From the New Orleans Menu Daily Archives By Tom Fitzmorris Click here for the current edition Cruise Journal Eat Club Mediterranean Cruise, July 6-20, 2006 Wednesday, July 5. Long, Easy Flight. The best thing about flying to Europe is that the flights tend to commence late in the day instead of at the crack of dawn. So last-minute issues like getting more cash (an essential for European travel) and picking up prescriptions aren't emergencies. Still, we are unusually well prepared for this trip, and we arrived at the airport before one in the afternoon for a three o'clock flight. So did some black clouds from the east. A pretty good rain fell on the airport, but by the time we were ready to go it had cleared up, and the flight had hardly a bump. Those MD80s that so few airlines fly anymore are good planes--quiet and comfortable. We had two hours in the Atlanta airport before the Delta 767 lifted off for its nine-hour journey to Rome. It had to be re-routed well to the north of its normal path, because of very bad weather in the Northeast. We felt a little of that, but not much. The dinner was literally forgettable--I don't remember a thing about it, other than that it was the kind of thing one used to be served on short flights across America, and nothing like the dinners we used to be served on transatlantic flights twenty years ago. Those used to come in courses on china, with wines poured from actual bottles. But, really, who cares? Even the best airplane meals were only good for airplane meals. The movie was "Take The Lead," in which Antonio Banderas teaches a bunch of inner-city toughs hour to do ballroom dancing. It was as bad as it sounds. I didn't tune into it until the middle, and wish I'd begun the novel I'd brought instead. I got a little sleep, but not enough to matter, and then the sun came up over Ireland and the anticipation of arrival followed it. Thursday, July 6. Negotiating The Dining Rooms. The Rome airport is about a third of the way from the city to the major port of Civitavecchia, where all the cruise ships dock when approaching Rome. Except for the part when the bus driver got lost, it was a tolerable trip, and even allowed a short nap. And then we were aboard. The Carnival Liberty is the first ship of that line to cruise the Mediterranean, and began doing so only last year. They were unsure about how well the Carnival style would fly in Europe, but apparently it's done well, because a second ship will begin plying the waters here next year. Except for its interior design motifs (which are distinctly Mediterranean), the Liberty is a twin to the Conquest, the ship Carnival operated from New Orleans until you know what. We've been on that one enough times to know our way around it, and we like it. We boarded too late for much of a lunch, so I just showered and tried to get as long a nap as I could. During my slumber, however, the cruise director--quite a salesman--made a few announcements in the rooms (I don't remember their ever doing that before). One of them troubled me. He touted the ship's supper club so well that I thought it might be a good idea to run right up there and make my own reservations. I was right to be concerned about the effectiveness of the announcement. There was a line for reservations--the first time I've ever seen such a thing. I got one for my family and another for just Mary Leigh and me, and hoped there would be enough for all the people in the group. I tout this place as a major benefit of traveling with us (we give all our people a free dinner in the supper club; it usually carries a $30 surcharge), and it would be a problem if they had trouble getting in. All was well when we convened in the main dining room ("Gold Olympian," they called it). Everybody in the group was seated at the group of big tables in the center of the restaurant. Nobody in booths; nobody on the second floor. Good. They served a good soup of asparagus and oysters, which I followed with the sirloin with peppercorns, with cheese for dessert. Charles and Mary Kunderer--regulars at our Eat Club dinners--allowed me to buy the first bottle of wine, then came back with one of their own. We're off to a great start. A few things were going on around the ship, but most people were pretty tired from the long flight. I went to bed at around ten, and hoped I could sleep till a reasonable hour to get the jet lag out of the way. Friday, July 7. Naples. Amalfi. Positano. Negitano. Sorrento. Pompeii. Too Much! The ship was in Naples early in the morning, and Mary Ann went into her usual port-of-call mode of wanting us to get out of the ship and do as many things as possible before getting back on. First item: we must have breakfast in a hotel where various writers were reported to stay, and where there is a good view. We walked a very long way looking for this place, and discovered that it was a good bit farther away. By this time, breakfast was over. I resolved not to leave the ship again without at least some juice, coffee and a croissant in my stomach. We retraced our steps through what, we saw when we were not rushing, was not exactly a great part of town. And this is Naples, the New Orleans of Italy, its third-largest city, a port town, famous for pizza, infamous for a twenty per cent unemployment rate. Last time we were here, we went to Capri. The kids and I wanted to go there again, but Mary Ann said no, we must see the Amalfi Coast. Back at the dock, we were accosted by an assortment of taxi drivers who wanted to take us on tours. After interviewing several of these, Mary Ann chose Mario, who agreed to take us to Amalfi for 280 Euros. We learned later that this was an extravagantly bad deal, but I relinquish control of these matters to my wife. Mario drove us through the mountains to Amalfi, saving the famous sea view Amalfi Drive to the way back. About halfway there, for the first time in some thirty years, I was on the verge of motion sickness. I decided that fumes were getting into the cab--I'd been smelling something funny since the moment I got into the back seat (the boss was in the front). I rolled down the window and found it cool enough to dispense with the air conditioning, an idea Mario embraced immediately. We reached the town of Amalfi at around noon. It was very pretty, the buildings stacked one above another as they ran up the steep volcanic mountains. Looking the other way, we saw a vast sea far below. We still hadn't had breakfast, so that was our first stop. We found a marvelous pastry