries?” They were that good. I need to add that we had a week left on the cruise, and we had those fries (as a side dish and as a dessert) at least three more times.

Number 4—Lunch in Athens, Greece, with our guide George.

On our full day of touring Athens before we departed on our Viking cruise, we did a six-hour tour with the amazing George from Tours By Locals. George took us to a bunch of places, including the Acropolis, the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldiers and the original Olympic stadium. But the best place George took us was…lunch. Early in the day, he asked if we wanted to have lunch or tour all day. We all voted to finish up our tour with lunch; if he would recommend someplace wonderful to eat.

Our incredible guide—George.

George (that’s him at left) said he knew just the place. He took us to a wonderful, family-run restaurant in a working-class section of Athens and said this is the place. We sat down at some tables pretty much across the street from the restaurant, and the owner came out and told us what was available for lunch. George recommended letting the owner bring us what he thought would be good. So that’s what we did, and that’s what he did—brought us some amazing Greek food. And he brought a TON of it. He kept bringing course after course after course. All of it amazing, all of it delicious. I wish I had photos of everything that he brought, but either we ate it too fast (at the start), or it was in another course that we forgot about. If you are ever in Athens and you want the ultimate Greek food experience, tour with George.

Number 3—Beer and pretzels at Valley House Brewing in Duvall, Washington.

This one happened by accident. My brother Steve and sister-in-law Jamie were here in June so Steve could help us do some stuff around our new home. One afternoon we decided to drive east to the little town of Duvall for lunch instead of into downtown Redmond. Duvall is a cute little town that is actually closer to our place (in the amount of time it takes to get there) than downtown Redmond is. We had looked online and found a winery that we thought would be great for lunch, but when we got to Duvall, we could not find the place, nor did we see anything else that looked interesting. One of the four of us found Valley House Brewing on their phones (not me, I was driving), so we went there.

Like the french fries I wrote about in Number 5 above, we found the world’s best pretzel. The beer itself was really great, but the pretzel was worth going back for. It came to the table HOT (burn your fingers hot 😜) and had just the right amount of salt. It tore apart perfectly and almost melts in your mouth. To top it off, it comes with two different sauces to dip it in; an outstanding honey mustard (my favorite) and a superb beer cheese. This is the kind of pretzel that you want to go back for again and again, and we have. But it’s been a while. Now I really want one. Guess I will just have to wait a couple of days/weeks/months.

Number 2—Pizza in Europe.

I was going to try and pick a specific place we got pizza, but two really stood out. First, I took a tour (Kathleen was too tired from COVID to go along) in Naples that was all about pizza and the pizza there was amazing. Of course, it should be; that’s the birthplace of pizza when we stopped at Solopizza, which has been in business making pizzas in Napoli since 1977. To be honest, I would have preferred we stopped someplace that had been there since 1797 but no such luck 😜. I did get to go into the kitchen and watch them make pizza which was eye-opening, and it changed the way I now make pizza. I also learned that in Naples, the rule is “one pizza, one person.” Everyone at the table for eight I was sitting with thought this was crazy, but when we finished the meal, we counted the pizza pans they had brought ours out on, and there were seven empties, so we got close.

After Naples, I thought that would be it for great pizza mostly because that’s where pizza was born but also because the pizza on our cruise ship was just OK. Nothing wrong with it but nothing great either. Was I ever wrong? About a week later, we docked in Monaco and were off on our longest tour of the cruise. We started in Eze and then went to Nice and finally wound up back in Monaco, where it was now almost 2:00 pm, and we still needed to eat since we left on tour at 8:30 am. Kathleen and I were famished, so when the guide stopped in front of the Monaco cathedral and just kept rambling on, we headed up the street to find food. There we found the simplest pizza you can buy and easily the best of the trip. We topped that off with our favorite beverage of the trip, an Aperol spritz, and we were in heaven. I can’t begin to describe how great this pizza was. It truly has changed the way I make pizza.

Honorable mentions:

Before we get to my number one food of 2022, I want to honorably mention these dishes that didn’t quite make it into the top five: the incredible anchovies in Monterosso in Cinque Terre, Italy, the soft-shell crab, Norwegian waffles and seafood buffets on Viking Sky, the lemon-basil gelato in Vernazza, also in Cinque Terre, the lobster rolls at Tamarind restaurant on Nieuw Statendam, the pintxos open-faced sandwiches we had for lunch in Barcelona with our guide Olga and lastly, the ratatouille at Rudy’s Sel de Mer restaurant, also on Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam.

My sister-in-law Jamie read this, and since they travel with us most of the time, she nominated some additional honorable mentions: Soppressata sandwich from Molinari’s deli in San Francisco (this was from our SF food tour—which was on a day I had completely blocked from my mind because later in the day, Kathleen tripped and fell on a bad sidewalk and we spent six hours in the emergency room), cannoli from the same SF food tour, the Peruvian chicken we had in the Club Orange Dining Room on Nieuw Statendam and the spicy arancini from Victoria, BC food tour. My brother was nice enough to include my Grilled Antipasto Vegetable platter (one of my summer specialties, pictured above).

Number 1 has to be the Dark Chocolate Amarone Cremoso onboard Viking Sky.

Let me first state here that I have never been that much of a dessert guy. I prefer carbs to dessert any day of the week. And when it comes to dessert, I (unlike my daughter) prefer fruit in my desserts. I love pies and crisps and cobblers. And I have never been that big a chocolate person—until now.

On our second night onboard Viking Sky, we went to their Italian specialty restaurant Manfredi’s. The food was fine. I was not too fond of the calamari appetizer, I thought the steak was poorly cooked and much too thin to be a true Florentine bistecca, but I did like the risotto with escargot. But then we got to dessert. My normal choice would have been the lemon cake they had on the menu as I love almost any lemon dessert but the name of the one chocolate dessert caught my eye.

One of our favorite types of wine is a deep, rich red from the Veneto region of Italy—Amarone. When I saw that word in the name of this dessert, I thought it must be an ingredient, and I had to try it. This turned out to be both a great and a bad thing for me to do. Great, because it was the best thing I have eaten this year and bad because I fell in love with this chocolate dessert and soon discovered that pretty much anything the pastry chef on Viking Sky did with chocolate was amazing, so I had to try it all. A few nights later, I found it on the buffet, and that’s where the photo came from. Suffice it to say; I had to have it again.

How much did I love it? So much so that when we got home, I did Google search after Google search until I found the recipe on another cruiser’s blog. She had begged the pastry chef on another Viking ship for the recipe (as I should have done) and was nice enough to share it. Since we got back, I have made it three times and still have two pieces of it in our refrigerator. It is incredibly thick and rich. Almost like a fudge (but definitely not!), it is very expensive to make. To do it right, you have to invest in some fairly pricey 70% cacao chocolate and a few other wonderful ingredients. But if anyone reading this wants to try it, I will happily send you the recipe. It’s going to become my go-to chocolate dessert for the rest of my days.

That’s it! My culinary adventures in 2022. Watch out later this week for more Top of 2022 lists. I hope to have the other two done by New Year’s.

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.  —Charles Schultz

The Best Day of the Entire Trip—Cinque Terre

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography2 Comments


The day after we took our day off in Rome was absolutely the best day of the whole trip from Amsterdam to Athens to that day. The ship was docked in Livorno, Italy, which is the port for Florence. And about 95% of the passengers on board were headed to either Florence itself or the Tuscan countryside and Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. We, on the other hand, had decided to do our own thing.

