Before dinner last evening we went to the mandatory life-boat drill. All guests, regardless of how long you had been on the ship were required to go. While there was a large changeover of passenger's yesterday morning at the same time there was a turnover of crew as many went home and others returned to take their places. As we made it to the lifeboat drill, one of the crew members said "welcome aboard" and we mentioned that since he had just returned that it was us who wanted to welcome him aboard. The three of us laughed.
After the drill was over and we put the life vests back in our room, we went to the Crystal Cove and listened to Pianist John Mentis. We sat at the two chairs that are right adjacent to wear John sits and also chatted with him for awhile.
While we were there, John Stoll who is Vice President of Shore Excursions and Land Programs and Port Operations came by to speak with us. John will be on board the Serenity for the next few days to participate at the Gala for the top producing Travel Agents who jet boarded Serenity in Southampton and will be on the ship for the next few days. John will give a talk to them and also be a host at some special dinners.
Last evening featured the new menus in the Crystal Dining Room. As a Cruise Industry first the Crystal Dining Room is serving two distinct types of cuisine. Each night the left side of the menu will feature what is known as Modern Cuisine which includes fusion types of items. The items will change daily. The right side of the menu will feature Crystal Classics which are the traditional items that have been featured on the evening menus and these items too will change daily. These are the menus from last evening.
We do not often have an appetizer but we did so we could try out one of the new items on the modern cuisine menu. As such, we began our meal with the Seared Ahi Tuna, Wasabi Crumble & Crest Salad.
When, Evana, our Senior Waiter served each of us the appetizer she explained exactly how the dish was prepared and what the items on the plate were. As mentioned, this new menu is a major change so the change involved not only the chefs knowing how to prepare the new items, and also coordinating the timing of all of this but the wait-staff needed to be familiar with each item so that they could answer questions about it at the time the guests were placing their orders and also so they could explain it as they served the meal. The other change is when orders are placed for food that is brought on for the upcoming cruises they must figure out how much of various items to order. In addition to that, earlier in the day as certain items are being prepped it is also helpful to have an estimate of what will be ordered. While there is lots of history for the older type of menus which have been around for a long time about what the overall consumption will be since this is all new there is no history to fall back on. In short, it is similar to opening up a new restaurant when it comes to some of the planning.
Back to the appetizer, the Ahi Tuna is close to a sashimi, but was very lightly cooked. It was very tasty and we would just say this was a wow.
For our next course we each had our standing order salads.
We each had the same entree, which was the Pan Seared Baby Halibut, Cockles Dill Chowder, Snow Peas and Potatoes. We thought it was very tasty and greatly enjoyed it. We were asked for comments and our only suggestion was that it needed to be hotter. It was also a wow.
Three desserts were part of the modern cuisine menu but we went with berries for Keith which are not on either menu and a sugar-free Mocha Cream Puff for Anne Marie which was a classic dessert item.
Towards the end of the meal, Toni Neumeister who is Vice President of Crystal Cruises responsible for the cuisine that is served on-board both ships came by to get our comments about what we had ordered. He along with another person who is helping him and some chefs from the Crystal Symphony where the new menus were rollout several weeks ago are on board the ship for this voyage as part of the rollout of this new menu.
We enjoyed the menu so much that we decided to cancel our specialty restaurant reservation for tonight and to go back to the Crystal Dining Room.
We wanted to mention that from our table we could see the beautiful scenery throughout the evening which was on both sides of the ship. It is nice to be back to Europe.
After dinner, we stopped by the third of the new shops which just reopened last evening. This shop used to carry a variety of jewelry and now just sells ladies and men's watches. The fourth shop which carries jewelry by Hubert remains as it was. We didn't spend a lot of time there but essentially just walked through the store relatively quickly but will stop by again over the next couple of days.
We did sleep very well as we are now sailing to Bordeaux. We did have to set the clocks forward one hour as we are sailing into a new time zone.
Keith was up first which was no surprise. He worked out at the fitness center, read and wrote and then made his stop at the Lido Cafe for some coffee. Afterwards, he brought some coffee back to the room for Anne Marie and after she got ready we went on a nice walk.
We had breakfast in our room as we normally do and then Keith took anther Spin Class. With Fitness Director Michael no longer there, Fitness Director Leanne who came on board taught the class. Keith had a new cast of characters in the class including one guest that he knew from a previous cruise. Each instructor whether at sea or on land has their own style of teaching the class and Keith thought that Leanne did a nice job of teaching the class. The class combined a nice combination of speed and climbs and by the end of the class Keith knew he had gotten a great workout.
Keep in mind the legs look out of focus because of the speed they are going. After all, this is Spin.
Afterwards, Keith met up with Anne Marie at the Crystal Plaza and we spoke with some fellow guests and crew including Cruise Director Gary Hunter, Food & Beverage Manager Tayfun. We saw a nice couple we know from previous cruises as we walked around the ship and we checked out the shops on more time just to look at the new merchandise.
As was the case during the World Cruise there were lots of enrichment programs on the schedule, including three different lectures. There was a lecture on Bordeaux, one on new world politics and the final one on great antique finds.
We had lunch at the Lido Cafe. The Cafe was quite crowded likely because with the outside weather more people were inside and while there is Team Trivia it is far less popular than on a World Cruise.
It was quite cold outside but Keith tried to venture outside for some Paddle Tennis with his long pants and long shirt and fleece but after a couple of minutes outside he decided to wait until another day. Instead, he went back to the Fitness Center to workout on the Elliptical Machine. Anne Marie walked for one hour inside the ship. Anne Marie also worked on her needlepoint projects in the morning and in the afternoon, taking a little break from Knitting.
This evening we will dine in the Crystal Dining Room. It will be a black tie optional evening. We also plan to see the Serenity Pops Concert.
TODAY'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY……..
"We miss many of our friends who departed the Crystal Serenity yesterday in Southampton, and we look forward to seeing you on a future Crystal Cruise." - Keith & Anne Marie
Keith & Anne Marie
No comments:
Post a Comment