shop that made some amazing layered pastries loaded with butter. I ordered one and an espresso, and moved outside to one of the tables in front of the place. I didn't get a chance to sit down before an upset waiter ran up and said I couldn't sit there, because there were different prices for table service. I don't know why I had never encountered this rule before, but we would run into it consistently throughout the rest of the trip. So I had the espresso at the counter and walked around with the pastry--not because I wanted to save the money, but because the waiter said that once we bought the stuff there was no way to move into the world of the served. I'm glad I learned this lesson early in the trip. We spent about a half-hour in Amalfi--not quite enough to replace the exhaust fumes from Mario's taxi with clean air for me, but enough to clear my head--and we continued along the twisting Amalfi Drive through Positano. I made up a story about the neighboring town of Negitano, where the people have really bad attitudes, and tortured the family with it for the rest of the day. We finally had a decent lunch stop in Sorrento. Certainly the loveliest town along the Amalfi Coast, Sorrento is also the biggest--although it creates the illusion of being a small town until you try to drive through it. We found a crowded, casual restaurant named Aurora near the center of town, and all I had to do was look at the menu and the antipasto table to know it was the place for us. They were making pizzas in a wood-burning oven, made their own mozzarella cheese and pasta, and smelled good. We had to wait about twenty minutes for a table, which was just as well--it started raining while we were there. I had the city's namesake dish: gnocchi Sorrentina. The little dumplings of potato pasta (these had an ideal texture, soft but not gummy) come with a somewhat spicy red sauce with fresh basil and a good deal of mozzarella di bufala. Great dish, as were the antipasto assortment and the pair of pizzas. By this time we were within range of the time when we had to back on the ship. My reckoning of this is much different from Mary Ann's, however, and she insisted we had time to go to Pompeii. So we did. What we found was a total surprise. Pompeii, which is surrounded by the suburbs of Naples, is vastly larger than I thought it was. And much, much more interesting. The preservation of that ancient Roman town, no matter how much you've read about it, is astounding. Everywhere we turned, there was something fascinating to look at. Too much for us to even consider taking in with the small amount of time (less than an hour) we had available. Especially since the place is something of a maze, and the maps we had were all but worthless in helping us figure out where we were or how to get out. In fact, we escaped with just enough time to get us back to the ship on time, what with the afternoon Naples traffic between us and the dock. And I had to get more cash to pay Mario. Cash. Cash. These cab drivers that Mary Ann so much prefers are nice, but they all want cash. It was too much stuff crammed into the day. But I learned later that quite a few of the people traveling with us jammed even more into their tour packages, bought from the ship. In addition to Pompeii and Sorrento, they went to Capri as well. Too much! How can one have pleasure on the run? Dinner was a bit better than yesterday's, and I was pleased that the Eat Clubbers went along with my suggestion that they move from table to table each night. I did that, and bought another round of wine for the people I sat with. Already, this group is as sociable as our past groups were after five or six days. I made my first appearance in the karaoke theatre tonight. Was not happy to see that the music selection contains very little of the kind of thing I like to sing (standards). I did a Johnny Mathis number, and that was that--so many people were waiting their turn that nobody sang twice. Better still, everybody I heard actually could sing. Another positive harbinger. Saturday, July 8. At Sea. It's a long way from Naples to Dubrovnik, so we have a sea day today. I love sea days aboard cruise ships., because I love cruise ships. It's my kind of place: full of cafes, bars, and music clubs. Everybody slept in, even Mary Ann. I awakened before she did and, seeing no interest from her in having breakfast, I left her and the kids to keep sleeping at about seven-thirty. This is much easier than on past cruises: Mary Leigh and Jude have their own stateroom, which they can mess up, watch TV in, and loll around in bed as much as they like. It has been my habit in past cruises to have a breakfast of fruit and pastries in the buffet. I do this more to have something to accompany the juice and coffee, which is what I want most of all. I haven't often breakfasted in the main dining room, because the food there has been exactly the same stuff as what's on the buffet, with the single addition of eggs Benedict--which I can live without. But there is the advantage that the juice in the dining room is full strength, which it absolutely is not in the buffet. So I thought I'd give it another try. I'm glad I did: it was delightful, both for the food and the company. You sit with strangers in the dining room, unless you insist on a small table. The people who joined me were a fourson from Australia and a couple from Seattle. We had an unusually good conversation about all sorts of things, but not the one I've had in the past. Once it comes out that I'm a restaurant critic, the talk goes there and never leaves. Now everyone is more interested in talking about the future of New Orleans. I continue to find that on an individual basis, the people of America (and, in this case, the world) are still very much pulling for us. The dining room has something new: a daily egg special. Today's was smoked salmon and pastry topped with baked eggs. I will come back here again if the specials continue to be this good. At this point in the day, my habit is the pull out the laptop and write. But Jude had the laptop in his cabin, and I didn't have a key to that room. . . so I just let it go. It was the beginning of the cruise, after all. I would not have guessed that this would set a pattern. I would not do even a little work anytime during the remainder of the cruise. I did not check e-mail or web sites. I did not even think about work. The only chores were those I have as leader of the group. I added a few notes to a previously-written newsletter