As I said about Rome in my last post, you can’t see Rome in one day. I also believe you can’t do justice to Florence in one day. If you really want to see the Uffizi or the Academia, you need half a day in each. That leaves no time for the Duomo, the baptistery, the Ponte Vecchio, or so much more that is Firenze. Besides, we had been there before. So we opted out. But sadly, that was the only place that Viking was offering tours to. So we created our own.

About three months before the cruise, I started looking for someplace else to see in the general area of Livorno that we had not seen. We had never seen the Leaning Tower and the rest of Pisa, but that was a two-hour tour, and we would be in Livorno for two days and would see that on the second day. So where to go? I searched maps and Cruise Critic for ideas, and in doing that, I looked up the coast, and lo and behold—Cinque Terre. We had heard so much about it but had never been there, and we really wanted to see it, but for some reason, Viking does not do any tours in that direction (although it took us the same amount of time to get there as it did to get into Florence). That meant I had to find us a tour. So off I went to Google, and the first tour that popped up was a “Tour to Cinque Terre from the Port of Livorno” by BellaItalia Tours. That sounded like just what we were looking for, so I contacted them.

Like most tours, this had one price—the price of the tour. Actually, there were two possibilities—a tour with a driver who got you there and got you off on your way into the first “land” and then picked you up and took you back to the ship after you finished touring everything. The other option was a driver AND a guide. The driver got you there, but the guide accompanied you throughout the day from village to village telling us all about them on the way. We wanted to do this because we were looking for someone to walk us through the entire thing.

If you got the driver and the guide, the price was just about 800 euros for two people. But if you could find more to join you, the price went down because you were paying for the car, driver and guide no matter what. Up to 8 people could come along. To find someone else to join us (the other four in our party had never been to Florence, so they were going there), I went on Cruise Critic to our roll call (click here if you need Cruise Critic and Roll Calls explained) and found Corky and Larry from Maui who said they would love to join us. This meant our price was basically cut in half. And not only did that make this tour a bargain, but we made two great friends in the process.

As soon as the ship had been cleared by the port authorities, we were off and looking for my name on a placard being held by our guide, the amazing and hilarious Luigi. And he and our driver (Alessandro) were waiting right where they said they would be, we jumped in their Mercedes van, and we were off. What joy it was to ride in a van and not a “luxury motor coach.” It meant that there were two of us to a seat, with plenty of legroom and Luigi giving us non-stop play-by-play as we drove along.

On the way, we got to see some things we hadn’t expected, like the famous marble mountains of Carrara. I suppose if I had thought about it, I would have realized that the Carrara marble that makes up so many buildings in the Mediterannean or our very own tile floors at home comes from a huge mountain of marble. The mountains are magnificent to look at, as you can see in this small gallery. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

The Carrara Marble Mountains
Not snow…
Just a lot of marble.

A little while after passing through Carrara and some amazing hilltop towns on either side of the AutoStrada (Italian for freeway), we reached La Spezia, a coastal community that is the gateway to Cinque Terre. You climb far above it and that puts you about even with those hilltop towns, so here are some views from the hill above La Spezia and some hilltop towns we had seen between there and Carrara. Don’t forget; they can be viewed as a slide show.

After passing Carrara it was…
One hilltop town after another.
Then we reached La Spezia…
…and climbed high above it.

As soon as you have seen La Spezia go by, you go over the hill, and you are looking down at the first of the five “lands” of Cinque Terre (literally translates to “five lands”), Riomaggiore. It’s a beautiful little village built into the side of a very steep hill. Alessandro dropped us off, and we walked down into the town itself. We would next see our illustrious driver at the other end of Cinque Terre. From this point on, our transport was the Cinque Terre ferry. Luigi led us down through the town, pointing things out to us as we went. We all took a much-needed restroom break and then met Luigi to board the ferry to move to the next land.

Luigi was a font of knowledge all about the region. We all learned a lot, especially that we should wait for the fourth village, Vernazza, to get gelato because they had the best, then have lunch at the end of the journey in Monterosso because they had the best food. We liked that—eat dessert first.

The second stop on our visit was to the village of Manarola, which might have been the most picturesque. The photo at the top of this post was taken there. Luigi was more than thrilled to help me find my shots because he said we had something in common. His real vocation in life was a guitarist, and he loved it. He told us it was “his art.” And he said photography was mine. I truly appreciated his interest, and from that point on (he had this conversation with Kathleen on the ferry while I was outside taking photos) he took me to what he thought would make great pictures…and he was right.

The ferry to the next of the five lands (actually four because the ferry does not stop in the middle land of Corniglia as there is no place for it to dock—it is only accessible by train) comes just about every hour, so once we landed in Manarola for instance; we had an hour to take photos and look around before we got back on the next ferry and left for Vernazza.

Vernazza was the village where we heard about the awesome gelato, and again, Luigi proved to be correct. He had advised me that if I truly wanted to try what the locals loved, I would have basil gelato (seen at right). So I did, and it was wonderful. Kathleen had lemon, and when we put the two together…perfection. Vernazza was a great village for photography, so again, I took more shots until the hour went by and we boarded the ferry for Monterosso.

Monterosso was the final village and is the most commercialized of the five. It has bigger hotels, sandy beaches, etc. It also has amazing food, and this was where Luigi said we should get lunch. He was all set to drop us at a restaurant to fend for ourselves when we insisted he join us for lunch—our treat, which he did. He said that like the gelato I had tasted, the people of the five lands believed their basil was better than any other basil in the world and therefore, their pesto sauce was the best anyplace—hands down. So, of course, we had to try it. The traditional pesto pasta is improved in Cinque Terre by the addition of potatoes and green beans to the mix. This came about when they started making pesto at a time when those things were plentiful, and the recipe stuck.

Besides the pesto, there was one more thing I wanted to try while we were having lunch. It is something that Rick Steves had mentioned in his Cinque Terre video—fresh anchovies. Rick said that if you come here and order them fresh, you would be amazed how little they would resemble the anchovies you see on a pizza or a caesar salad and he was right—almost. I ordered (with Luigi’s help) “Tris di acciughe del marinaio” or Lemon, salted and stuff anchovies. The salted looked very much like what we put on pizza but bigger. It tasted like you might think but much less salty. Luigi told me that this is what it should taste like when brined, but it is much saltier when we get it because it has sat for weeks in a can on its way to America.

Then there was the stuffed version, filled with some rice, some veggies and who knows what, but it was delicious. But the winner of the three was anchovies marinated in lemon juice and olive oil. I could eat those every day, all day long. Delicious.

After we finished lunch, we walked around Monterosso for a while longer before we walked up a hill (thankfully much less steep than the one we walked down in Riomaggiore) to the top of the village to be met by our faithful driver Alessandro and transported back to the ship. This was around a nine-hour trip from ship to ship, but I have to say I enjoyed every minute of it.

