Friday, August 16, 2013

South East Asia Cruise in December 2012 (Part 2)


Food was definitely not a concern on the cruise as complimentary cuisines were available most of the time throughout the day. The two main restaurants serving cuisines with no extra charges were Windjammer Café and Romeo & Juliet. 

















Our breakfasts were usually taken at Windjammer café which was a buffet. The best time to go for breakfast was 7:00 am when it just opened since all trays were full of food and lots of vacant tables and seats that were clean. Here were my breakfasts on 2 different days. Food selection and satisfaction were okay but I enjoyed the ocean view more.















Getting up at 6:30 am for early breakfast wasn’t easy but I could manage to do that every other day. See! The sky was still not completely bright at 7:00 am.


As I mentioned, food was always available even after dinner time such as this poolside buffet on Wednesday (December 5) from 10:30 pm – 11:30 pm.



Only on the 4th day (December 6) we realized that besides buffet lunch at Windjammer Café, we could also enjoy Royal Brasserie 30 lunch at Romeo & Juliet Restaurant with better ambience and food.


Like majorities, we had dinner at Romeo & Juliet Restaurant every night. There were two seatings available – first seating @ 6:00 pm or second seating @ 7:30 pm. We picked the first seating and we were assigned to sit close to the central atrium, where the professional pianist would play wonderful, romantic songs such as “Fly me to the moon” and "月亮代表我的心" during supper.


Let’s have a family picture before dinner! From left to right: my brother, mom, uncle (mom’s brother), auntie (mom’s sister) and me.



























Romeo & Juliet offered fine dining with 3 course menu – appetizer, main course and dessert. Each course had 5-6 dishes to choose from. As there was no limitation for each course, guests could order all the appetizers, main courses and desserts on the menu (I don’t think anyone was crazy enough to try that so far). Here are some examples of what we had as appetizers (1st three photos), main courses (2nd row right photo and 3rd row photos), desserts (4th row photos and 5th row left photo). Don’t they look delicious?

The most difficult task was to translate the menu from English to Chinese to my mom and aunt/uncle. Since my mom had gout, we needed to select the menu carefully for her. This special task became easier when we found out there was menu written in Chinese on the 3rd night … haha!

Each waiter and assistant waiter served 4 to 5 tables. I forgot the names already, I only recall that our waiter was from Indonesia and assistant waiter was from Philippines. Both of them were nice and professional. Since there were more than a hundred tables, you can imagine how many chefs and restaurant attendants were there. Last supper was on Thursday (December 6) with all the chefs and restaurant attendants singing on the central atrium. They started with an Italian song first then a Chinese song called 月亮代表我的心. If I’m not mistaken with my own observation and listening, there were about 150 staffs from 26 different countries!
 

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