and walked around the ship distributing it--and that was it. Mary Ann and I had lunch together in Fish and Chips, a nearly-invisible counter above the buffet that we knew about from past cruises on this class of ship. They serve little squares of seared tuna, a light but freshly-made bouillabaisse, fried shrimp and oysters (and sometimes soft-shell crabs), and a few other goodies. I had a couple of bowls of the bouillabaisse and saw that the advice I'd given in my newsletter to find this place had actually been taken by a few in our group. I swear I have no idea how I spent the rest of the early afternoon. The next thing I knew it was afternoon tea time. I'd also recommended this to the group, and many of them came. A classical trio played why tea, scones, smoked salmon, sandwiches with the crusts cut away, and pastries rolled around on carts. The room was full, and many were talking, despite the shushing from a lady in the back who apparently thought of this as a concert. Time ticked away, and then it was time for a preprandial martini. I had it in the main bar in the atrium, where an excellent young Polish pianist who went by the name Przemek was playing very listenable standards, followed by classical selections. He and Jude--who is trying to learn piano--hit it off later in the cruise. I showed up almost anywhere he played, he was that good. Carnival is one of the few cruise lines that still has live music exclusively in its bars and restaurants. Really--nothing recorded, anywhere. Formal night. I love it. I tuxedoed myself. Mary Ann pulled out her black dress. Mary Leigh put on the formal dress from the last cruise four months ago, but she is growing so fast that this will certainly be the last time she can wear it. Jude wore his new seersucker suit (if you're wearing jacket and tie, you're still above average on the ship, even on formal night.) The four of us took a few photos (the photographers on the ships are so good that we can't resist). Then we had dinner together in Harry's Supper Club. This is the gourmet room on the ship, and for the most part they really do succeed at putting out a meal at the four-star level. The feature is prime steak, and they serve it well. But what I find more impressive is the array of appetizers. I started with frog's legs in bubbling garlic butter; excellent. Then the lobster bisque, which is always perfect here. (The menu is more or less the same in the supper clubs on the Conquest-class ships, so we have come to know it well.) I had a sirloin strip crusted with peppercorns, served with a peppercorn sauce; I think they could refine their sauces a bit. And an assortment of cheeses--interesting, rich ones--for dessert. Steaks dominated the remainder of the orders at our table. Then everybody split. Jude went off to hang with the teenagers he'd already met and formed into a cadre. Mary Leigh retired to her room to watch TV. Mary Ann just retired. I kept my tux on and went down to karaoke. Another big crowd there; I managed to get only two songs in. A bunch of younger listeners were in the house, so I did the song they always whoop for: The Lion Sleeps Tonight, in full falsetto. Which is only a little harder to do after a Dalwhinnie single-malt Scotch. Sunday, July 9. Dubrovnik, Croatia. We arrived early in the morning on a brilliant day, but one that promised to be cooler than the 100-degree-plus visit we made here two years ago. The ship landed on the other side of town from where we were then, so we swapped a long ride on a tender for a short ride on a bus to arrive at the historic medieval gates of the walled old town. It's a captivating sight. The main gates have drawbridges (they still work) over moats (with flowing water). The walls are very substantial and clearly made with defense in mind, with battlements placed every now and then. Many sections have fallen over the years (most recently in the war with Serbia a decade ago), but they were rebuilt as needed, always with the same local limestone, so that it's hard to tell the new sections from the old. In fact, most of the buildings and streets in the old town are made of that same stone. It gives the town an utterly distinctive look. And shiny streets: the billions of footsteps have polished its surface so well that the lights at night reflect from them in yet another unique visual. As soon as we were inside the walls, I located the restaurant where our group was to have lunch later, and checked in with the manager to make sure we have the right number. All was well, and the place was certainly easy enough to find. Then we undertook a walk we'd wanted to try but didn't have time for on our last visit: to ascend the walls and walk all the way around the old town atop them. Unfortunately, we had to do this with everyone on a bad mood. Jude had stayed up quite late clubbing around the ship last night, and Mary Leigh was also aroused earlier than she would have liked. And they were certainly not eager to climb hundreds of steps and walk dozens of blocks. Mary Ann was steamed by this drag on her ambitions for the day, and her pique made my life less than perfect. But there we went, whining along, taking in magnficent views again and again. Dubrovnik is on the side of a high mountain over the Adriatic, and the walls are high enough to give matchless views of both the city and its setting. Fortunately, we encountered enough vendors along the walltop path to keep us in cold water and even ice cream. (In fact, there were several inviting cafes that opened up onto the wall.) It took us about an hour and a half to make it all the way around. The climbing was not easy: the steps were steep, slippery, and usually lacked handrails. I thought of the many warning signs that would have ruined the authenticity if this were in the United States; such things were utterly missing here, and I didn't miss them. We descended from the wall at the point we climbed up it, too late for Mass at St. Blaise's. He's the patron saint of Dubrovnik and its former bishop, and the guy whose intercession Catholics invoke when they have their throats blessed every year on his feast day. We did enter and look around the old cathedral, which is crumbling, but not as much as it was last time. We were also too early for lunch at Proto. Klara Cvitanovich (she's Drago's wife, and a native of Dubrovnik) made the arrangements for us. She said this was the power lunch place in Dubrovnik, and that the food was very good. Indeed it was. We took up most of the second-floor