How would you pronounce Ajaccio?

Ajaccio! Birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte! Where we managed to see absolutely nothing related to Napoleon whatsoever…actually, we DID see the outside of the house where Napoleon was born, but the horde of tourists and schoolgroups was a major deterrent in trying to brave the museum inside the house. However, I get ahead of myself.

Ajaccio is a tender port, and so after breakfast, we got onto one of the four catamarans shuttling passengers to the jetty. At the jetty, we did our usual trick of bypassing the ubiquitous ship photographers and headed into the town. The route I chose by chance passed the main market, which apparently was present every day until 1 pm. There we found a little booth selling candy and lovely wooden children’s toys, and we stopped to look – eventually buying a few things. That was where I got my first “good for you, you speak French, even lamely” bonus – the lady threw in 4 toffee lollipops, and she was very friendly. I get the impression that they’re used to tourists who can’t speak any French at all.

After the market, we made our way to Maison Napoleon, which was teeming with the aforementioned hordes. Torsten was getting restless, so after we snapped a picture of the house, we went back to the boulevard we’d walked up so that he could run about a little. Then we wandered in the direction of the Fesch Museum, which is supposed to have the largest collection of Italian art in France other than the Louvre. To our disappointment, the museum was closed until the end of 2009. Thus, we gave up on trying to see anything remotely historical, and just wandered around.

Ajaccio has some quaint winding streets, some of them pedestrian areas, filled with shops with homes above them. It was funny walking down one of the restaurant streets and seeing the lines of laundry flapping up above. We didn’t look up very much, however, because as this is a French city, dog poop abounded on the sidewalks and roads. There were a number of tourist-oriented shops, but also some nice shops selling fashionable clothing (I really like the fashions here, but I regretfully decided not to spend the minimum 25 Euros on flimsy articles) and jewellery. We did stop into a little gift shop selling cute glass animals, which is where I got my second lame-French-speaker bonus – she threw in a pen. It was awfully funny, because she wanted to practice her English, and I wanted to practice my French, so we both limped along in foreign languages. I’m amazed at how few tourists speak even a few words of French. Being a busybody, I would often hear people struggling (or, more often, repeating English words loudly to an uncomprehending Corsican) and throw in a translation in passing – and my French is NOT very good!

We then stopped for lunch at a harbourside bistro that had a nice patio by the wharf, where we watched some fishermen preparing their boats and nets. The table next to us had a plate heaped with tiny fried fishes, so I asked what they were (Friture des éperlans – fried smelts) and promptly ordered them. Yum! Torsten agrees – he kept snitching them from my plate. Ingo had a ham, cheese and mushroom galette.

After lunch, we meandered over to the citadel, which was built in 1492 (and had bits added onto it in the 3 centuries after that), and is still in use as a military base. Since we couldn’t get in, we took stairs down to the beach below it, where we introduced Torsten to sand and the beach. He didn’t actually wet his toes in the water, just went close and then back up the beach; however, after he got used to it, he really enjoyed digging his feet and toes in the sand (which was very fine and soft).

We stopped for a quick (and as it turned out, expensive) ice cream, primarily so that we could use the restrooms, and then decided to head back along the pedestrian shopping street, as I’d decided to buy another little glass animal. It’s a good thing that we did, since the shopkeeper had forgotten to put in one of my previous purchases! This time, I think the little flashlight that she threw in was an “oops” bonus.

On our way back to the tender, Torsten fell asleep in the backpack. He’s still sleeping now – only waking up briefly to drink a bit of water and eat some banana bread. Ingo and I are sitting on our balcony, sipping club soda, and watching the sea sparkle in the light. This is the life!

A Poopful Post - be warned

How can something so vile and evil come out of someone so lovely? Today was a sea day, and the one thing of note was the incredibly huge poop that Torsten had after dinner, while we were in the library. We first got wind of it because of its acute rankness, and we rushed him downstairs, with his pants half falling down from the weight. It was not pretty, and was definitely a two-parent emergency. Luckily, the stewards were just outside, doing the turndown service, so we were able to get rid of the toxic waste immediately, and popped Torsten straight into the bath. No wonder the poor little man hasn't been sleeping well!