This brings me to the subject of shore excursions. One of the reasons Viking appealed to us was that they included a free shore excursion in every port. But we are just not sure if that is a selling point anymore. After our day in a van with a guide and being able to move at our own pace, we think if (probably when) sail with Viking Ocean again, we will book our own shore excursions again. We had pretty much always done that in the past until COVID came along, and you couldn’t book a lot of private excursions. Now you can again and we likely will. It is so much more personalized, and you meet incredible guides. We had done three tours on this entire trip with private guides (in Amsterdam with Hans and Athens with George), and those were the best tours. Far better than being put into a “luxury motor coach” with 26 other people and a guide who is just a monotonous voice in your “whisper headset.” This really hit home with us after touring all day with Luigi and Alessandro. Luigi became a part of our group. Just look at the photo at the top of this post. Don’t we look happy? Cinque Terre—what a day. And here are the photos from that day. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…ESPECIALLY THESE!

The view of Riomaggiore from the top of the hill near La Spezia
A more wide angle view of Riomaggiore
There are hiking trails to all the “lands” so you can walk the entire way.
It is recommended to take a day between each if you walk.
Our first glimpse of the kind of ferry we would be traveling on.
The mountainsides above the villages were terraced.
This allowed the villagers to grow all their food nearby.
We have arrived in Riomaggiore
Walking down the long hill to the ferry.
The village is a delight.
Lots of great photo opportunities.
Everywhere I looked.
Everything in the villages seems vertical.
Finally the sea where there was a protected harbor.
And many colorful buildings everywhere.
Looking back up the village of Riomaggiore
Such great colors.
The ferry arrives.
There is no beach so sunworshippers just lay on the rocks while waiting for the ferry.
You get on the ferry on a very wobbly ramp.
And you sail away to Manarola.
The view looking back is stupendous.
Did I forget to mention that the travel gods were smiling on us.
The weather was perfect.
Had we come a day earlier or later, we would not have been able to take the ferry…
but we would have had to take the train that goes from village to village.
Coming into Manarola.
All off the ferry.
Manarola has some great swimming areas…
with very large rocks that people braver than I jump off of.
Luigi told me that for the “money shot: that would crown my photography of Cinque Terre, I should climb this hill.
He was right.
In so many ways.
I can’t imagine I would have done it if he had not been there to advise me.
This is the one I love the most.
But back in the village, the colors were wild.
As were the colors of the boats.
Looking in almost any direction brought you a different viewpoint of the villages.
And now we are back on the ferry going to Vernazza.
But on the way we pass some hilltop towns.
And terraced farms.
And the one village that cannot be accessed by the ferry.
Only by the train or on foot.
The village of Corniglia.
As you can see there is very little near the water in this village.
But it was still very photogenic.
No matter the angle.
Nor the distance.
From the ferry you could see it all.
I loved the rock formations as we headed into Vernazza.
This medieval church is in Vernazza
As is this tight and small but colorful alleyway.
And this staircase. Can you imagine taking groceries home this way?
There was a very cool opening to the sea below…
an apartment house.
I also found a small chapel.
And some very busy streets.
Larry and I had run off to take pictures while Corky and Kathleen finished their gelato.
Everywhere you look in any Italian town, there are churches.
The inside was just as beautiful.
As you can see here.
Back at the harbor…
One more shot of color…
And off on the ferry to Monterosso.
As we approach you can see…
the umbrelllas on the only sandy beaches in the villages.
A much more commercial village than the other ones.
With fortifications above the small harbor.
Our first goal was lunch here at this wonderful restaurant. Pesto and anchovies.
Then we went to take photos with Luigi.
There is a whole story that must be told orally…
About these three pictures.
And of course there was a church.
And the inside was beautiful. It reminded us of the churches of Tuscany.
And my last shot before Alassandro picked us up—some colorful laundry.

It took us about 90 minutes to get back to the ship, but after the day we had, the time flew by. I truly hope I did a good job expressing my joy about this day and my gratitude to the amazing Luigi, who took such great care of us. I can’t recommend him more highly. If you decide to go, book with Bella Italia tours and ask for him specifically. You will not be sorry.

I think people in Italy live their lives better than we do. It’s an older country, and they’ve learned to celebrate dinner and lunch, whereas we sort of eat as quickly as we can to get through it. —George Clooney

 

It’s a cruise—it’s always about the food

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography4 Comments

One of the biggest questions I get when it comes to cruising is…how was the food? And yes, I will fully admit to having consumed three times the number of calories I should have consumed over the last 10 days and probably gaining a good 10lbs but I promise that within two weeks I will have walked it off…because even though I worked out…the food was off the charts and I just could not resist it.

Before I start, just let me state up front that after 30+ cruises, we have had room service a grand total of once (maybe twice 😜). So if you are looking for reviews of room service, this is not the place.

Breakfast

On most of our cruises, breakfast would have been in the buffet but because we were in a Neptune Suite we got our own restaurant we could eat in for breakfast and dinner—Club Orange (Holland America’s colors are blue and ORANGE). We went there every day for breakfast except one. We went to the buffet to just get some granola and yogurt after having way too much dinner at a specialty restaurant the night before. The experience in the buffet was a good one but more about that later. (I should note that you don’t have to be in a Neptune or Pinnacle Suite to be able to eat in Club Orange, you can buy just a membership for—as of this cruise in February 2022—$50 per person, per day.)

Club Orange has some of the best breakfast food I have ever eaten. They have a HUGE variety. Three kinds of Eggs Benedict, as many omelets as you can think of, fruit, pastry, donuts, muffins, toast, skillets…you name it…I think they either had it or would make it for you. I fully admit to having any and all of the above mentioned breakfast food during this cruise. The team in Club Orange is the absolute best dining team we have ever been served by. From the second time we came into the restaurant they knew our names, they knew what we wanted to drink (for me it was coffee, a single espresso shot, a mimosa and maybe some extra orange juice to add to it) and how you liked your eggs. My coffee cup was never empty and the food…was spectacular.

Here’s some breakfast pics for you. I wish I had more to show you but darned if we didn’t eat all the food too quickly. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and feel free to look at these on your phone. That’s what I used to take them.

Buckwheat pancakes
Veggie Skillet
Eggs Benedict with Dungeness crab
Lemon donut

Lunch

While we ate all but one breakfast in Club Orange, we kind of moved around for lunch. There are so many great places to eat on board that it is hard to choose. Which made it a good thing that Club Orange did not serve lunch. Here’s where you can eat lunch on Nieuw Statendam and her sister ships:

  • The Lido Market Buffet. Located midships on Deck 9 (the Lido Deck) the Nieuw Statendam is a superb buffet with stations for just about everything. We went to the buffet when we made our one or two attempts to eat healthy. Grabbed a salad and a roll for lunch…and of course a couple of cookies or gelato/gelato pop. All the buffet was NOT self-service. You walked up to a station and either told them what you wanted to eat or just pointed. They did have some standard items (like Caesar or chopped salad, etc.). All the food we had for lunch in the buffet was fresh and excellent. The service was superb as well.
  • The Dive-In. A great place for a burger, a hot dog and fries. They have a variety of types. Ate there twice and truly enjoyed it. Have the Cannonball, skip the Gainer. Their fries are the second best on the ship and they have good Dive-In fry sauce. You will find the Dive-In on Deck 9, just forward of the buffet on the starboard side of the ship. Right next to it is the Gelato spot where you can get the best value on the ship. You have to pay for gelato (ice cream from the buffet is free), but it is only $2.50 for a cup that is probably half a pound of gelato. We only had it once but man it was good. I had a biscotti gelato with huge pieces of biscotti in it. Delicious. They also have gelato pops for $2 (although we heard these may be discontinued) which are just like ice cream bars on a stick with a coating and gelato inside. Tried one of those and they were awesome. Seth promised us another but we never got around to it.
  • New York Deli and Pizza. Just upstairs from the Dive-In on the port side of the ship is this deli/pizza place. We did not try the pizza but my brother and his bride did and they said it was quite good. We went up and Kathleen had a salad and I had a Rueben. I love Ruebens so this may the only place where the food I got onboard was not as good as a Rueben I could have gotten off the ship. And no fries there. Just chips. But still go try it. Great place to grab a quick bite.
  • The Grand Dutch Cafe. Down on deck three (the Promenade Deck) right at midships is an undiscovered gem of a place for lunch. I say undiscovered because we didn’t discover it until more than halfway through our cruise. Lots of other people did and now we know why. We had heard about it and wanted to go and since we were late getting back from Grand Turk we headed there as soon as we were on board. They serve lots of Dutch delicacies. For instance, I had a veal croquette sandwich. Kathleen had a wonderful melted ham and cheese sandwich. But the real star of the show were the French fries. They were amazing. How good were they? On subsequent visits, we always had them for dessert too. One other big plus is their selection of European beers. If you are a beer aficionado, this is the place for you.

Dinner…ahhhh dinner

When we bought the cruise we were part of a special HAL deal called Have It All. With that deal we got the cruise and some other perks. Two of those perks were dinners on two nights in two of their four Specialty restaurants. Since they had included two we decided to go ahead and purchase dinner in the other two just so we could tell you about them. See what kind of sacrifices I go through for my readers 😜.

I need to let you know that we never had dinner in the buffet nor the MDR (main dining room). If we weren’t having dinner in one of the specialty restaurants (five out of ten nights) we had dinner in Club Orange. But, I should also mention that the only difference between the menu in the Main Dining Room and Club Orange are two menu items (one appetizer and one entrée) that are available in Orange that are not in the dining room. And we only ate one of those during the entire cruise (it was Peruvian Chicken—one of my favorite meals of the entire cruise) so we really had much of the same food as the MDR.

Trying to figure how to handle telling you about the dinners. I think I will rate the restaurants we ate in from great to “just fine.” Also below each restaurant are the photos with captions from that restaurant when I can remember where and what they are. You know how that works—you can either be a photographer or a diner…choose one. I guess I could never be a food critic—too busy eating the food. Don’t forget, if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping…and since I took these with my iPhone, feel free to view them on yours.

  • Rudi’s Sel de Mer. This is HAL’s seafood restaurant created for them by Master Chef Rudi Sodamin. It is the most expensive extra charge on the ship. The voyage we sailed it was $50 per person. I have to say, it was worth just about every single penny. Photos are below but suffice it to say it was a dining experience I would not want to miss. Be aware that it is only available every night on HAL’s three Pinnacle Class ships but is available as a pop-up restaurant for one night on others…sometimes. They also have the coolest plates and you can buy them. WOW! More in the photos (loved them so much we brought one home). Oh and my brother would want me to mention the best side dish on the ship—Rudi’s ratatouille. I agree. Loved it so much we begged for the recipe and they printed it up for us. There is a Rudi’s cookbook that you can buy (but everyone in Sail with Seth got one as a gift from Seth) but the ratatouille recipe isn’t in it. If you want it, you either ask them or e-mail me.
    Our amuse bouche. Smoked salmon pate.
    Rudi’s signature dish, whole dover sole, filleted at the table
    Kathleen’s salmon appetizer—HUGE! And delicious.
    The seafood tower that Steve and I spilt.
    It is an upcharge of $25.
    Our bread and toppings at Rudi’s
    Rudi’s has the coolest chargers.
    There are 8 in all but he has a book with more than 100.
    All with food faces. Guess which one I bought to bring home?
  • Tamarind and Nami Sushi. Choosing between this Asian specialty restaurant and Club Orange as the next best option was really tough but this one wins by a lobster roll. We got to eat in Tamarind twice. Once because it was part of our Have It All package and once because my brother Steve won a drawing to have dinner with Seth from our Sail with Seth cruise. We went the first time with Seth himself and since he had eaten in Tamarind many times on previous trips we followed his recommendations. One thing about Tamarind is that it sits in the same room as Nami Sushi and you can order off either menu. The difference is that you pay one price for your entire meal in Tamarind but Nami Sushi charges à la carte. But you can order from both menus. My brother and I love sushi (as does Seth) but our brides not so much so this worked perfect. The sushi was amazing (my brother and I will agree that the lobster roll from Nami was the best bite on the ship), the dinner divine and the service incredible. Cocktails were not too shabby either. Here’s a great dessert tip: get the sorbet trio but tell them to skip the lychee and give you two scoops of the lemon-basil sorbet—you won’t be sorry. One last thing—this Asian restaurant, sitting above the wake of the ship may be the most visually beautiful restaurants we have seen on the high seas.
    Kathleen’s Tom Khakai sweet and sour soup, coconut chicken, bean sprouts, chili oil.
    Nami Sushi has some signature dishes. On Seth’s recommendation I tried Hamachi Usuzukuri and it was AWESOME!
    The best bites of the trip—Lobster Tempura from Nami Sushi
    Kathleen’s entrée, Panang Red Curry Coconut Chicken
    Another awesome dish at Tamarind. I wish I could name it but just can’t remember the name of it. It’s shrimp and dynamite.
    My Mongolian Barbecue Lamb Chops
    This was an eggplant side dish I loved! Perfectly spiced.
  • Club Orange Dining Room. This one was close. Really close. But Tamarind one by a hair (or a lobster roll). Otherwise the 5 nights we ate in Club Orange were AMAZING! Every night superb food, superb service and a pretty unforgettable dining experience. The team in Club Orange led by the amazing Wayan Suadnyana took care of our every need and made us love being in the restaurant. Imagine going to your favorite place to eat every night and they treated you like a local, like a regular. When this happens, it’s one of my favorite parts of cruising.
    These were some great entrées from Club Orange. Not sure what this fish dish is.
    This was a Caribbean lamb dish that knocked my socks off.
    My brother’s beef Wellington
    Not sure what this is.
    Or this one. Just know they were all good.
  • Pinnacle Grille. This is HAL’s signature steakhouse. It is on all their ships. Our dinner there was one of our two included dinners with our Have It All promotion. We (Kathleen and I) have eaten in the Pinnacle Grille on two other HAL cruises but I should state up front that we are not big steak people. We like ethnic food better than steaks but we have always enjoyed the food at Pinnacle. And it is in fourth place not because we didn’t love it this time, just that the other options were so much better. Pinnacle gives you some great steaks (my ribeye was a little fatty) and lots of super sides (don’t forget to order the clothesline of bacon when you first order or you will be adding it as you see others get theirs). One reason this fell to fourth in my rating was the service was really sporadic. We would have five servers all over us for five minutes and then they would disappear and we wouldn’t see anyone for another 10 minutes. A couple of times after they brought an entrée, we didn’t have something we needed that went with it (like a glass of wine or a steak knife) and there was no one to help. The manager of the restaurant was five feet away from us much of the time but with eyes glued to his phone and NEVER even glanced at anyone in the entire place. Lastly, leave room for the key lime pie. Delicious. Sorry only one photo from Pinnacle. My ribeye with onion rings.
  • Canaletto. This Italian restaurant is carved out of the buffet every night. This means they use a part of the buffet table area, put table cloths on those tables and do Italian food that is served to you (not a buffet). Kathleen and I had eaten in Canaletto on another HAL cruise in 2018 and loved it but the food was just not up to par this time. Now, by up to par, I don’t mean it was bad…it was just not as good as every place else we had to choose from onboard. Service was fine. The food was fine. Everything was just “fine,” if you know what I mean.
    And my braised ribs with gnocchi. I won!
    Kathleen’s branzino
    Another
    One of the entrées.
    Kathleen’s beet salad
    These were served with some outstanding bread.