dining room, whose open windows keep the place reasonably cool with sea breezes. We started with a plate of locally made prosciutto, cheeses, marinated squid, and a few other things--almost a meal unto itself. The entree, which was a long time in coming, involved two large Adriatic fish, baked with herbs together in a single pan. One was a sea bass, the chef said. The other was a golden something or other. I asked again and again, and all I could get were Croatian names, and the advice that there was no English translation. However, they were so similar that most diners were unaware that they'd been served two different species of fish. Good, fresh, simple flavors, accompanied by a pair of Croatian wines that flowed very freely. Mary Ann and the kids did not stay till the end of the meal. Instead, they sought out the little cove, just below Klara's mother's house, where they'd gone swimming last time, with the intention of doing so again. After I finished collecting all the money and paying the bill in a combination of dollars, euros, and kuna (the Croatian currency), I set out in search of the cove, and to my found it easily. (Last time, I got lost briefly.) My gang was not there. I waited around for awhile, then moved to the plaza just outside the old town gates, where a little coffee shop offered shade and a place to sit down. I had a couple of espressos and a bottle of water. I bought the latter mainly so I could refill it with the town's water, which flows freely and very cold from a large fountain there. My family showed up with barely enough time to catch one of the last buses back to the ship. Doing that seems right to Mary Ann, but it always makes me nervous. After getting the closest thing to a cold shower (for some reason, this ship's water is a little warm; I accused Mary Ann of using all the cold water, and she bit on that for a few seconds), I took a nap, dressed, and went downstairs in search of a martini. Which is one of the easiest things to find on a cruise ship. Which is another reason I like them. Dinner in the dining room was reasonably good. I had the Essence Of India, a combination of a lamb t-bone, lentils, chicken curry, and a few garnishes. It was pretty good, and it should have been: the chef is Indian, as is most of the kitchen staff. Karaoke ran later than usual, but I knew better than to think I'd get a second song in. I did "San Francisco," hung around a little while, then left just after midnight. The quality of the singers remains excellent, and nobody has done anything really offensive (as several did on the last cruise). Tuesday, July 11. Fegato Veneziana. A Long Walk. Mary Ann has lost her patience with our laggard ways, and declared that she and Mary Leigh would head back into Venice as soon as they could focus their eyes, breakfast and coffee and juice be damned, and that Jude (who went clubbing on the ship after we got back at eleven last night, and could not be expected to get up before ten or so) and I could meet them at our leisure. That worked for me. I had my breakfast and coffee and juice, then roused Jude at a humane hour. We decided that it might be fun to walk from the ship--parked at the western extremity of the island--to St. Mark's. This created an immediate difficulty. The walk from the dock (which, like most docks, is in an industrial area) to the edge of the old town took us across the main vehicular entrance to Venice. Cars don't go deep into the island, but they do come and go a lot in that area. It was a hot and dusty walk across overpasses that could have been in Anywhere, USA. When we finally reached Piazzale Roma, we stopped for bottles of cold water and a map, then struck out along the Grand Canal from its northern end. A few yards along its west bank, across from the train station where I'd first set foot in Venice in 1988, Jude was pulled by the gravity of some sunglasses in a sidewalk vendor's stand. I saw what appeared to be a straw fedora, selling for seven euros. I discovered how this was possible right away: it was made of woven paper. I figured it would be good enough to last me the rest of the day. And that, if I wore it on stage when I tried out as Frank Sinatra for the guest talent show in the ship, it might help. Thus defended against the sun, we turned into one of the passageways leading away from the Grand Canal. We knew two things. First, that even by using a map we'd get turned around on our way to Piazza San Marco. Second, if we just kept our eyes on the signs with an arrow and "S. Marco," we'd get there sooner or later. Venice is a maze. No two streets run parallel or meet at a right angle. No two blocks are the same length. Walk five or six blocks, and no matter how fine your sense of direction, you will be headed in a direction quite different from the one you think you're going. Dead ends and walkways that suddenly end when a canal meets a wall are inevitable. But once you accept that as part of exploring Venice, it becomes fun. You encounter stores full of wonderful things, from cheese and meats and fish to carved stone, wrought iron (ubiquitous in this city), and unique clothing. We wandered for about forty-five minutes, then came to a familiar place: the Pesceria. This is the Venetian fish market, with a dozen or two stalls where men and women displayed a staggering variety of seafood--all of its vividly fresh, almost all of it from local waters. I was struck by the enormous variety of squid and lobster-like animals alone. I found the crabs we'd eaten the night before, still on the hoof and moving with their big domed shells. And dozens of fish, some familiar and others not. (I am still trying to find out what is the American equivalent of a handsome fish the Italians call orata.) As I looked over all this wealth of fish, pulled from waters that have been fished intensively for millennia, I couldn't stop wondering why we can't have this same kind of resource in New Orleans. Unfortunately, unlike in Europe, the recreational fishermen have persuaded the government that they own the fish, and the fish merchants have nowhere near this kind of variety to sell. How much better our restaurants and home kitchens would be if they did! The fish market led into the vegetable market. Which, like the latter, was beginning to shut down for the day. (These guys start early and are gone by about one in the afternoon.) The vegetable market led to a much more touristy section, with stalls selling all the stuff you'd expect (think Bourbon Street, but