Travels, Thoughts and History
Via Napoli is a new pizzeria constructed at the rear of Italy at Epcot. Their claim to fame is that they import their flour from Naples and carefully match the water used to make the dough. Linda and I tried it when I went to let Ryan into Epcot, and it was pretty authentic. The place is very loud, so I don’t think I’d go out of my way to go there, but that pizza in a different setting would be a favorite.
This weekend is the 35th annual Festival of the Masters at Downtown Disney. Linda and Ryan and I went to Paradiso 37 at Pleasure Island. (Ryan is a programming intern from England, working on iPad apps. He’s here for IAAPA.) As always, the food was really tasty, although we couldn’t get Chaz, our favorite server because they were busy. We tried a couple of new things because Ryan is a vegetarian, and I really liked the corn on the cob appetizer.
Afterwards we walked through the festival, which features 150 artists. There’s a lot of rather crude folk art, but there were also some nice things. The emphasis this year seemed to be on jewelry and art glass. Sue Archer, who painted the picture in our foyer some 25 years ago, had a booth, but I didn’t see the guy who sold us the lenticular photos last year.
They certainly had beautiful weather for the event this year, with 80 degrees and a light breeze all weekend. Of course, as a result, there were lots of people there!
For dinner I made Bacon Wrapped Scallops and Cilantro Lime Rice. That meant a trip to Whole Foods for wild caught sea scallops and uncured hikory smoked bacon. Whenever I go to Whole Foods I like to stop in at Delish New York Bakery for a cup of coffee. (I do this partly because Barnie’s is next door, and I loathe chain store coffee.) The baker here is a true artisan; she showed me photos of some of the fabulous cakes she’s made, including one that looked just like a Louis Vuitton purse—she had to paint on the frosting. Today she was getting ready for Christmas, making samples including this cute little Christmas tree cake that is $4.99. There’s a little Hanukkah cake behind her, too. It’s really great that there are still a few small businesses like this; I should work harder to patronize them.
Theme Park Design is my latest book. It’s based upon the text of my Imagineering class. I published it through createspace.com, which is a division of amazon.com. I decided to publish it because David Green’s and my previous book, Building a Better Mouse, continues to sell well, even after three years.
The margins are excellent on books published through createspace, and it’s great that amazon owns them because they do the fulfillment, and copies are even available through Ingram for distribution to conventional bookstores.
It’s been interesting to do a real book launch; I’ve never tried it before. I began by contacting the various industry blogs and trade magazines, asking if they wanted a copy, and having them drop shipped from createspace. Meanwhile, Loren is doing a press release through PR Newswire on Tuesday, and is contacting newspapers.
I also tried some advertising on google and facebook. Originally the ads linked to the createspace page (because my margin is a bit better), but after a day of poor results I changed it to the amazon page. So far, with only one more day of data, it looks like people are much more willing to buy from amazon. Building a Better Mouse is usually about number 39,000 (out of 6 million) on their site, and yesterday Theme Park Design was number 29,000. Because the ads cost between fifty cents and a dollar per click, I suspect they won’t be cost effective, but I’ll try it for a week and see. The margin on createspace is at least ten times that of conventional publishing, or it would make no sense. Still, it’s amazing how few click there are for hundreds of thousands of impressions. However, I’m limiting my budget to $20 a day, just in case.
I also set up a Theme Perks Press blog through blogspot, because the RSS feed can be connected to my amazon author’s page.
My plan is to time this book release both for IAAPA (where we plan to do a book signing) and also for the holiday shopping season. If some of the blogs release reviews before Thanksgiving that could work out well. I have a suspicion that amazon sales behave as a positive feedback loop, and that if the book could be propelled into the top 1000 it might be self-sustaining for a while.
Anyway, it will be an interesting experiment.
The Eagles played the first big concert at the new Amway Center. The event was actually rescheduled from an earlier date because Don Henley was sick. At nearly the last minute we decided to get tickets and were surprised at being able to get seats right next to the stage, although a side view.
Since it was Martin’s birthday, we took him to Shari Sushi Lounge for dinner before the show. The sushi was quite good, and the place has a nice vibe. And we were there so early that all the sushi items were $3.75. Such a deal.
The new Amway Center is bigger than the old Orena, although the major difference is lots of skyboxes and club space. There are supposed to be restaurants and bars, but these weren’t open. I don’t know if that’s because they are only for Magic games, or if they aren’t ready yet. There’s also a lot of bars on the club level that you can only get to if you have seats in that area, which is weird, since they aren’t really great seats.