Apart from that, nothing too interesting happened today. The Mediterranean Sea is an incredible blue, and I took the opportunity to admire it after I finished doing some work.

I also forgot to mention previously that we were delayed leaving Malaga by about an hour because of a passenger with "document irregularities", according to the announcements over the PA system. Ingo was on deck taking shots of Malaga and the other ships in the harbour, and he saw a police car, and then, in a little while, policemen leading out a passenger in handcuffs and driving away with him. As Ingo said, not even document Imodium was going to cure that kind of document irregularity!

This was a silly post, but nothing exciting happened today, although it was a nice day and Torsten played with his little friend Simone and another little boy, Aaron (who is loud and made Torsten cry because of his volume - but he's actually a very nice boy).

Shazam and Gargamel in Malaga

Good news – Torsten is fine and we all thoroughly enjoyed Malaga. We woke up a bit late, which was all to the good, as it allowed us to miss the initial rush of people taking the shuttle bus into Malaga. From the bus drop off point, we walked up to the cathedral, which is massive and truly imposing. However, it was teeming with tourists and would have cost 3.50 Euros to go in, so we gave it a miss. It was quite amazing, how rude people pushing around were! Luckily, Ingo had Torsten in the backpack, so Torsten was protected from the worst of the shovers.

Our main goal for sightseeing in Malaga was to see the Alcazaba, an old Moorish castle that was built on top of some Roman ruins (they’re excavating a coliseum at the foot of the castle). The Alcazaba apparently has a nice museum inside. Unfortunately, the Alzacaba is closed on Mondays, so we continued on up the steep hill to the Castille de Gibralfaro, which is actually older than the Alcazaba (8th century) and more or less adjacent to it. As Ingo said halfway up the climb, it seems as though someone said “Great, we’ve built this wonderful, defensible castle that nobody can overrun – but there are so many freakin’ steps to climb; let’s build another one, lower down”. As the names were a bit tough to remember, we nicknamed them Shazam and Gargamel.

From the Castille (which is at the pinnacle of the hill), we had a wonderful view of the city, including a view overlooking a bullfighting arena. No fights were in progress while we were there. There wasn’t a museum up there, just ruins and ramparts to walk around, but Torsten had a lot of fun running around, and we had a nice refreshing drink up at the top, at the strategically placed café.

Making our way down the hill was quicker, but a bit trickier, than going up, as the pathways were comprised of large, smooth flagstones set in cement. As they were quite steep, you can imagine people trying to storm the castle and being repelled by losing their footing on flagstones made slick with olive oil. Halfway down the hill, we took a different pathway, which led us to a broad pedestrian boulevard lined with trees and overlooking the harbour. Malaga seems to have quite a number of parks, and there are a lot of flowers and trees in evidence – it made for a very pleasant walk. Coming down the hill was so pleasant, in fact, that Torsten fell deeply asleep in his backpack; it was really funny.

We then visited a little wine shop, where we bought some Malaga sweet wine (it was popular in Victorian England, where it was called “mountain sack” – not sure why), and from there we made our way back to the ship. Actually, we made our way back to the shuttle bus pick up point, discovered that the bus pulling out had filled up, waited for a bit, and when we saw that people were going to try to pile onto the next bus regardless of the queue, we decided to walk. It took us half an hour, but it was totally worth it – we gained a leisurely perspective of the harbour, and were spared the scrum of rude people on the bus.

Currently, Torsten is taking a nap, while Ingo is on deck trying to get a good photo of the sailing cruise ship berthed ahead of us. We are somewhat late in pulling out, but no matter. Tomorrow is our last sea day – after that, we have 5 port days in a row, with the last port being our final disembarkation. It’s hard to believe that we’re over halfway through the cruise!

LATER
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but Torsten has collected quite the fan club – more so, I think, than any other kid on board. Waitresses stop and say, “Oh this is the famous cute baby I’ve heard so much talk about!”, and other passengers say “Oh look, it’s the cute little boy, the one that was wearing the hat, in the knapsack!”. People are always talking to him, waving at him, and, in the case of various elderly persons in Lisbon, touching and kissing him. He has special friends in the crew – one of the cleaning staff (whose name I’ve forgotten), our two cabin stewards, John and Mochahmad, and one of the hospitality staff, Melania. Torsten eats it all up. It’s going to be hard to get him to settle back into the quiet life in Waterloo!