denser). Jude, however, found a stall that had ties of the kind he likes (when did my son start wearing ties?) for six or seven euros. That phalanx led, and continued right across, the Ponte Rialto, the center of Venice. It's the oldest and most famopus bridge across the Grand Canal, and the shops are built right across it--on both sides on the main passageway, and one side of each of the ones on the side of it. We made our way across the Rialto and met up with the girls. Who who were shopping in a much more dangerous way than Jude was with his sunglasses and ties, let alone me with my paper fedora. Mary Leigh had returned to the store where she saw the formal dress she liked (Mary Ann hated it, and called it a "rag"). She decided she really did want it, because it would turn eyes on board the ship when she wore it. A hundred euros. And at a store called Furla, she found a bag that would be ideal for all those reasons she told me and that I can't recall now. Two hundred. Mary Ann, meanwhile, had found her own pair of sunglasses: one hundred sixty-five euros. I walked around wielding the credit card, not putting up a fight at all. Encouraging them, really. Because I wanted to build up capital to finance the only thing I really wanted today: a really good lunch in a really good restaurant with the kind of food I wanted to try. They could not say no to me. I found a restaurant called Antico Calice ("the old cup") that looked very good. And met the girls' only stipulation: it was air-conditioned. Air conditioning is not universal in Italy, and even where it can be found it is barely up to the task. We chose a table at Antico Calice that seemed to have an air duct nearby, and everybody was happy. What I was looking for was a local specialty called fegato alla Veneziana: liver and onions with olive oil, herbs, and polenta. All over Italy, when you see a liver dish on a menu, it is likely to be called "Veneziana," in the same way the gumbo across America is identified with New Orleans. Antico Calice had it, and the waiter's eyes lit up when I ordered it. And the risotto verde, and some vegetable antipasto. I don't remember or much care what the others ordered (Mary Leigh certainly had spaghetti al pomodoro, which already had become her standard dish in every restaurant we would visit for the rest of the trip). All I remember was that the fegato Veneziana was all I hoped it would be. Tender squares of liver, cut about a quarter inch thick, no funny gristle lumps, a great simple sauce with sweetened onions, and a lively wedge of grilled polenta to take up the sauce that escaped the liver and onions. Fabulous, utterly soul-satisfying. . . an unimpeachably the real food of the locale. After lunch, the girls again peeled away on their own errands, Mary Ann not wanting to be hamstrung by my paranoia about getting back to the ship on time. Jude wanted to show me the hotel where he dined last night. A friend he'd made in Washington--Tomas, who was from Guatamala--had somehow made a rendezvous with him and they went to the Europe Hotel with Tomas's parents for a grand dinner. (We'd been nervous about this, because we had no meeting place after the dinner, nor any way to reach him. But, as Jude always does, he found us just in time.) Along the Grand Canal. I wanted to take a vaporetto along the entire length of the Grand Canal, so we did. What I did not expect was that it would make every stop along the way. When we got back to the Piazzale Roma, the last of the shuttle buses had already left, and we had to break into a near-run across the overpasses and industrial area to get back to the ship. We stepped onto the gangplank two minutes before it was pulled up--the closest call I wanted to have. Mary Ann told me that she was watching us run to the ship, and she laughed the whole time. One thing is for certain. I am balancing all the eating I have been doing with a great deal of exercise. Wednesday, July 12. At Sea, At Last. After three days of running around to the maximum extent possible, I was very thankful for a day at sea. Nothing to do but eat, watch the waves, eat, drink, watch the waves, watch women in their bathing suits (many more beauties on this cruise than I remember noticing before), listen to music, take a nap, drink, eat, drink, listen to more live music, sing, and drink. That was my day in a nutshell. The only unusual event was our gathering for a group photograph. We could not do it our usual way--on the winding staircase in the atrium--because there are too many of us. When I saw the photo the next day, I was astonished not only that every face can be seen, but that everyone is looking at the camera and smiling. Pretty good for sixty-two people. (Four were missing, but we never get them all.) My girls spent the day around the pool, soaking up rays. Jude was, as he always is, constantly wandering around the ship, often trailed by a number of other young men and women. He woke just before noon, and didn't return to the room till so late that nobody knows really how late he was out. For lunch, I gathered an assortment of dishes from the Chinese window (which was serving a great seafood soup and some spicy Szechuan eggplant) and the Fish 'n' Chips stand (I took some of their seared tuna). Mary Ann joined me and a few others of our group wound up with us. But lunch comes and goes in the most casual way. I almost never lunch in the main dining room (and would not during this entire cruise of nearly two weeks. Lunch is one of the few things I think Royal Caribbean does better than Carnival; on sea days, they line up a big grill and salad buffet near the pool, and that stuff was a lot of fun. Few of my group showed up for afternoon tea and chamber music. I think this may be a taste of mine shared with few others. Still, the room was reasonably full with other feeble geezers trying to remember (or imagine) a more civilized time--whether it actually existed or not. Cruises are largely a fantasy for me. After tea and a nap, I fell into a habit that would last till the end. A small sushi bar opens shop for a few hours every late afternoon on the Promenade deck. This has been very poor in past cruises, but maybe they read my comments about it (and, I'm sure, those of anyone else who likes sushi), because the sushi was at least passable, with three or four different items each day. All that is for the taking. So I sit there and hope a server comes by to sell me a drink. A Negroni (gin, Campari, sweet vermouth, a splash of club soda) is