For the most part the facility is quite nice, but there are a few things that need to be worked out. There were lines for the restrooms — even the men’s restroom — and the causeway to the parking garage is an obvious bottleneck. For the most part, though, it’s a fine facility.
When we went to our seats we found out why we’d been able to get them at the last minute. One of them didn’t exist! Fortunately, they knew they’d made a mistake, and the usher had replacement tickets for us, even closer. In fact we were in the second row. This was the view from our seats:
Unfortunately, there was a hyper active druggie — a middle aged woman with enormous fake boobs — next to us who continually bounced in her seat, rocking the entire row, even between songs, until we thought we were going to be sick. This was worsened by the fact that our section was a movable scaffold, rather than concrete. So, before the whole thing collapsed or she blew out a boob, for the second half we moved to the empty nose bleed section behind the stage. This was the view from our new seats:
As it turned out, they were pretty good seats, because we could watch the video, and the music wasn’t deafening (mostly). I found that watching everyone play guitar left-handed from behind the rear projection screen didn’t bother me, but the piano playing was a bit weird!
The band is really tight, and they can still hit those high notes, after almost 40(!) years. For some reason, though, they seemed to have no energy during the first half, and things really dragged. But, mysteriously (energy drinks? wink, wink), they came out after intermission completely energized, and the second half was excellent. They have about ten backup players, four different keyboard stations with at least seven keyboards, two drum sets, nine spotlight operators, at least five HD camera operators, and a mixing area that occupied the space for 100 seats. This is not a small operation. The video wall behind the band is one of those RGB LED curtains (I think) about 30 feet high and 40 feet wide. While my favorite songs are by Don Henley, the Joe Walsh numbers really got the audience excited. The country songs, performed by Glenn Frey and Tim Schmidt, seem light years away from the newer material.
The band was very generous with their time, and played for 3-1/2 hours. Definitely an excellent concert. And yet… it’s funny. I go to concerts to get to know a band. It’s the stories and interaction that make them interesting. If I want to listen to the music I have an iPhone. While they expended a great deal of effort and were generous with their time, I never really felt like they were there onstage. I suppose I’d have trouble with that, too, if I had to play the same song and go through the same patter every night for forty years.
Last week Linda’s wallet was stolen, which started the process of replacing her credit cards and IDs.
To get a new Driver’s License you now need all kinds of documentation (never mind that you’re right there in the system, picture and all).
The snag she hit was that her Social Security name was still Linda McBride, which didn’t match her license. (Remember when they assured us that Social Security numbers weren’t required, and wouldn’t be used for identification?)
So to get her name changed she needed our marriage certificate.
In looking for it, she unearthed a box of mementos from the 70s, that proved to be quite a time capsule of our college years.
Speaking of IDs, here are ours from our college days.
One of the things I found most striking was the absence of anything to do with computers. Even the tickets and itineraries for our honeymoon were hand written or typed, because travel agents and airlines worked by telephone, with pen and paper.
The only sure sign of computers were the UCLA quarterly registration cards, which were IBM punch cards generated by the university’s sole IBM 360/90 computer. These were folded up to fit in your wallet.
Remember BioRhythms? They were a popular gimmick in the 70s, and there were machines that would print yours for any date you wanted. But even the biorhythm cards would have been generated by a kiosk with dedicated electronics (or perhaps even mechanics) to generate the graphs. Here are Linda’s and my biorhythms for our wedding day. The prospects for sex look pretty bleak.
The saddest thing I found was this page from my 1973 senior yearbook. Each senior got to design his own page (actually, as editor, I had to design the whole book, but that’s another story). I decided to do a collage of things that were meaningful to me. There in the center is my mint copy of Spiderman Number 1, which is worth over a quarter million dollars. Unfortunately, the next year I sold it for about ten bucks.
Anyway, the walk down memory lane was fun. I can’t say youth is wasted on the young; those were good times, too.
Today we went to St. Petersburg for a book fair, to hear a presentation by Michael Connelly, whose latest book, Reversal, is number one on the bestseller lists this week. He signed my copy, and also a small chapbook he’d sent me for a picture I posted on his Facebook site. His presentation was well attended with at least 500 people there. After browsing the fair we took a scenic drive down to Sarasota and then returned to St. Pete for dinner at a restaurant we hadn’t been to before, Chateau France.
