Text 2100, 90 rader
Skriven 2006-06-14 12:15:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: cruise part 3 806
=========================
The Bahamian sun came in too early through our porthole
(bigger rooms get a window). There are two choices for
breakfast.

The Windjammer on deck 11 has a buffet, so we decided to
try that at 7 am-ish.

An odd collection of disparate dishes served at stations
with cute names like "Breakfast Central" for cold cereal
and "Jade" for congee and fried rice.

Hash is one of my favorite breakfast foods along with
black pudding (Europe), scrapple (North America), and
dim sum (Asia); accordingly I had a big serving of it -
turned out to be decent ground corned beef and almost raw
diced potatoes. Result being I could take a forkful of
the stuff and shake it, and most of the potatoes would
come out.

I love smoked salmon, so I had some of that.

Two varieties of sausages - pork, sort of like Smithfield
or Jamestown, only greasier, and turkey, fatless, tasteless,
and textureless, as is all turkey sausage.

Carol's a sucker for biscuits and gravy, and she had that.
Seemed to enjoy it.

Fried rice and sauteed vegetables from Jade were kind of
nasty - it looked as though nobody ever had any, and they
just kept recycling the same stuff for cruise after cruise.
A note on the demographics of the custom. About 3/4 white
and 1/4 black. Very few anything else. Most from the South,
of course, as who else would go out of Orlando for a 4-day
cruise? Something like 58 nationalities represented among
the staff: sales, customer service, and similar high
visibility personnel were largely white; dining room staff
were largely Indian, southeast Asian, or Hispanic. Cleaning
and maintenance almost exclusively Spanish-speaking of
many varieties (Jonathan, our steward, was Filipino). Not
many blacks on staff.

Congee didn't have traditional Chinese condiments; instead,
the little serve-yourself bowls offered chopped bacon, ham,
sausage, tomato, green pepper, and onion. I passed. Not
surprisingly, the omelet station next door offered the same
choices. I passed on that as well.

Just for poops and giggles, we decided to check out the
sit-down breakfast, offered in the Mirage dining room on
Deck 4. We were seated at a six-top being used for two
couples, the others being an old married couple (about my
age) from the deep south, for whom this was clearly a big
treat. Carol had eggs Benedict, whose sauce looked and
tasted as though it had been reconstituted from powder.
The woman of the couple said it sure looked good, and maybe
she should have ordered that. She asked how it was. Carol
gave a run-down such as she might do on a foodie conference.
I don't think that's what the other folks wanted to hear.
My kipper and boiled potato were fine.

A croissant, however, made the ones on United Airlines look
like Poilane. Carol told me that they were just like what
Costco sold in big flats for families with undiscerning but
large appetites.

=

We wandered about the ship a bit before realizing that soon
it would be time for our excursion. We duly reported to the
Follies Theater, the staging area for our departure, only to
hear that as we had been delayed by headwinds, everything
was a little behind schedule, so please go have a drink or
some lunch and come back in half an hour. Back to Windjammer
for a hurried inventory of the offerings. I ate from Cantina
Mexicana - had some fairly decent chili and some extremely
nasty refritos with the cheese already stirred in, with more
added with each reheating, so that it ended up being like
Cheez Whiz with beans in it. Carol got tom kha gai, which
was pretty good, from Jade, and a few other unmemorable
tastes. We returned to the theater twenty minutes later only
to find that everyone had been sent off already.

Immigration is nonexistent. Of course, we'd filed a Bahamas
entry card with the cruise line, as is required; but once
that's done, I guess we're Royal Caribbean's responsibility.

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