A Relaxing Day At Sea

After going non stop from Las Vegas to Philadelphia to Dublin to London to Dover and onto the ship, we finally had a day with nothing going on. As normal on a sea day, we slept in. I’m sure we had some sort of lunch on the Lido deck, but as I mentioned, I can’t describe them all.

Our first sea day was our first formal night in the dining room and that means one thing on a cruise, lobster night. Now I really don’t eat lobster that much, but Joan does. Before we get to that, we have all of our starter courses.

Each night at dinner they bring around the bread basket. My standard order each night is a baguette and a sourdough roll. Here they are on my bread plate:

 

 

Joan and I both started this evening with the Baked Stuffed Mushrooms. There are five small mushrooms served in round dish baked with spinach, romano cheese and herbs. Here’s what it looks like. Don’t worry, the mushrooms are under there.

 

We got different second starters. Joan’s was one of her favorites. She ordered Strawberry Bisque, which is a chilled strawberry soup with fresh mint. We have both said that it really tastes like melted strawberry ice cream. I didn’t get the “in progress” shot of this dish, but they basically put down a bowl with a small bit of strawberry in the center and then pour the soup in at the table. Once they’ve finished, here’s what you get:

 

For my second starter, I again went with one of the pasta main courses served as a starter. I went with the Spaghetti Carbonara. This is spaghetti in a cream sauce tossed with bacon and parmesan cheese. Here is the small starter serving:

 

Now we move on to the main courses. Joan, of course, got the lobster. It was a broiled Maine lobster tail that was served with three jumbo black tiger shrimp, mashed potatoes and broccoli. Here it is with a little ramekin of butter for dipping:

 

 

She liked the lobster so much, she had to ask for a second tail that was of course delivered promptly. I have heard of people ordering as many as eighteen lobster tails, but I have never personally seen more than three.

As for me, as I said, I don’t eat much lobster, so I went for the prime rib. It was served with a couple of onion rings and a baked potato that they topped with sour cream. The prime rib was cooked a wonderful medium rare. The meat itself wasn’t the top tier of beef (we’ll get to that later), but it was still very good. Here’s what I had:

 

 

That was all delicious, but we of course had just a little room left for dessert. One of the great things about the first formal night is the Cherries Jubilee. Smooth vanilla ice cream, which was made even better on this cruise because it was actually gelato, served with dark cherries and flamed in cherry brandy. Here’s what we got:

 

Next time we get to spend the day in Copenhagen, Denmark and find a couple great local foods, plus another dinner on the ship.

Until next time,

Mike