It was really delightful, and we felt bad that we were the only ones in the place for most of the meal. Eventually, two other tables were seated. The restaurant is in a charming house built in 1905. In many ways it reminded us of Linda’s mother’s house. They’ve been in business for fourteen years, and the chef is from Nice. He is particularly adept at souffles, and the ones we had were easily the best we’ve encountered, even including the one we reminisce about from Marrakesh, twenty five-years years ago.
But the highlight of the meal was the wine. When the one I ordered wasn’t available, they offered us one that wasn’t on the list, at about 30% of the normal price: a pristine bottle of 1959 Gevrey-Chambertin from Louis Trapet Pere & Fils. It was the finest Burgundy we’ve had from a restaurant wine list in several years. It’s also the first bottle I’ve had that came packed in an individual wooden case lined in straw. It was one of those magical bottles of Burgundy that evolved for two hours: fruity and earthy, with pronounced favors of red berries, flowers, leather, tar, coffee and much more.
All in all, a delightful evening, and I’m sure we’ll return.
Tonight we had dinner at Thai Blossom in Winter Garden, a restaurant in the Edgewater Hotel around the corner from The Chef’s Table. The Thai food was mostly quite good, and the place was packed by the time we left. Our wine was opened by the owner, who then left to get ready to be in the show playing across the street at the Garden Theatre.
After dinner we listened to the jazz band that plays on the fourth Friday of every month, then strolled to the theatre and chatted with Becky Stafford, its president, who is the mother of a boy Dani performed with at Trinity.
Then we went in to see the play, a farce called Noises Off. It was entertaining, at times frenetic, but never quite the uproarious comedy intended. It’s divided into three acts, each of which contains the same play-within-a-play. In the first act it is being rehearsed by a band of fairly inept actors. In the second act the set is reversed, and we watch them fight backstage during a performance. In the final act things are flipped back around, but the production comes completely unglued. Good fun.
Since it won Scott Joseph’s readers’ poll of best hamburger in Orlando, Tommy and I decided to check out Hamburger Mary’s downtown on Church Street. While the rest of Church Street is still in the early stages of recovering from its demise in the 1990s, Hamburger Mary’s was certainly doing a brisk business. We both had the Barbra-Q Bacon Cheeseburger, and I have to say it probably is the best burger in town: perfectly cooked, with a tasty balance of sauce and a good bun. I would have preferred my bun toasted and the bacon a bit less durable, but I’d give it a 9 out of 10.
Tommy couldn’t resist the deep fried Twinkie for dessert, which actually wasn’t as strange as I was expecting — basically a creme-filled donut.
I wouldn’t say we’re thick, but even though the place’s slogan is “Eat, drink and be Mary,” it wasn’t until the check showed up in a high heeled shoe that we figured out the transvestite theme.
We loaded up three cases of empty wine bottles and took them up to one of our favorite restaurants, The Chef’s Table at the Edgewater Hotel in Winter Garden. They’re going to use them to decorate their new dining room. These bottles ranged from the 1950s through 1970s, and included a lot of wines I wish I could drink again! Even with the donation, we’ve still got a full shelf of collectible old ones, dating back to the 1920s. I wish those two 1947 Cheval Blancs still had wine in them!
While we were up there we had a very tasty lunch at the Winter Garden Pizza Company, a place we hadn’t tried before. They definitely have some of the better pizza in town, and their buffalo chicken strips were good, too. The place was much larger than I thought, and was packed.
Afterward, we hurried home so Linda could take delivery of her new treadmill, which has much higher torture settings than the old one.
It’s been more than a couple of years since we’ve been to Del Frisco’s, and it was near the Shakespeare Center, so we decided to have an early dinner there on Friday. Since our last visit they’ve completed the seamless connection of two different buildings, and created a new, large entry hall between them.
I still think Del Frisco’s is the best steakhouse in Orlando, even with the explosion of competitors in recent years. The difference is that red-hot metal plate that lets you finish cooking your sliced prime strip steak any way you like (and the butter all over it doesn’t hurt, either). The spinach, sauteed onions, and house salad are really better than the other steakhouses’ also. It’s not a low-cal place, and it’s even more expensive than Morton’s, but when you want the best steak, it’s the place to go.