So much for Cadiz.

Well, Cadiz has a lovely container port, and there seem to be some nice buildings around the town, including an imposing cathedral, but that’s pretty much all I can say about it from the distance of our balcony on the ship. Torsten was unfortunately sick last night, throwing up a few times (just liquid though, oddly – his dinner, consumed hours before, stayed down). He continued the trend this morning before breakfast, after having just a bit of water and breast milk. We were understandably very worried, and took him to see the ship’s doctor. She examined him, and didn’t think he had any infection or even dehydration, so she said to keep him off solids, milk and breast milk for at least the next 12 hours, and to give him some Pedialyte (basically a rehydrating drink) for the next few hours to see if he kept that down.

We’ve therefore spent the day on board the ship, and actually, for a sick boy, Torsten is very chipper. He still wants to run around and explore, and his main, very loud and crying complaint is that we aren’t feeding him (especially me). However, he hasn’t thrown up since just before we took him to the doctor, and he was able to eat a tiny bit of bread without any problems, so we’re probably going to accelerate the doctor’s orders and give him some plain white rice and bread for supper, together with apple juice and chicken broth. He’s taking a long nap right now, and I have high hopes that he’ll be fine tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

Port in Portugal!

Port today, in more than one sense! We docked at Lisbon at 8 this morning, and Torsten again spent the first little while admiring the buses and cars off our balcony. After a quick breakfast, we disembarked and waited in line for the infrequent shuttle bus to take us into the city centre (it dropped us off at the Placa de Commercio).

Torsten rode happily along in his backpack as Ingo and I speedily made tracks away from a particularly annoying, loud and ignorant group of fellow passengers who had been debating the merits of a sightseeing bus where you’d have to pay versus wandering around the city and not knowing what anything was. The novel concept of doing some research in advance had apparently never occurred to them – they had no idea what was in Lisbon, and, to quote one of them “once you’ve seen one European city, you’ve seen them all, right?”.

Lisbon is a delightful city, and we only saw a tiny part of the Alfama, which is the old Moorish quarter. The streets are narrow, cobbled, winding and very steep, and the houses have lovely wrought-iron balconies. Our goal was the Castele del Sao Jorge, which was supposed to have a good view, excellent museum, and beautiful grounds. However, we didn’t make it there, as we stopped at the Church of St. Anthony de Sé to look at the crypt there, and then stopped at the Sé (Cathedral) itself. The Cathedral had beautiful chapels off the transept, and the niche with the baptismal font near the entrance was tiled in lovely blue and white azulejos – ceramic tiles for which Portugal is famous. (Actually, a lot of the houses we saw had those azulejos on them – it made for a very colourful and unique display) The Cathedral also had a treasury which contained numerous reliquaries (some containing relics of St. Vincent), vestments worn throughout the Catholic year, and some old music books with Gregorian chants in them. The treasury also afforded a close-up view of the rose window, which depicted Jesus and the 12 apostles with the symbols of their martyrdom.

After the Cathedral, on the way to the Castele, we stopped for lunch at a little terrace café. We started with a fantastic gazpacho, and then I had grilled sardines and a Fanta, while Ingo had an excellent Sangria and some roasted squid. Although it was such a hot day, we decided to finish off with an espresso for Ingo and a cappuccino for me, since the coffee onboard the ship is frankly awful. By that time, Torsten was getting a bit cranky and wanting to go, so we packed him into his backpack, whereupon he proceeded to say bye-bye to everyone in the café – I think everyone turned to look at us and smile as we left!

Continuing up the roads to the Castele, we stopped at an antiquarian shop to look at antique azulejos, and then stopped again to buy some water for Torsten to drink, as he was both thirsty and tired. Ingo, however, decided to pour half a bottle of the freezing water onto my pants. He CLAIMS he was aiming for the cup that Torsten was holding, and that Torsten moved, but I have severe doubts. Two shops down the road was a shop that sold port – so we stopped in to look around, and wound up buying 2 madeiras and 2 ports. The lady in the shop was very nice, and kept holding things up for Torsten to identify, like pens, magnets with pictures of chickens on them, grapes, etc.

