I don’t know what sort of manna or ambrosia you get to eat where you are; I assume that, since heaven still contains most of the truly good things in life, you’re able to eat and enjoy things (and hey, Jesus ate fish after His resurrection, so why not you?). And while I realize that any earthly thing probably falls terribly short of that which you can find in heaven, I figure I might as well send you an album of what we’ve been presented with over the course of these past two weeks.
I should probably start out by mentioning that even the ‘casual’ dining room is considerably fancier than what we were ever used to on the cruises we would take. Even I concluded that we would be probably be spending more time up here than in the regular dining room; if nothing else, it’s not like we have to assemble there as a family every evening. It’s just the two of us, after all.
However, since we wouldn’t be going to the main dining room, very often, Daniel expressed regret that I wouldn’t be able to have escargot. Shows what he knew; even up here they were serving a vol au vent featuring the snails on our first night out.
I did, however, convince him to join me in the main dining room for breakfast. On the day we pulled into Aomori, if only to get himself some poached eggs. Even I got a couple, complete with asparagus and hollandaise sauce on the side.
Meanwhile, the couple sitting next to us (whose shoulders we kept looking over, because they were right by the window; they were cool about it) requested ‘a little’ additional butter for the croissant. What they got was more butter than they had croissant; all four of us got a laugh out of that.
Morning in Niigata had Daniel craving another rice omelet like the one he had in Tokyo. He tells me it’s good, but nothing like that one; which stands to reason, as this is made by an international culinary team, not local Japanese. As a result, it neither looks nor tastes like the anime-style one he’d had a few days ago. He still enjoys it, however.
Every night, the Windows Cafe has served a menu based on a certain national cuisine: French, German, Asian (? That’s a nation?), Thai (wait, isn’t that part of Asian?) and so forth. Well, on our way out from Sekaiminato, they were offering Moroccan food. To be honest, we didn’t know what to do with it, and, judging from the lack of crowds in the restaurant, neither did most of the guests. We were about to leave and head downstairs to the main dining room for once, but on our way out, found this little outdoor café that I thought had been closed during most of the trip (because it’s been so cold outside). It was still cold evening, but they did have heat lamps hanging up, so it was quite comfortable, and the food was very good. We may take advantage of the place again some time.
It’s a good thing that, while we were in Kobe’s Chinatown, we didn’t bother with the Chinese street food, otherwise we would’ve considered the dim sum in the dining room to be a redundancy.
They offered sushi with the dim sum as well, although I keep forgetting that buffet style is no good for tempura rolls. I’ve known this since our first cruise in 1999, and I never seem to really learn the lesson.
But they make an absolutely amazing dragon roll.
Among the many ethnic nights they celebrated in the Windows Café, these are the desserts from American night. I guess they don’t get any more American than a cake in the form of a flag. Didn’t have any, personally; I was always taught it was wrong to desecrate the flag like that.
For many of our days out, I’ve been including our meals in the recap of the day. I’d planned to make up for it a bit by telling you about the meal we’d gotten at the airport after we’d checked in, except… there really aren’t so many options once we’re checked in, and the ones that are (McDonald’s and 7-Eleven among them) have interminable lines. We should have gotten lunch while we were waiting instead. Another lesson learned, I guess, but not knowledge I can put to use any time soon.
And I’m sure you don’t want to hear about airplane food. Even Jerry Seinfeld denies having done a routine about that deal. So I think I’m just going to close this out, and get to work on one last letter before we board our flight.
You’ll hear from me soon enough. Until then, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck; I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 