If and when we sail a Pinnacle Class ship again, we would go back to Rudi’s and Tamarind in a minute, skip Pinnacle and Canaletto and put the cost of those into another night at Rudi’s. And we would hope to win another night with Seth Wayne in Tamarind for sushi.

And I want to make one final food comment that really set the Nieuw Statendam food apart from 90% of other meals we have had on ships—spice. The cooks on NS were not afraid to use it. Most cruise fare is geared to middle American tastes. Steaks, chops, bland sides, etc. As I mentioned we love different and adventurous food. We do get that sometimes when we sail.

One of our all-time favorite onboard restaurants was the old Qsine on Celebrity ships before they corrupted it with that damn “Le Petite Chef” or whatever they call it. Turned if from a culinary experience to a tiny little piece of tripe (sorry for the rant–I truly loved Qsine).

HAL chef’s put spice in their food. My eggplant side in Tamarind was ordered “spicy” (could have ordered mild or medium as well) and it was spicy. Not “burn your mouth” spicy but delicious. They tried new things. They gave us incredible meals with incredible service. For years in the cruising world of so-called “big ships” (over 2500 guests) Celebrity has been the standard for food. Not anymore. You want great food—HAL gets the nod, at least on this ship.

 There is no sincerer love than the love of food
—George Bernard Shaw

My End of the Year Lists Begin Today with Food and Drink

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences5 Comments

With the end of this mixed bag of a year, I am seeing all the Top Ten/Bottom Ten of 2021 lists in every part of the news. I usually read the ones about movies and photos (there are lots about the latest music but it makes me sad when I have never heard of anyone on those lists 😂). If you have been following me for a while you know I love lists. I even have a page of nothing but lists I have made. Most were posts first and then added to the list page. Check them out sometime if you are new to the blog. You can expect these new ones to be added to that page as well.

This year I have decided to do my own set of Top Ten Lists. I am already doing my Top Ten Photos I Took in 2021 on Facebook and Instagram (I will post them here tomorrow). In that spirit I have decided to do a post about my Top Ten Things That I Loved About 2021. Then, when I started listing that Top Ten, I also thought about a bottom 10…or maybe 5. Then I started thinking about other lists from 2021 like my favorite meals or my favorite just about anything. But I decided that this could just go on forever. So I decided to do four lists (including my photos). First, the aforementioned Top Ten and then a Bottom Five of 2021. That leads us to this post,  The Top 5 things I ate or drank in 2021. And I was going to do them all in one post but I knew that would get too long so I broke them into four posts (for today the next three days) so I hope you enjoy them.

Food, Glorious Food!
My top five things I ate or drank in 2021

You know I love food and drink so here they are in no particular order. I had two of them in one meal and three of them within two days and the other two in the same week (Did you get all that?).

  1. Chicken Sandwich with slaw (Houstons restaurant in Irvine, CA)
  2. Wood-fire grilled artichokes (Houstons restaurant in Irvine, CA)
  3. Blue Coyote’s margaritas (Blue Coyote Grille–Palm Springs, CA)
  4. Sango De Camarón (onboard Celebrity Flora in the Galapagos)
  5. Fritada and Llapingachos (EB Hotel—Quito, Ecuador)

As you can see the first two things come from the same restaurant, Houstons. This is a small chain (11 outlets) of restaurants located across the US. I had first heard about them while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Armchair Expert. The expert himself, Dax Shepherd, raves about them and my brother and his bride had been wanting to take us to the Irvine, California location for a while but we didn’t have a reservation the first time we went. But in April when we went to visit them for a few days, we stopped there for lunch right after we got off the airplane and based on the recommendation from Dax, we ordered the chicken sandwich.

Then, based on the menu description, we ordered the artichoke appetizer as well. Suffice it to say, these were both AWESOME! How much did we like them? Well, six days later when they took us back to the airport we had an early dinner ordered the same thing and when we went down to see them in October, we had lunch when they picked us up and dinner when they took us back to the airport and we ordered the same thing all over again. Yes, they do have other things on their menu but when something is this good and you don’t live nearby, get it! If you are ever in a place with a Houstons, go have these two dishes. You won’t be sorry.

I mentioned that I had three of my top five things within just a few days time. Well the first two were at Houstons and the third was the next day after both our visits to Houstons. We stopped by the Blue Coyote for margaritas. Blue Coyote is a restaurant in Palm Springs (my and my brother’s hometown) and we first discovered it years ago and then took Steve and Jamie a few years later. When I was a kid if you wanted Mexican food in Palm Springs, you went to Las Casuelas. They are still there but the tourists have taken over the place and it just isn’t as great as it used to be…so now we go to Blue Coyote.

We used to just order a round of margaritas but the last few times when we have been there with Jamie and Steve we have started getting a pitcher…they are that good. I do feel a little sorry for Steve because he is always driving and that means he only gets one (but not too sorry 😜).

The last two items in my list of food are both from our trip to the Galapagos in July. I had the Fritada and Llapingachos at the EB Hotel in Quito where we spent the night both before and after our visit to the islands. I ordered this the night before because it sounded good (it is a pork dish with potatoes and lots of other stuff) but it was so good, when we came back a week later I ordered it again—yup, still just as good and since I don’t know of anyplace to get it besides Quito, ordering it again was a no-brainer.

Lastly, Sango De Camarón is a traditional seafood stew with a plantain base and I ate that onboard the amazing Celebrity Flora while we were cruising through the islands. One afternoon Kathleen and I were looking at the menu for that evening outside the dining room and I told her I was sad because there were no real Ecuadorian dishes on the menu that night. I had learned on the four previous nights (plus the night at the hotel) that I LOVE Ecuadorian food. The maitre’d overheard me saying this and asked if I really liked the food from Ecuador. I said, “Yes I do!” So he said he would see what he could do. That night when we went to dinner—still no Ecuadorian food on the menu 😔. But the next night…I had already told our waiter what I wanted when the maitre’d walked up and said he was cancelling our order (of an octopus dish I knew I would love) and the chef had made a wonderful surprise for me. Being an idiot and looking a gift horse in the mouth, I told him that this sounded great but I loved octopus and I really wanted to have that entrée. He said to wait a few minutes and he would see what he could do.

About five minutes later he was back with an appetizer that was not on the menu. It was a big salad with a HUGE portion of braised and broiled octopus on top and tons of avocado (the avocado in Ecuador is amazing!). After eating that he brought me the regular octopus entrée I had ordered and set it down in front of me and then brought a huge bowl of something that smelled amazing. He set that down in the middle of our table (there were four of us) and said, “This is sango. It is a traditional Ecuadorian dish that is a seafood stew with a plantain and rice base.” So I had to taste it and it was AMAZING. If there was a kind of local seafood that was NOT in there, I would like to know what had been left out. There was shrimp, clams, mussels, different kinds of white fish, calamari, scallops and…octopus. The stew/sauce part reminded me of a very good risotto.