Finally, when we reached the Castele, we looked at the time, and we only had an hour before we had to head back to the ship – so we decided not to go in. Instead, Torsten walked up one of the streets and spotted a cat lying in the sun, and spent quite a bit of time telling all passers-by that it was a cat. He was so enthralled by it that he actually sat down on the road to continue staring at it. Eventually, we managed to tear him away from the cat and walk back to the shuttle pickup point. A bus arrived shortly after we got there, but there was no room for us, so we settled down to wait for the next one. By this time, Torsten had fallen asleep and I was carrying him in his sling, so we were in no real rush. However, quite a large crowd had gathered when the next one arrived, and instead of forming an orderly queue, everyone just barged in at once – I started shouting “Watch out! Baby!”, as big men pushed past me to get onto the bus. It was unbelievable how rude some people were. Luckily, Torsten was really tuckered out and was largely undisturbed by the scrimmage.

When we arrived back at the ship, we got through security without a hitch and made our way back to the stateroom – where Torsten woke up. He and Ingo went out to play while I did a bit of work, then we went to have dinner. We bumped into the nice Swiss family there, and Torsten was very happy to see Simone (the little girl) again. As her father calls her “Simi”, Torsten has picked that up, and ran after her, saying “Imi, Imi!”. Heads turned in the dining room, and there were an awful lot of “awwwwws” at that.

Tomorrow is Cadiz – hopefully it’ll be as much fun as today was!

Ponta Del-Da-Da

Yesterday was our very first shore day, at Ponta Delgada (or, rather, Ponta Del-da-da, since whenever we said “Ponta Delgada”, Torsten would chime in with “Dada” and point at Ingo). We docked around 9 am, and took a bit of time to get ready, since our stateroom balcony faced the dock, and Torsten was fascinated by the shuttle buses outside – he kept saying “bus”.

The shuttle took us to the end of the pier, as we were docked past the industrial port and pedestrians weren’t allowed to wander around there at will. We then put Torsten into his knapsack carrier, and made our way to the tourist information centre, along the promenade by the ocean. It wasn’t a very large office, and there weren’t any brochures, so we just picked up a map and started following the walking tour that I’d photocopied out of our Azores travel book.

It turned out to be a lovely walking tour – we saw the old city gates, which were where the harbour used to be (a lot of land has been reclaimed), and the houses with lookout posts on the roof, where servants watched for ships coming in. We saw the church of Sao Sebastian, which is a nice little church with a strange mix of Baroque and Romanesque style. The verger seemed to like us a lot – possibly because we comported ourselves as people should in a church, rather than like obnoxious tourists. He gave us a thumbs up when we left.

Ponta Delgada is a nice town, with narrow streets and crazy traffic (although not as crazy as a larger city like, say, Rome or Paris). It has a lot of squares where pedestrians can walk around, and a lot of beautiful parks and gardens. In the Praca 5, which is the main square where they hold festivals, we let Torsten out of the knapsack so he could run around. He headed straight for the carousel, and Ingo took him on twice – he loved it, and cried when we wouldn’t let him keep going for rides. He was only distracted by a flock of pigeons, and he promptly singled one from the pack and started following it till it flew away. On the square was a lime-sherbet coloured building that was once the main hospital, but is now a maternity hospital, and also a convent which contained a sacred statue, the Ecce Homo. Since tourists were pouring in and out of the convent, we decided not to go in.

Continuing on, we passed by a number of other churches, and walked down the small pedestrian road, where shops sold a variety of consumer goods. Actually apart from the Sao Sebastian church (mentioned above) we didn’t go into any of the buildings; Torsten was a bit tired and cranky, and we thought it would be better just to wander around. We came to a garden dedicated to Anthero de Quental, a poet, with a nice monument, a small expanse of grass cut by paths, and a fountain. Torsten had a good time running around there, and discovered that tree bark feels neat.