The 39 Steps is a comedic version of the classic Alfred Hitchcock film. It combines the original (fairly inane) plot with zany action made even zanier by the fact that four people have to play all the roles. It becomes increasingly manic, and by the end some of the characters are having conversations with themselves. Monty Python meets Alfred Hitchcock is a fairly good description. One fun aspect of the play was trying to find all the references to Hitchcock’s other films (in the scene at right, he’s about to climb through the “Rear Window”). It was quite amusing, although perhaps not quite as gut-bustingly hysterical as claimed.
Turn your back for just a minute and the library is overrun with books again. Whilst looking for a couple of misplaced ones I purged a hundred or so from the cupboards (I think they reproduce faster in the dark). Most of these will go to Windermere Prep, I guess.
This is the first year for a new event at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. It’s called First Bites, and it gives you the opportunity to sample some of the food and wine that will be on the promenade, but in the air conditioned comfort of the seldom-used Wonders of Life pavilion.
I can’t say I really recommend this event. At $200 a head (thank God we didn’t pay that) it’s very overpriced. There were a dozen foods, a few of which were very good, a few of which were impossible to eat, even with table seating. Particularly indestructible were the grilled bread served with several dishes, and the Korean beef. There were also a dozen wines, but the only truly good one was the Chateau Ste. Michelle Cabernet Sauvignon that was only poured as part of a seminar.
Probably the single best food item was the tiny white chocolate pumpkin truffle, which was served during the cooking seminar. So the two best items won’t even be available to Food and Wine Festival guests.
The “ambiance” of Wonders of Life is also questionable. It’s basically an abandoned attraction that has been repurposed with tables and chairs, but the bright spotlights pointed this way and that don’t really create a pleasant environment.
I felt sorry for the four piece jazz combo that played to an empty seating area for an hour. The event came to a sudden end at 8:45, when we were driven from the building by the deafening and talentless Taylor Dayne.
Tasty but not at all spicy. The Korean beef dish had a wonderful spicy sauce, but the beef was inedible.
Like several of the hot dishes, it was a bit startling that the underlying noodles were chilled, but I really liked them. Some said the fish sauce they were made with was too salty.
That’s chicken soup to the rest of us. The green olives in it were delicious, not overpowering.
Basically mashed potatoes on top of mixed seafood. This is a large, filling dish, and is probably the smartest buy out on the promenade.
This had way too much sauce, but the elements were very tasty. The Australian lamb served at the same table was okay, but another of those hot dishes served on top of jarringly cold starches.
Today marks the last day of Orlando Magical Dining Month (although last night was our last foray, since tonight we’re going to “First Bites,” the opening event in the Epcot Food and Wine Festival). During September, a wide array of Orlando restaurants offered a special three course dinner for $30. At some of them it was quite a deal. Although we were out of town for most of the month, we did have a chance to try Morton’s, Nine 18, Big Fin, The Boheme and Ocean Prime. (We also went to Everglades for a wine dinner and Season’s 52 for lunch, but not as part of this event.) We enjoyed all of them, but Big Fin (the only one new to us) is the place that sticks in our memory. We liked the casual atmosphere, good food with a Cajun twist, and friendly service.
Our Wine Syndicate group met Saturday at the Bull & Bear in the Waldorf Astoria. It was one of our best tastings ever, focusing on the 1961 Bordeaux vintage, perhaps the best of the century. The two vintages of Chateau Haut Brion were the overwhelming favorites, with the 1961 Haut Brion widely being awarded 100 points and scoring a unanimous first place. I think that’s the first time that’s ever happened. The chef really rose to the occasion, preparing a tasting menu that outdid the fancy Gordon Ramsay restaurants we recently visited in London. Quite a surprise, coming from a steakhouse!
The Wines:
1966 Ch Pichon Lalande,
1966 Ch Montrose,
1961 Ch Haut Brion,
1962 Ch Pichon Baron,
1961 Ch Lynch Bages,
1962 Ch Margaux,
1961 Ch Lafite (tenth),
1961 Ch Mouton Rothschild,
1966 Ch Haut Brion
Martin and I (Linda has a cold) went to the periodic Vine & Dine event at the Everglades restaurant at the Rosen. They always do a nice job at these events, which allow the chef to experiment outside of his normal menu. I like the venue, because the group of about forty guests is divided into four or five long tables, which allows you to meet some other wine and food enthusiasts, but avoids the giant round table syndrome that bogs down a lot of social events. Wines were provided by Southern Wine & Spirits, and consisted of a refreshing Elderflower champagne cocktail (made with Proseco, elderflower liqueur and a twist of lemon), a very good Chilean Chardonnay, a Sardinian Vermentino, Argentine Malbec and a Moscato d’Asti Proseco. The food was themed after the four seasons: asparagus, shellfish, pheasant, snow eggs. The dessert of snow eggs was the best; they are balls of meringue that have been poached rather than baked, served with a delicious and complex Creme Anglaise. A fun event. The next one is on my birthday.