Sadly, because of Kathleen’s allergy to shellfish, she couldn’t eat any of it. And the better half of the couple we were eating with (Jamie and Catherine) said she couldn’t eat anything with tentacles. So it was up to Jamie and I do make that chef happy…and we did. We ate it all.

One of the main reasons I want to go back in 2024 is to have this dish again. The taste and texture were delicious but I think the thing that really made it special was the fact that just because someone had overheard me talking about my new love for Ecuadorian food, the chef had made me this wonderful dish that represented his homeland. Food experiences don’t get any better than that.

Eating is not merely a material pleasure. Eating well gives a spectacular joy to life and contributes immensely to goodwill and happy companionship. It is of great importance to the morale.

Elsa Schiaparelli

 

 

 

Food, food and more food!

On By Jim BellomoIn Food Experiences, Photography6 Comments

Don’t worry. I still have more fauna and flora photos for you but right now I need to address the biggest question people have asked me  “How is the food on board.” So here goes. I promise to get to the other questions later. Many may have to wait until I get back to Quito, Florida or home.

Before we left we had read comments on the Cruise Critic boards about Flora that the food “wasn’t up to the standards of the rest of Celebrity’s ships.” And since we have been on board we have had discussions about the food with numerous people. Some expressed the same view.

So if you know me personally, you know I love to eat, I love to cook, I just plain love food. But I am an adventurous eater. My favorite food in the world is octopus. I will try just about anything once. I have eaten grasshoppers at Mariner games. Don’t get me wrong…I am not Tony Bourdain. He truly would have eaten anything. I do have some limits but mostly I like new things. And when I am a foreign country, I like to eat cuisine from that country or other nearby countries and cultures.

This is our 21st Celebrity cruise and I can honestly say that overall, this is the best food I have had on any of them. Have I had better meals on Celebrity? Yes. In the old United States Dining Room on Infinity, in Quisine or at The Porch or Lawn Club Grille on Reflection I have had some great meals. But day in and day out I have enjoyed the food here on Flora more than any other. Let me explain.

Breakfast, which is a buffet but in the dining room has been good. First I need to say that since the second day of the cruise, we have been greeted by every single person in the dining room (and pretty much every part of the ship), by name. I feel like I truly am a Celebrity. I guess that’s one of the good things about a small ship but these people try hard and are great at their jobs even on a smaller ship.

Back to the buffet. I should add here that post-COVID you walk around the buffet with a server and he/she puts food on your plate. (all crew are wearing masks). But what I love about that is if I want an omelet that is made to order, I get my other items, leave my plate with the server who helped me and a few minutes later, it appears at my table.

Plus, let me tell you some other amazing things that have happened while I was picking out my food. Geovanny and his wonderful bride Natalia have poured our water, grabbed us a cappuccino from the adjacent Discovery Lounge, put two croissants on my bread plate, brought me my marmalade and are waving to me as I walk back from the buffet area. And then they are back in no time to make sure everything is OK. It’s like a miracle and easily the best service I have had anywhere in the fleet or maybe in the world. And yes, it is a small ship but the dining staff (pictured below) is also small and you would never know it. I can’t say enough good things about them.

Not only is this the kitchen staff but the awesome guy on the right hand side is the head chef. And can he cook.

Back to the food. Lunch has been a buffet every day in the dining room. I should add that you can also go up to the Grille on deck seven for a burger, fries, quesadillas or guacamole and chips and a few other specials but we only did that one day. It was fine but not what I was looking for. We did LOVE the fries up there. The burger needed sauce of some kind. We didn’t go back. Not because we didn’t like it but because we can get that food at home. We wanted something different.

So each day in the dining room the lunch was a buffet (served the same as breakfast) each day with a different theme. We had Aztec (authentic Mexican), Spanish, Amazon (combining cuisines from countries on the Amazon River) and of course Ecuadorian. All had a huge selection of interesting food. There was also sandwich makings, a bunch of salads that fit the theme (I got an octopus salad on the Spanish buffet) and a carving station but I can’t tell you about it because the other dishes were so good I skipped it. I can get ham, turkey or prime rib in the USA or on any other cruise ship.

Dinner for us was always in the dining room. We usually ate with friends we had made on shore hikes, tender cruises or walks as well as people we had talked to at the hotel in Quito. This is a very friendly ship. You can get a table for two but there is never a shortage of parties to join in on. On two nights we were “supplied” with people to eat with. One night we were invited to join Captain Patricio and Chief Engineer Paul at dinner. We have eaten at the Captain’s Table on previous cruises but this was different. Usually it is you, the captain and about 12 other people. This time it was the aforementioned two and just us. That’s it. Keeping the conversation going was fun but the two of them were a joy to have dinner and great conversation with.

The next night was “Dinner with A Naturalist” and you get to join your favorite of the naturalists who lead our tours each day and have dinner with them. We we joined by one of our favorites (they all are really), Juan Carlos. A few minutes after Juan Carlos sat down, a gentlemen asked if he could join the three of us…Fausto. Fausto is the head of all operations for Celebrity in the Galapagos and that was a SUPERB dinner. We learned so much about both of them but also about all the things Celebrity is doing in the islands.

So the dinners were pretty much three courses; appetizer, entrée and dessert. For long-time Celebrity cruisers Flora even has the “left hand side of the menu” with all the standard fare (shrimp cocktail, steak, salmon, chicken, onion soup, etc.) but we never ordered from that side. We did overhear (at an adjacent table) people saying, “I am sure glad they have this side of the menu and we don’t have to eat the weird food.” Boy did they miss out. I love the “weird food.” So we have decided that what people were complaining about on Cruise Critic were the non-adventurous eaters.

Today as I was writing this I also realized I have done something on this cruise I have never done before…eaten fish every day. Sometimes twice a day. There are so many amazing ceviches, fish entrées, fish salads that I could not pass them up. And all (except the salmon on the right hand side of the menu) were done in an Ecuadorian style. That was it for me.

This style is also a lot lighter and healthier than our usual cruise fare. We leave the table feeling full but not stuffed. The food is healthier and more fish and vegetable based. This is how I try and cook at home and the tastes were fabulous. Ecuadorian sauces rock.

And the desserts (especially with Ecuadorian chocolate) are not to be missed. WOW!

One other very special thing happened last night (Day 6). On the afternoon before Kathleen and I were outside the dining room looking at the menu for that night. I was kind of sad because nothing looked totally Ecuadorian and/or interesting (I ended up having an amazing scorpion fish) when the Maitre d’ walked up and heard me complaining that there was no Ecuadorian options. He said if I really wanted to try some Ecuadorian food, he could make it happen. We thought nothing of it and I enjoyed dinner that night. The next night we were with our friends Jamie and Katherine and the waiter said he had a special surprise for me.

The chef had put an Ecuadorian appetizer on the menu for that night. But when we ordered I told our waiter how much I loved octopus (as did our dining companions) so all of a sudden we had a big octopus salad full of avocado and the amazing tomatoes we have been having all week. It was awesome.