Then it was lunch time, and we found a place called the Terrace Café, attached to the Hotel Talisman. The service was slow, but we expected that – we are, after all, in Europe, where people linger over their food. We ordered a blood sausage with pineapples (presumably Azores pineapples – yum), limpets, and squid with olive oil and garlic. I wasn’t that keen on the blood sausage, finding it a bit peppery, but the limpets and squid were outstanding. By the time we were done, it was almost time to get back to the ship. However, we had promised Brady’s that we’d send them a postcard from the Azores, so we popped into a souvenir shop, purchased a couple of postcards (we’d purchased 2 stamps from a machine earlier that day), realized that we didn’t have a pen, bought a pen, dashed off the postcards, and walked briskly back to the shuttle bus pickup point. We were just in time.

Torsten actually fell asleep in the knapsack, leaning his head on my hand, so we took him out of the knapsack, and he slept through the shuttle ride back to the boat, through the security check, and for an hour or so after we got back to the cabin – hurrah! After that, he woke up full of vim and vigour, and tore around the ship for a while, making friends.

Today is a sea day, and tomorrow is Lisbon, and the start of many shore days!

I can be a hermit anywhere!

Just a short update to let you all know that I'm still seasick, so I spend most of my days in the cabin. You'd think that I could get work done because of that, but no - unfortunately staring at agreements makes me really dizzy and queasy. Oh, all right - it's not just agreements, it's the computer in general.

Torsten is very popular with the crew, one of whom calls him "smart baby". Others have learned his name, and they all seem overjoyed to see him. I know it's their job, but they do seem to be genuinely charmed by him - which isn't hard, since he's a little ham when he's tired, dancing around and smiling at everyone. A lot of passengers have complimented us on him as well - mostly Ingo, since he's the one running around the ship with Torsten.

One funny thing - we were having a coffee break, and Torsten had milk - but that wasn't good enough for him; he wanted to drink my coffee. I gave him a sip on the assumption that he wouldn't like it and would therefore stop asking, but NO! Our little gourmet wanted more! That's gotta be Ingo's genes.

Well, back to lying down.

It's swell...and that's why I'm popping Gravol.

Luckily, Torsten seems to have inherited Ingo’s sea legs and lack of motion sickness! The wind began to blow quite hard yesterday evening and has continued all today, causing quite a lot of movement on the ship. Torsten takes it all in stride.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful – we tried out the main dining room for breakfast, and were a bit taken aback at the small portions and slow service. Upon consideration, that’s the drawback of “Freestyle” cruising – everyone wants breakfast around the same time, and as there’s no assigned times or seatings, there’s bit of a scrimmage. The poor servers are kept hopping, and many passengers get vaguely disgruntled. The same thing occurred at lunch. Scattered around the ship are displays that inform passengers of how busy each restaurant is, but it’s only of limited assistance.

We met a nice Swiss family with a little girl around Torsten’s age, and they played reasonably well together in the “Under 2 Zoo” (which consists of a room where they’ve scattered random age-appropriate toys for toddlers to play with). Other than that, we spent most of yesterday exploring the ship – looking at the tacky tourist stuff in the ship shop, checking out where all the bars and cafes were, and generally following where Torsten led. He received many compliments and really enjoyed being able to run the length of the ship. More importantly, there are loads of stairs to climb! He showed us his new skill – climbing a few steps without the benefit of holding hands, rails or other support. We also discovered a new skill – calling room service for snacks!

Today we woke up to a moderately rough sea, which caused me some difficulty. I popped a Gravol and some ginger pills, but they only helped a little bit. Happily, we found a table for breakfast that was outside but sheltered, so that I could get some fresh air. At 10, I headed off to the spa/salon to get a haircut. Unfortunately, the motion of the ship was quite extreme there, so I was thankful when the girl cutting my hair made a quick job of it, with only a quick blow dry to finish off, not the usual eternity of blow drying and styling. Gratuity is included, but I felt a little bad about simply scrawling my name and running off – I’m not even sure my name hit the signature line anywhere!