nice with sushi, I discovered. And demonstrated to the few friends who happened by. If there were any doubt whether friendships are forming among the members of our group, they were dispelled tonight. I don't think any table hosted the passengers to which it was assigned; everybody had moved around to hang with new faces. The dinner included Chateaubriand. The general opinion was that this was better than the previous night's beef Wellington, and not as good as the lobster on the second night. My kind of conversation. Why has karaoke moved to eleven at night? I can do the first hour, but with a port in the morning I know better than to try the second. Thursday, July 13. Sicily. The time could have been measured in seconds between the moment when the ship's gangway was lowered and when Mary Ann strode down it into the port town of Messina. She was alone, not wanting to begin the day with the inevitable squabbles with the other three members of the family, who do not share her sense of urgency to spend every available minute on land in the ports. Messina stands on the corner of Sicily across from the toe tip of Italy, and for mariners it has been the subject of lore since at least the time of Homer. Mountains shoot straight out of the water into the town, and Mary Ann's target was what looked like a church about ten blocks away, but already higher than the top deck on the towering ship. She made her strenuous way there, and found out that it wasn't a church at all but a mausoleum. That's what she reported when, already footsore, she returned to the ship. I was properly showered, dressed, breakfasted, and ready to go, and the kids almost were. We'd learned our lesson. We might delay Mom's plans, but not stop them, and the longer we did, the worse things would be for us. Messina, we knew, is not a town for people with our wants. We also knew that Palermo, the capital, was too far for the time we had. And that the northern coast had beautiful beaches, but little else. In the end, the best bet seemed to be Taormina. Mary Ann's Edict #16766: We do not buy organized tours, or take buses unless it's unavoidable. Our first alternative was to walk to the train station--about ten blocks, to the accompaniment of the usual whining from the younger half of the team. There we encountered a brick wall. After struggling with the ticket clerk's minimal English and our minimal Italian, we learned that there would be no train the Taormina for two hours. Unacceptable. So we went back to the ship (more whining) where, Mary Ann said, all the cabs were charging 450 euros for the day. "We may as well go back to the ship and watch TV," she said. Fortunately, it turned out that there were cabs, and they were not 450 euros. A guy named Mario was there, and he offered to take us to town and bring us back for 150 euros. However, his English was rudimentary, so I had to repeat again and again, in different ways, what my apprehension of the deal was. Four people to Taormina and back, 150. Not per person. Not each way. Drop us off and wait for us. All for 150. Right? Wrong. Despite all this care, the trip wound up costing us 320 euros. Why? Because, Mario said, he thought we just wanted to go and come back, not hang around for two hours. When we found that we liked the town more than we expected and wanted to stay longer, more money. At the end: What about my tip? This is the problem with trying to improvise absolutely everything. I am now done with all the problems of this day, all of which were overwhelmed by the beauty of Taormina and of the ride there. The town was about an hour from Messina, by way of a highway that went through no fewer than twenty-six tunnels (I may have missed a couple of them), and rode high enough up the mountain range's slope that the view of the sea and the villages along it were constantly marvelous. Sicily, like the rest of Italy, is in the grip of a drought that's gone on for a few years. The countryside reminded me a lot of Texas west of San Antonio, or perhaps of Northern California. Most of the grass was yellow, and there was lots of exposed ground. But many of the trees and shrubs were in flower. Very appealing. Taormina was far more charming than any of the guidebooks indicated. Its old town stretched on for about the length of two French Quarters, with side streets going a block or two from the main street (strictly a pedestrian walk) before they reach either a rock wall or a cliff. Restaurants and shops were everywhere, including many of the same ones we'd seen in Venice. That allowed the girls (and Jude, too) to resume their shopping while I scouted around for a likely restaurant. The menus were distinctly different from those we'd seen in Naples or Venice, with more pasta with red sauces of various kinds and more pizza. The dessert menus were very familiar: here were all the ice cream flavors and confections we know from Angelo Brocato's, with cannoli as a major specialty. Many of them had their dining rooms in the rear of their buildings, affording views of the sea. We lunched in one of those, the name of which I can't recall. We weren't looking for a major meal--just some pasta and pizza. All this proved to be very good. My pizza (they were intended for a single person, although they were certainly big enough for two) was "quattro stagione"--four seasons. Artichokes in this quarter, anchovies and garlic in that, mushrooms over here, and broccoli in the final quadrant. The crust was just the way I like it" thin, crisp at the very bottom, and vaguely smoky. Taormina has a chairlift that carries one down to the beach. This seemed like a good idea to the gang, even though we have to leave within the half hour. I was very relieved that the thing was on its midday break. The kids had to be consoled with only some fantastic gelato while I finally cornered a cannoli. The drive back was as delightful as the outbound, and Mario insisted on taking us through a tour of Messina's few sights. One of these was truly worth seeing, however. Even with the churches of Venice fresh in my mind, I was impressed by the cathedral in the center of town. Its ceiling, which seemed to have an almost Arabic quality (not surprising, since the Arabs were here for a long time), was especially worth staring at. After Mario cleaned me out and I cleaned myself up, the evening began. Mary Leigh and I indulged in a tradition we've kept since our very first cruise: the daddy-daughter date in the supper club. Carnival's upscale dining rooms are