After the always superb lunch at Jean Georges (perhaps my favorite restaurant in the world), we strolled down Broadway, which becomes a giant flea market closed to traffic on Saturdays. Then, in the evening, on the spur of the moment, we went to the revival of La Cage Aux Folles starring Kelsey Grammer. It was fun, as always, but I wasn’t sure it deserved its Tonys; I couldn’t help thinking that parts of the Trinity High School production had been better!
For dinner we walked to Hell’s Kitchen and had an nice French meal in the darkly romantic and jazzy Chez Josephine‘s, with live piano and trumpet jazz. Occasionally a patron would play a set; an elderly black woman really impressed with her sultry voice and lightning riffs.
Sunday morning our three-week adventure came to an end, with Dani winging her way back to Chicago and Linda and I headed back to Orlando.
When we saw The Addams Family in Chicago during its test run, the songs were good, but the show was pretty poor. So poor we couldn’t imagine how it made it to Broadway (admittedly we saw it when its star, Nathan Lane was out sick). So, gluttons for punishment, we decided to see it on Broadway. I purchased tickets early enough that even though the theatre was sold out, we had front row seats.
From the first note it was clear that the entire show had been reworked. The first act was completely rewritten, with lame numbers cut, and an almost entirely new book. A new plot (one that actually made sense) had replaced much of the old, with The Addams Family now aware that they are strange, and attempting to be normal for one night (and failing miserably, of course). The songs mostly remained. The audience loved it, and certainly we loved the first act. Less work had been done on the second act, so the show only ended up being good, not great, but it was an amazing improvement. And Nathan Lane is indeed a comedic genius.
Afterward we went to our traditional post-theatre dinner at Sardi’s, which never changes.
I’m impressed with our hotel, The Michelangelo.
A large hallway connects the bedroom and living room.
It’s the nicest we’ve stayed at in the theatre district, with upscale furnishings in the lobby and rooms, and a very spacious one bedroom suite at a reasonable price. It’s just off 7th Avenue at 51st street, so an easy walk to all the theatres and to Columbus Circle for our lunch at Jean Georges.
Just as the sun began to rise we entered New York harbor and a tug boat escorted us past the Statue of Liberty. By 7AM we were docked in Brooklyn. After clearing out of our cabin, we breakfasted in the dining room (for the first time) and then spent a couple of pleasant hours reading and waiting for our disembarkation time in the Skywalker Lounge on deck 16. Oddly, we had the place to ourselves, even though it afforded the best view in all of New York, from a movable high rise that would be there for only ten hours!
This is a photo taken with the iPhone 4 camera, as were about half the photos in this journal. What a terrific upgrade it is.
On the large Princess ships you don’t want a cabin below Baha deck, because Caribe and Dolphin balconies stick out progressively farther, so there’s no shade and no cover from the rain.
If you have two cabins, you want them on opposite sides of the ship, for both views, but if you have only one, you want it on the starboard (right) side during an east to west voyage, because that’s where the view is. In any event, you want your cabin toward the front, where there is much less vibration.
The large Princess ships offer two cover charge restaurants in addition to the dining rooms: Sabatini’s and The Crown Grill. Consider the cover charge restaurants as a way to get away from the commotion of the dining room. You’re not going to get a great steak at Crown Grill (in fact, the lamb carpaccio and mussels are the highlights) and you’re not going to get great Italian food at Sabatini’s (the Fetuccine Alfredo in the dining room is much better). While the dining room food is definitely middle brow, it’s often just as good as at these cover charge restaurants. But the dining room can be noisy, and the cover charge restaurants offer a respite. On the other hand, making a late reservation in the dining room — say 8 or even 8:30 works just about as well, at no extra cost. Still it’s worth trying the cover charge restaurants at least once each.
A transatlantic cruise from east to west lets you take advantage of the time change. Every day or two you get an extra hour, which makes early morning shore excursions a lot easier to handle.
We awoke to find our ship had somehow managed to either back into or turn around in The Narrows that fronts State Street, the main street of St. John’s, and North America’s oldest commercial street. One of the oddest things about St. Johns is that it’s 30 minutes off from the rest of the world. The clocks here are one and a half hours ahead of east coast time.