After a few deep breaths of fresh air outside on deck by the pool (where nobody was sitting – the only people I saw were hurrying to shelter from the wind), I went off to find Torsten and Ingo, who turned out to be on the deck above. We wandered around outside for a while, but it was a bit too windy – one gust propelled Torsten a few feet into my arms! The deck below was a bit better, as it had some shelter, and we stayed there for a bit. There was even a small buffet area where I snagged an apple (which was really tasty). Sadly, we couldn’t stay outside for the entire day, as it was too cold, so we went inside. Being inside made my head spin, so we went down to the cabin where Torsten and I lay down for a nap. After Torsten woke up, he and Ingo went out for lunch while I continued to nap. They came back an hour later with lunch for me (a nice fresh hamburger and fries), and, after I ate it, they went out to explore some more while I went back to sleep. That Gravol really knocks you out!
All in all, we’re having a pretty good time. Torsten is having a nap right now, but when he wakes up, we’ll go for dinner, look around a bit more, and then – what else? Sleep!!!

Embarkation and off on our adventures!

It turns out that the Pope is in New York, so our bus transfer to the port was a bit late. We then had to wait a little while longer, as a couple of passengers inexplicably didn’t show up (and never did). Finally, we set out on a circuitous route to the port (again, because the Pope was, to quote the bus driver, “marching down Fifth Avenue” – this led to mild speculation between Ingo and myself as to how that would actually look).

Upon arriving at the port around one, we found that we had to first line up to get through security – which wasn’t too bad, as the line moved at a steady rate – and then had to get into a much slower line to get our boarding passes for the Norwegian Gem. It took quite a lot of ingenuity to keep Torsten happy in the lines, as we hadn’t had lunch, and he only had a bit of a nap in the bus going to the port. After all, lines aren’t much fun when you’re an adult – it must feel like a pointless eternity to a 1 ½ year old! The only upside was the view of the ship, which was very pretty with all the brightly coloured gemstones painted on the side.

After getting our boarding passes/keys/ship credit cards – amazing how they make one small bit of plastic perform all those functions – we trundled aboard the ship and into our stateroom. Our mini suite is awfully nice; it’s got a lot of stowage, and a sitting area that can be separated from the bed area by means of a curtain. The sofa turns into a bed, so it’s perfect for Torsten. The balcony is fairly spacious, and you’re prevented from falling over the side by a glass half wall; that means that the view is relatively unobstructed – an improvement over unsightly bars. As there is a small gap between the half wall and the floor, however, we will have to prevent Torsten from playing with his Hot Wheels on the balcony. Or anything else small, for that matter.

We changed Torsten’s diaper when we got to the stateroom, and relaxed there for a bit…until we realized that Torsten had – um – become stinky. This led to the appalling realization that we had just used his last diaper; all of his other diapers were in the checked luggage being loaded aboard the ship. Ingo went to take a look in the ship’s shop to see if they sold diapers, but the shop was (a) closed while we were in port, and (b) unlikely to carry diapers. Then, shortly after Ingo returned from his fruitless search, the siren wailed for the mandatory emergency drill, so we put clothes back onto Torsten, hoped that his odour wasn’t too off-putting, and joined the throngs headed to their emergency stations. The drill wasn’t really that good, in my opinion – the emergency stations were in various lounges on the ship where people could sit down, and so the vast majority of people weren’t paying attention. We never went out to the lifeboats, and the drill mainly consisted of some weak speeches on the importance of not setting fire to your room and a perfunctory demonstration of how to put a life vest on. Some crew members wandered around, peering at the stateroom numbers on passengers’ life vests, and checking them off a list.

After the “drill” concluded, we went back to the stateroom, hoping that our luggage had been delivered. It hadn’t. However, shortly thereafter, it was. Luckily, the bag containing all the diapers was the first to be delivered, and so we were finally able to destinkify Torsten, after which we unpacked our bags (the second one followed the first very quickly), stowed everything away, and set out to look around the ship.

Our first stop was the Kids’ Club – which Torsten loved. It’s a beautiful room with a small jungle gym at one end, padded mats along ¾ of the length, small tables and chairs in the remaining ¼, and windows along the whole length of the room. Torsten is unfortunately too young to participate in the Kids’ Club activities, and even more unfortunately too young to be allowed to play on the jungle gym, but unexpectedly, there are activities for under 2 year olds – the parents simply have to stay and supervise – and he also received a wrapped present which consisted of a stuffed lobster (a toy, not the food), a colouring book, and some crayons. I will be interested to see what they are like. He had a great time just running back and forth along the mats.