about as fine as dining can be in the mind of Mary Leigh, because they have excellent versions of two of her favorite things: filet mignon and mashed potatoes. I began with the terrific lobster bisque and the Caesar salad (made at the table, which is becoming a rare thing indeed). Then the fillet of sole meuniere, which I chose largely because I'd splurged on a glass of Corton Charlemagne--one of the great names in white Burgundy--for $25. The sole was not good, but I'm inclined to place most of the blame for that on the fish itself. Its reputation is in the upper circle, but I'm never impressed by it. Even while we toured  Taormina, another big event this day loomed large in my mind. In the ship's bulletin this morning, it was announced that tonight would be the guest talent show. A sheet for signups went up at five in the afternoon; I knew, from past cruises, that you had to be the first down there to assure yourself of a place on the program. Even though I did arrive fifteen minutes in advance, four other people were already there. Like me, they were shutouts from the Carnival Legends show. The contest for that event appeared a couple of night earlier. I asked all the Eat Clubbers to come cheer for me, but they started the competition late, and my heat was the last one--after one in the morning, by which time my folks (who tend to the older side) had mostly gone to bed. A guy who, I later learned, was an accomplished jazz trumpeter who'd played with Al Hirt years ago, beat me by appealing to the New Yorkers in the crowd. So he got the Frank Sinatra gig, and I had to content myself with having done it before. So this unexpected other talent show was a reprieve. My name was chosen at random from the ten or so who wanted to be in on it, and the next thing I knew I was on the stage with the band, rehearsing Where Or When, my ace in the hole. The talent show began at ten, and was interspersed with some very funny, seemingly impromptu business on the part of the cruise director and some randomly-selected people from the audience. There was, in fact, nothing random about any of it; none of what we saw could have been done without a thorough rehearsal. (And besides, one of the Eat Clubbers had been tapped for an earlier shtick, and was going around the ship under the identity Willie Banger. So we knew what was going on.) I was preceded onstage by a very pretty young woman who danced in a gymnastic way, and then surprised everyone, including the cruise director, by being underage for this show at only fifteen. (She looked at least twenty--but what's new about that?) I got my song out with only a little difficulty. I didn't hit the first notes exactly right in the verse, but nobody knows that part anyway. The band played slower than I would have liked, but it was a moment I love for: on a stage with an audience of a thousand or so people, spotlights trained on me, with a ten-piece live band behind me. This was far more to my liking than singing My Way in the Legends show. So I am fulfilled. Friday, July 14. Last Sea Day. Two-Thirds Gone! It's Bastille Day. In two days we will be in France. If we were there today, I wonder whether it would be a good or bad thing for a visitor? The cruise is two-thirds over, but I'm not even thinking of the end of it now. Instead, I'm enjoying the fact that my checklist is almost finished. All the group dinners have occurred. A little problem with two couples who were not officially part of our group (they booked online to get a lower price, but wanted all the extras we plug into the group program) has been averted. Everybody traveling with us seems to be having an excellent time. I made it onto the talent show and have performed. The newsletter I write and distribute around the ship to our people (who always seem to span the entire vessel, making this a bit of exercise) did not need to go out today. Because it's a sea day. Our final one for the cruise. Total relaxation. Usually, I take the opportunity to catch up on journal-keeping, checking e-mail, and the like. But I still have not done a lick of non-cruise work since I boarded, and it looks as if I won't. Eating got off to a great start, with breakfast in the main dining room with another group of interesting folks. These were from New York by way of Florida, and we swapped hurricane stories. The kitchen's daily egg specials have continued to be excellent. Today's was a Mexican-inspired thing, with black beans and chorizo. Later, I lunched with Mary Ann on a polyglot assortment of Chinese, Indian, and Italian dishes in the buffet. She did not join me for afternoon tea, which was lightly attended. The classical trio was as good as ever, with the pianist being the star of the ensemble, in my opinion. We did have a group activity today, but it's an easy one: our cocktail party. We managed to get the ship to make it a private event--our last few have been in the company of other groups--but we still can't seem to score the beautiful appetizers we had on the first couple of cruises, before they changed the rules. I'm going to get that back one way or another. (Although why I feel we need even more food is something I can't explain.) Mary Leigh begged me for another dinner in the supper club. At $30 a person, it's more affordable than most requests, but getting a reservation would be tough. I thought. But we have apparently made such an impression on the staff with our culinary expertise and New Orleans joie de vivre that they slipped us onto the book. This time, Mary Leigh and Jude dined together. They were a cute couple. For the first time in a couple of years. I think the friction of their early teen years may be past. I dined in the main dining room with a couple of sisters, one of whom is with her husband, the other unattached. They have been delightful company throughout the cruise, dressing well and getting the most out of everything. I love happy people. The food was no explanation for that this night. Turkey and dressing, prime rib, fried catfish, and more of the most uninspired food I think I've ever had on a ship. It wasn't even comfort food--just old-style, boring American home cooking. I went up to the supper club to see whether there were any leftovers, but no such luck. I found myself at loose ends. Karaoke is over for the duration. (Why? I never found out.) The guy in the piano bar encourages singalongs, but the music he liked I found unlistenable for long. Then I found the sweet spot. I wish I had done so earlier. In The Cabinet--the