Our five hour shore excursion wasn’t particularly well selected, with two hours on a bus and two hours on a small boat in nine foot seas to spend ten minutes looking at puffins from a hundred yards away.
Their activity was interesting, though. They seem to spend most of the day trying to fake out the seagulls running interference at the entrances to their burrows. The gulls make a living by stealing fish from the puffins before they can carry it down their five foot deep tunnels to feed their chick.
On the way back to St. John’s we made two very brief stops, one at pretty Petty Harbour, where a stream competes with the surf for governance of the tiny boat harbor, the other at Point Spear, easternmost place in North America. At Point Spear there is a lighthouse that has been tended by the same family for almost 200 years, and also the remains of a WWII artillery bunker.
Back at St. John’s we had an excellent late lunch at Bianca’s, a French restaurant that reminded us how mediocre the food has been for the past ten days!
Then it was time to squeeze our way back through The Narrows and out into the North Atlantic, where we watched the pilot take his life in his hands leaping from The Crown Princess to his tiny boat being tossed in twelve foot seas.
This voyage includes many days at sea. With six days between Greenland and New York, and only one port in between, we’re in no great hurry, cruising along at 15 knots. The weather has been pleasant, with billowing clouds like those in a water color painting, and the only night that really required sea legs was the first one out of Quaqortoq, when the seas were fifteen feet and the spray occasionally hit our deck nine balcony. It didn’t dissuade the ballroom dancers, though, who maintained their cha-chas; we tried it on a calmer night and still found it challenging.
Dani has spent much of her time reading, and has exhausted the supply of books she brought with her. She’s also making a friendship bracelet, which takes a lot more time than you’d think. She’s taken advantage of the flock of on-board paparazzi to have some nice portraits taken.
Linda spends her mornings on the treadmill in the gym, where she works off 750 calories, the equivalent of about five minutes in the dining room. She spends her evenings listening to Eric Stone, the piano player and singer in Crooner’s bar. He was in the original cast of A Chorus Line on Broadway, and his show each night packs in several hours of Broadway tunes (which he performs as mini-shows including commentary and him singing all the parts) and trivia games. She’s also the only gambler among us. She’s experimenting with ways to alter the rate at which you lose money in the casino.
I’ve spent the week with a cold, so other than lunches and dinners and a few hours in Greenland, I haven’t done much. It was an expensive struggle to keep up with the students in my writing classes during the dense cloud cover before we reached Greenland. Weather had a much more deleterious effect on the Internet than did the extreme northern latitude. I’ve been doing a bit of reading, but mostly from saved Instapaper articles on my iPhone. Also Kindl books on the iPad, but the iPad has been less useful than expected. In Evanston it was with me everywhere in the condo, but here on the ship, where it takes several minutes to log in to the Internet and then costs thirty-five cents a minute to stay connected, it’s no longer the instantaneous reference and information tool that makes it valuable. So I’ve mostly used Linda’s laptop because I can quickly open many browser windows at once, load them, and then log off.
I’m baffled by the mediocrity on-board the middle-brow cruise lines such as Princess. It’s not from a lack of quality ingredients: the ships hold produces amazingly fresh (albeit often previously frozen) lobster tails, lamb chops, beef, fruits and vegetables through every day of a two-week cruise. And it’s not due to a lack of talent on board: the kitchen staff is capable of producing a few (very few) truly good dishes, when given the proper recipes. No, the problem seems to be an intentional decision by the corporate office in California to produce weird food. Here are a few of the more obvious examples:
Everywhere Else:
Corn tortilla, fish, onions, cilantro, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, cheese.
On Princess:
Flour tortilla containing fish atop a bowl of flavorless kraut-like substance and corn niblets.
Everywhere Else:
Shrimp with a zesty marinara sauce (exactly how it’s described on the Princess menu) on a bed of linguini.
On Princess:
Shrimp coated with bland cream of tomato soup next to bland white rice.
Everywhere Else:
Minestrone soup with grains of pasta
On Princess:
A cross between Tuscan bean soup and enchilada sauce.
Everywhere Else:
Slices of ham, turkey and Swiss cheese on bread, battered and deep fried, served with jam.
On Princess:
Slices of ham and turkey (or possibly chicken) on French toast, served with shrimp sauce (WTF?!)