After the Kids’ Club (the preceding paragraph makes it sound like a simple stop, whereas we spent a considerable amount of time there), we promenaded on deck, passing bundled up people shivering on deck chairs – as it was late afternoon, it was getting chilly – and also a few hardy souls swimming. I will permit myself a bit of meanness and say that those swimming were mostly protected from the cold by a good layer of blubber. As it WAS getting chilly, we headed inside, and as we were rather hungry – and in Torsten’s case, getting tired – we decided to have dinner. We had it at Cagney’s Steak House, one of the cover charge restaurants, which was completely worth it. For a $20 per person cover charge, Ingo got an appetizer of crab cakes, a large veal chop with foie gras croutons, and side dishes of creamed spinach, shoestring onions, and mashed potatoes. I got a lobster bisque, a 14 oz prime rib (where they brought the whole roast to the table and cut it before my eyes), and the same side dishes. Torsten had bits of our dinner and had an additional plate of creamed spinach. He was a big hit with the serving staff, who kept trying to find something to bring for him. Towards the end of dinner, he started getting quite antsy, so we decided to skip dessert – only to find that the wait staff didn’t want us to, and so they offered to bring it to our room for us! Mmmm, crème brulée!
A quick stop at the Internet Café to enter for a draw of 500 free minutes, and then into our stateroom for our normal bedtime routines. Good night!

Looooong train ride

We got up bright and early on Friday morning to catch the 8:30 am train to New York and joined the line up at platform 13. Courtesy of our little man, we were jumped up in the queue and got priority boarding, which was very nice indeed.

The first few hours of the train ride passed happily by, as we congratulated ourselves in bypassing the insanity of the airport and settled comfortably into our business class seats. Torsten was quite good, and we read, ate a few snacks, and watched some Little Grey Rabbit on the laptop. Torsten also enjoyed running up and down the aisle.

Later on, after Customs (which we cleared handily, but which some people did not - and, as a sidenote, are Customs and Immigrations officers taught to be brusque, aggressive, and borderline rude? It seemed so unnecessary, and they were much more stringent than in the airport - they made me fill in an additional form because I had a different last name. The only exception was the Customs officer asking about fruit and meat being brought into the US - he came along asking, "Are you bringing any food into the US?", and when he got to us, we were munching on cookies, so I said, "Cookie?" and he quirked a smile. What was I saying? Oh yes...)

Later on, after Customs, the hours began to weigh a bit more heavily. This was not aided by the realization that the snack car sold only very limited hot food (cheeseburger, pizza, hot dog and a few other microwaveable items), and quickly ran out of them. Our meals were therefore somewhat unsatisfying. It's a good thing we brought some snacks. On the bright side, we were entitled to free pop and coffee, as we sat in business class, so at least we could quench our thirst in the dry atmosphere of the train. This, on the other hand, did not help with the mild stench that wafted through our compartment when the restroom vent broke; the conductor left the doors open in the carriage while the train was moving in order to air things out a bit.

Torsten took a couple of short naps, but was otherwise awake until the train pulled into New York at 10:15 pm (and STAYED awake till we got to the hotel at 11:15) - what a trooper. He made a couple of friends on the train, but there were a couple of people who stolidly ignored him, so it all balances out. All in all, a decent way to travel - although not if you're in a hurry.

We made our way to the subway, found that the Rangers had won the game that night, took the E train to our hotel (Torsten was beginning to flag at that point), checked in, and collapsed.

And today....it's onto the ship with us!

We're off!

It never fails - we always underestimate the time it takes to pack, get the house in reasonable order, and do all those other last minute things that need to be done (including work, picking up Swiss francs, taxes, all that good stuff). However, we finally left the house - hopefully with nothing major undone - and got to Toronto around dinner time. Poor Ingo had to take the car up to my parents' place, so his dinner was delayed - and consisted of our leftovers. Torsten and I had a lovely room service picnic at the Royal York - although I do wonder why I bother ordering from the children's menu for Torsten. Chicken fingers are so yesterday - mummy's Butter Chicken Curry with Pappadums is SO much better (frankly, I'd have to agree - nothing wrong with the chicken fingers, but the curry was truly lovely).

And so to bed, preparatory for an early morning train to New York tomorrow!