But then when we ordered our entrées, he brought them (octopus and spaghetti with a beer-achiote sauce)…but then also brought…Sango! This is a dish we were told that is cooked in every Ecuadorian home. It is a fish stew with a base of plantains and rice. I cannot begin to tell you how awesome it was. It had shrimp, scallops, squid, cod and octopus (I have had octopus six times on this ship so I am VERY happy). Kathleen was not thrilled because it has shellfish so she couldn’t eat it but Jamie (our dining companion from Devon, UK—who loves beer, F-1 and futbol) and I loved it and between us we devoured two big serving plates. We were so much in a hurry to eat it I forgot to take a pic. But I did get the octopus salad.

Do I have any criticisms of the food? Just one. In the morning some of the items on the buffet that are meant to be hot, aren’t. At least by the time they got to the table. That’s why I have an omelet every morning because I can be sure it will get there hot. The potatoes, mushrooms, etc. that should be hot are often not. Other than that it was my kind of food. Lighter, healthier but delicious.

And I almost forgot one of our favorite food things on board. When you come back (twice a day) from your off ship hike, walk, Zodiac ride, when you get off the Zodiac and take off your life jacket, check in, get your cold towel to cool off and go up some stairs there are nibbles. Lots of nibbles. Usually little sandwiches but sometimes desserts too. One day there was even a bread snack with three kinds of bread (an incredible vegetable-topped focaccia) with almost perfect Spanish olive oil and Italian balsamic. I ate all of mine and Kathleen’s too. I included some pics of what you get when you walk back on. So much more than the lemonade or hot chocolate on most Celebrity ships.

Below are some pics from our meals. Check out the paella. Those prawns were bigger than my forearm! And delicious. Yum!

 

 

 

The Galapagos and Flora-Day 1: The story of the Grumpy Git

On By Jim BellomoIn Uncategorized8 Comments

First, if you are reading this in an e-mail, please do yourself a favor and click on the headline and read it in a web browser. The photos look better and the formatting is the way I intended you to see it. If I could figure out a way to get WordPress to just send you a link and not the complete post I would.

This was written starting on Sunday but I haven’t been able to get it out until today (Tuesday). They keep us very busy. So it looks like I will be about two days behind from here on in.

It’s Sunday morning and I am going to start this post now while I have a few minutes. We are waiting in our Quito hotel lobby for our charter flight from Quito to Baltra where we will tender (Zodiac) out to Flora for our Galapagos adventure.

This morning we had to have our checked bags in the hall outside our hotel rooms by 8:00 and we went down for our health screening at 7:45. We had been told it was just an antigen (spit) test but it turned out to be a full PCR, up the nose, test. Our first one (if you can believe that) and now I get what everyone complains about. Not that bad but still brought a tear to my eye. Breakfast in the hotel did not live up to the two previous meals but I guess the chef has to sleep sometime and leave the food in the hands of his assistants…who kind of failed. It was just “fine” with our first cup of coffee being cold, my “Everything” omelette having nothing in it and no jam for the rolls and croissants but it was still satisfying and should get us through until we have a box lunch (I am assuming) on the plane…which we are off to in about 10 minutes.

Eight hours later

We are onboard and have been VERY busy. At this point, I am being what my friend Paul would call a “grumpy git.” I get that when things are off from what I expected, I find that I forgot something, or something does not go the way I had planned. Hopefully I will get over it.

Ten hours later

It is now 3:45 am and I am not over it. In fact, this is the worst night I have ever spent on a cruise ship or maybe on vacation, in my life. I have been awake since 1:30 am (went to bed around 10:00). I am sitting in a lounge on the top deck all the way forward. For a variety of reasons I am not able to sleep. Noisy stateroom, noisy ship. Horrible pillows–my neck aches. Ship is rocking and rolling. I sat in bed for more than two hours trying to get back to sleep before I just got the hell out of there and let Kathleen sleep.

For those of us who have this sleep affliction (although I have slept GREAT every night since we left home) of waking up and not being able to get back to sleep, this is NOT the ship to do it on. On most ships if I can’t sleep, I can get up and go find a quiet place to sit and do stuff like this (writing or working with my pics). But on Flora that is impossible. This tiny lounge at the front of deck seven is the only place I could find. All the public areas on deck four are in pitch black darkness with doors closed. I have not seen a crew member anyplace. This is one of the benefits/problems with a small ship I guess. But…this lounge sucks because it is playing what I call thump-thump (electronic music) at a volume level that is not helping my massive headache. Much of my grumpiness now is due to my lack of sleep and inability to find someplace to just sit and write that is quiet and warm. Where I am is cold and noisy. the ship is really rocking and being on the top deck all the way forward is not a good place to be so I will have to go down and see if I can find someplace better.

I found a spot on deck three. The chairs are really uncomfortable but at least the music is better and not as loud. So let me explain where things went wrong.

We did leave the hotel right on time and made it to the airport. This is where I have to add that if you don’t like waiting in lines, producing document after document then this cruise (at least for the next few months until the world returns to more normal times) is maybe not for you. I had to show my passport and other docs at least five times yesterday. That doesn’t sound like a lot but it does mean that I usually had to stand in a fairly long line to do it. I have also filled out at least four forms (that could easily have been sent to me as PDFs way before the cruise for me to fill out and bring with me).

(Note from Kathleen – BRING AT LEAST ONE PEN – YOU ARE GOING TO NEED THEM!) Some of those were health forms, others for all kinds of things like one promising to not do anything bad I while I am in the islands (future Flora cruisers should note here that you can bring absolutely no food to the islands. That includes pre-packaged granola bars—the penalties are pretty big so leave everything edible at the hotel or on the plane).

I think things really headed downhill when we got in the Zodiacs to head out to the ship. I am trying very hard to find a way to phrase this that does not sound like I am whining or don’t understand how the crew feels but I can’t, so I will just tell it as I see it. Please know that since you aren’t on the first cruise back like we are, hopefully some of this will not happen to you if you decided to do this cruise. But I digress.

The airport greeter

When we got off the plane as we headed into the terminal we saw our first Galapagos animal–an iguana waiting to meet us. Actually saw two. Once in the airport they had a really nice lounge ready for us to wait in until they could call us to take a short bus ride to the Zodiacs. I was all smiles. But this is where things started bothering me. I am not sure what we did or who we offended but somehow we always seem to be called last for every line. The cruise director came into the lounge and started calling numbers for people to board the bus and went through the all of deck five including the stateroom numbers on both sides of ours without mentioning ours. Then she did half of deck six. Then we were finally called in the next to last group. This played out poorly a little later on.

Since this was the first ship back post-pandemic the crew led by our gung-ho hotel director was really trying to celebrate the reopening. I totally get that. But that meant they wanted each of the Zodiacs to arrive by itself so the 12 or so people on board could be escorted into this hallway on deck 3 where they blew horns and danced and chanted about how happy they were to have guests back on board. If it had been any other circumstances, I would have thought it was great but to make sure that each Zodiac had group had a separate welcome, they delayed each one out in the water for almost 40 minutes.