In each of these cases, the normal ingredients were readily available, and often appeared in other dishes. For example, cilantro, usually a Mexican staple, kept showing up in the Italian food.
And there are a few noteworthy dishes (rare enough to list here, in their entirety): the lamb carpaccio at Crown Grill, Mussels in garlic broth at Crown Grill, the brown butter at Sabatini’s, guacamole and tortilla chips in the dining room, and the chocolate and almond croissants at The International Cafe (when fresh — in fact, all the baked goods are well made, just bland.)
It’s true that the Executive Chef is talentless. The foie gras pate he spent the day making for the chef’s table dinner was nothing so much as baby food. But this food is constant across the entire cruise line. In short, they’re making it this way on purpose. Why that is, baffles me.
You can’t blame it on the international crew, or international tastes. The line is American owned, managed and the vast majority of passengers are Americans. They know what goes on a hamburger or hot dog. Just watch them, up at the grill by the pool looking for onions, pickle relish and French’s mustard. They won’t find them. Just mayonnaise, ketchup and Dijon. Perhaps the Princess management needs to get out more, and visit some exotic restaurants. Like Red Lobster and McDonald’s.
Greenland is a land of small towns, and this one’s population is about the same as the cruise ship’s. It was pretty funny watching 3000 passengers try to fit into the town’s only gift shop.
That dirty snow you see in the gap is the beginning of the polar ice cap. Check it out before it melts.
We traveled up a fjord in Greenland and found this ice field.
Cruising off the coast off Greenland we spotted several things: A large iceberg, whales (actually didn’t see these, but heard reports), and a bright object in the sky; we hear it’s called the sun.
I liked this juxtaposition of Iceberg and its mortal enemy, Hot Tub:
Ahhh… nothing like fresh caught iceberg:
We had an interesting experience tonight after a quiet day at sea. The Crown Princess Chef’s table is a dinner for twelve offered three times during the cruise. It begins with a tour of the kitchen conducted by the ship’s food and beverage director and the head chef.
There are eleven kitchens on The Crown Princess, including five massive ones. We suited up in white smocks and washed our hands, then toured the various prep stations. Considering the over 500 employees involved in food and beverage service, the environment was surprisingly calm, even though it was dinner time. In an out of the way corner of the kitchen we had Heidseck Champagne and several appetizer courses (lobster cocktail, quiche, foie gras, caviar), then adjourned to a table in the dinning room for carpaccio, lobster risotto, a main course of veal shank, beef and lobster tails, cheese, panecotta and cookies. Yes, there was a lot of food! Also Ferrari Carano Chardonnay, Louis Latour Pouilly Fuisse, and a homemade Limoncello.
The event illustrated what Princess does well and does poorly. Admittedly we are spoiled, having done chef’s tables around the world, and admittedly our companions were very impressed with the food, one couple declaring it was better than they’d had at high end restaurants in Paris. But let’s face it, it was, in Dani’s words, “Outback tries to do a chef’s table.” The ingredients are good, aside from the fact that they all have to have been frozen, but flavors never come together to create anything more than the sum of the individual components. Yet the service was gracious, almost to the point of being ingratiating, and they gave the ladies roses, very expensive cookbooks, and even took couple and group portraits which they printed and distributed at the end of the meal. On the whole a very interesting, if not culinary, experience.
It looks like this is the closest we’re going to get to Iceland. Although we can’t really detect it on the ship, apparently there is a 35 knot wind blowing across the harbor entrance, which makes it impossible to dock. So another port scratched off the itinerary.
Years ago we sailed on the Norway (once the liner The France) and they did complete Broadway shows in their theatre. That’s probably the last time I really enjoyed a cruise ships entertainment program. Usually I just skip it. Linda tried one show on this ship and came to the same conclusion.
But this ship did have a lounge pianist, Eric Stone, who was in the original cast of A Chorus Line, and he was very good. Linda spent every night there. If you asked for a Broadway tune he would do a ten minute version of the whole show, with explanations of the plot!
A highlight of this cruise was that John Maxtone-Graham was on board, and delivered five very entertaining lectures about the history of ocean liners. I made sure not to miss any of those.
Somewhere in the North Atlantic. 15 foot swells, 35 knot gusts, but it’s a big ship, so not too rocky. Running late because the storm kept us in dull Dublin 24 hours extra, missing Belfast completely. Scheduled to get into Reyjavik late, at 2pm tomorrow, but hopefully enough time for our 6 hour tour.