What should have been a five minute ride to the ship (we were even told it would take about five minutes—we could see the ship) turned into a thirty+ minute ride. We were not prepared for that. No sunscreen, no hats, no water. They did try and make it interesting by taking us near the coast where we could see some of the local birds (pelicans, blue-footed boobies and a few others) but the entire time we were baking in the sun. I personally was totally frustrated because here we were seeing all these great birds and my camera was in my camera bag and I could not get to it. I had my phone with me but the photos I got with it did NOT make me happy at all.

After baking in the sun for all that time we finally got on board the ship around 4:00 and went through the welcome by the crew, were able to pick our carry-ons back up (they had been sprayed with disinfectant) and then the scheduling started. I tried to find a way to describe it but I think it is better to just show you the schedule and then give you some details. I should also say that this schedule is not printed anyplace on paper. If you don’t have a phone/tablet/laptop, you are out of luck. Again, another COVID thing? Not sure. Here’s the schedule for day one.

Let’s start with the first item. Because we were driven around baking in the hot sun on the Zodiac for almost 40 minutes (we knew this was what was occurring because our Zodiac driver kept radioing the ship to ask if he could bring us on board) we didn’t arrive in time to get anything to eat. So at this point it was the snack they gave us on the plane that was going to hold us until dinner which was supposed to be at 7:15.

As you can see there was a “mandatory meeting” at 5:00. So between when we finally got on board and got to our stateroom it was almost 4:20. In that time between getting on board and the meeting at 5:00 pm we are supposed to do the following: 1) Go to our stateroom, get settled and meet our stateroom attendant so they could explain how the room amenities work (we still have not met that person as of Monday morning). 2) Go to deck seven to attend the new post-COVID muster drill where we sat at a table with a naturalist (just the two of us) and had our life jackets explained to us. 3) Then go back to the stateroom and unpack and sometime before 5:00 find time to get something to eat. I have a video tour of the stateroom but I will have to publish it later. My laptop battery is almost gone. 

We were able to do most of that (other than eat) by 5:00 but just barely. So at 5:00 pm when the “mandatory” meeting was supposed to take place we are sitting in the Discovery Lounge ready to hear all the important stuff they needed to tell us. Strangely enough, we were sitting there alone. People started straggling in about 5:10 or so and the actual meeting we were there for did not start until pretty close to 5:30.

As you can see from the schedule this meeting was supposed to transition (in the same place) into a “snorkel safety briefing,” and it did. Then our hotel director (a very nice and well meaning guy) had another surprise planned for everyone. We stopped the meeting and went up to deck seven (top deck) so that we could sail away from where Flora had been anchored. The other Celebrity ship in the Galapagos (Expedition‚ which is not sailing yet) was off our port side and many of her crew were standing outside waving to us while the ship’s horn went off and the crew on the Expedition shot some water in the air from hoses on their back deck.

After that it was time to distribute the snorkeling gear so we went back to our stateroom to wait for them to call us down to pick it up. Again, we are one of the last staterooms called. But eventually I did go down and get my wetsuit, snorkel, mask, flippers and small life vest. You get to leave much of this stuff (other than the snorkel and mask) in a big mesh bag near where you get on the Zodiacs so that’s a good thing. Kathleen has decided that she is not going to attempt snorkeling so she didn’t get any gear. I am still not sure I want to snorkel either but I thought I better get the gear anyway, just in case. More about that tomorrow.

This might be a good place for me to talk about logistics. I like to be organized when I travel. I like things to be planned. When I don’t know how something is going to go, I worry. Right now  I am sitting here typing this and I am worried about what is going to happen at 8:45 am this morning. I guess I will find out (and I did…it went fine).

Hopefully I will feel better about this after I have done it and things will just come together but I am not at this point holding out a lot of hope. You will have to come back later or tomorrow to see how I manage all of this. I know I will be surprised. Of course the way I am feeling right now, I may not go at all.

Back to the schedule. After I got my snorkel gear squared away, it was 7:05 so we had missed the Captain’s Welcome Aboard Toast but we still needed to get to the excursion briefing. These briefings take place every evening. The cruise director (who is also a naturalist) explains what excursions are available the next day, their degree of difficulty and what we can expect to see. Then when she is done, you see one of the other naturalists and sign up for the ones you want to do. You sign up for one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Here is tomorrow’s schedule:

We have chosen to do Option 3 in the morning and in the afternoon Kathleen is doing Option 2 and I am doing Option 1.

So we again, since it is 7:05, think we are late (unavoidable since we weren’t called to get snorkel gear until 6:45). But we get to the Discovery Lounge to find we are almost alone again. There is an entertainer playing an out-of-tune piano loudly so we sit down to wait. Lo and behold we find out that we have not missed the Captain’s Toast…it still hasn’t happened yet. It is now around 7:20. They start the toasting. The captain (a very nice fellow) makes a nice toast and attempts to get us all to do the wave with our glasses held high. I am hungry, tired and have a headache and I am not in the mood. I just want to get this over with and eat dinner and go to bed. But no! Not only is the captain making a toast so is someone from corporate and so is the hotel director who tells us a long story which at any other time I would probably been moved by. Right then, I just wanted to be moved along.

Finally at around 7:40 we get to the briefing. The cruise director does an excellent job and we find out all about what we will be doing the next day (yesterday). We then get in line and sign up for what we want to do and finally it is time for dinner. At 8:00 pm (approximately). The last time we ate anything at this point is on the plane around noon. At home I have dinner ready at 5:00 and I can be adaptable but this is just too much.

We have dinner in the dining room (all that is available tonight). It seems very strange to sit in a ship’s dining room in shorts and sandals but that’s what we do. Most of the people there are similarly dressed but some have gone and changed. Where they are getting the clothes from is beyond me with the limitations of weight imposed for the flight from Quito to Baltra.

We sit at a socially distanced table for four (there were six chairs–more about the COVID restrictions later on) with a very nice couple (John and Laura) from Southern California. The service and food are Celebrity good (really excellent) but there are again problems with some things. No paper menus. Just like your favorite takeout joints at home, you scan a QR code with your phone. Only problem with that is we had four people at the table and I was the only one with a phone that had set up their internet account (free WiFi which you had to have to access the menu) so we had to pass my phone around. And to be honest even though I have a pretty decent phone, I have a really hard time reading menus and schedules on that size screen, even with my reading glasses on. All this does mean that I can post the URL links to the menus and you can see them.

I ordered a shrimp ceviche with avocado that was superb. My main course was listed as seafood rice but it was really seafood risotto. Lots of shrimp but no octopus (even though it was in the description). I wish I had taken a photo of it because it was beautiful but I just plain forgot. Kathleen had a beet salad and an excellent Ecuadorian  chicken dish. We both had Ecuadorian wine (she had white, I had red) and both wines were excellent. Dessert was a “buffet” of red, white and blue things because it was Independence Day. They had cupcakes and donuts and pies and ice cream, all decorated in red, white and blue. When I say it was a buffet, I mean that you could look at it but then you told your server what you wanted and they brought it to your table. Another COVID thing.

It’s almost time to go back to the stateroom and wake Kathleen and get started on what I hope will be a better day but I am not sure. So I will add a few pics at the top and see you tomorrow. Hopefully feeling better and with some amazing flora and fauna shots.

PS: Kathleen normally proofs these but she only got through half of this so I want to get this online so I am going to go with it as is. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors. One should never proof and edit their own work. More photos tomorrow. I promise.

I’m a perfect example of the grumpy, old man. I’m really good at it.  –Ned Beatty