same British-style men's-club-looking place where they do afternoon tea, the Gavin Ahearn Trio was playing modern jazz. Sitting in with them was the guy who beat me out for the Frank Sinatra gig. They proved to be absolutely terrific. I ordered a Dalwhinnie Scotch in a snifter, settled into a comfy chair near the group, and let the music work on me. I couldn't bear to leave, and would have stayed until they closed the place at one in the morning. But tomorrow we will be in Barcelona, and that will be a marathon with an early start, I'm certain. Friday, July 15. An Incredible Fresh Food Market, In An Astounding City. Barcelona meant one big thing to Mary Ann: the architecture of Antoni Gaudi, one of the most original geniuses of building design in history, whose work is seen all over the city. Her schedule for the day was to walk around to as many Gaudi buildings as possible, and definitely a visit to his unfinished cathedral. All other needs would have to fit into and around that endeavor. For me, Barcelona also meant one thing. But a different thing. Tapas. Barcelona is the center of tapas restaurants. I would find one and eat tapas galore. To make a long story short, I did not get any tapas. In fact, we barely got a chance to eat anything. It was nobody's fault, really. We walked a path through the city that seemed sure to take up past many restaurants. But the only ones were saw served convenience food. And the places whose tapas I read about in the guidebooks were nowhere near our route. I had found what looked like a good one in the Barcelonetta section, and alerted the Eat Clubbers traveling with me about them. Many of the folks says they'd gone and loved it. Despite that failure, I found Barcelona an immensely agreeable city. The architecture and design of the town--all of it, not just Gaudi's--is delightful. The entire town, save for its oldest parts, has a more open air than I've seen anywhere else. The buildings have a look that in many ways reminds me of Canal Street--but on a much larger scale. Except for those Gaudi buildings, which are like nothing else in the world and amazing to behold. But we found my most memorable sight here right very soon in our wanderings. It was still early in the morning (naturally), and we were just getting our bearings and marching up La Ramblas, an esplanade whose neutral ground had a continuous line of shops, none of which were in business at the time. But La Boqueria--the central fresh food market--was very much in operation. It presented only a minimal face to the street, but as we walked around it I began to wonder just home many blocks it took up. Here was the single most eye-popping collection of fresh food vendors I'd ever seen. It began with something I fully expected to see: a stall curing and selling hams. Ham is probably the most often-eaten food in Spain, and their dry-cured hams are among the world's best. This first vendor had at least two dozen varieties, plus sausages and other works in pork. Then I saw another guy with his hams and sausages. And another, and another. There was an entire aisle of this stuff. We turned the corner and found ourselves among chickens. Whole chickens, with heads and feet still intact (but killed and plucked) and orange-red skins covering them, lay piled in the glass-fronted cooler. Along with other birds, turkeys to quail. And birds broken apart into component parts. Still with that orange color, not the grayish-yellow we're used to seeing. And not a square inch of plastic wrap covering any of it. We walked past several chicken vendors, and came to another kind of butcher. He had rabbits, goats, and lambs. Also with the skinned heads still on, open eyeballs and teeth very obvious. This was too much for Mary Leigh, who didn't want to so much as catch that out of the corner of her eye. Mary Ann took her away and told her when she could look again. They wound up in the section of the market with the fruit and candy vendors. But Jude and I kept going, looking at all this. Soon we were in the fish section of La Boqueria. The wonders did not cease. The first thing I saw were big flanks of dried, salted codfish--bacalao. In two different booths. But then there were more. Big fish, little fish, all whole. I thought I'd count the number of varieties, and lost count at thirty-three--all finfish. One stand had five variations on squid; most had at least two. One stand had three kinds of eels. Another had seven kinds of lobstery-looking crustaceans, several of them still moving. Shrimp were mostly very small ones, with the exception of one kind that looked exactly like the shrimp we have in New Orleans. I asked where those came from. "Golfo de Mexico," the man said. So they import some of this, too. It occurred to me that there are no cod or salmon in the Mediterranean, but here was plenty of both. But for the most part, these were Mediterranean fish, in clearly large supply, all fresh with clear eyes. I couldn't escape the same thought I'd had in the fish market of Venice: As good as our restaurants are, how much better they could be if chefs had access to a resource anything like this! We spent a long time in La Boqueria. Then we were off on a shopping spree. I tagged along, usually remaining on the street outside, getting a feel for the city. The more I saw, the better I liked it. And a critical element for me was missing: restaurants. How could it be that we walked dozens of blocks through what was obviously the center of town, and seen so few restaurants? Most of those were apparently there for the lunchtime feeding of the people who work there, judging by the menus and the fast-service aspects. I didn't worry about it. Surely we'd find something. After a couple of hours of the girls' trying on and buying clothes (and Jude somehow getting a 20-euro tie from Burberry, whose ties generally were in three figures), we struck out in the direction of Gaudi's cathedral. I kept my eyes peeled for restaurants. Nothing. It's not unusual to hear that a grand cathedral is not finished after decades or even centuries of construction. But this place was nowhere close. A maze of scaffolds inside showed that it was not functioning yet. At least not as a church. But as a feast for the eyes. . . well, there it was already in full career. Everything about it is unconventional in the extreme, and in a way that resembles nothing else. The spires reach insanely high, and the tallest of them hasn't been built yet. The sculptures over the rear doors come close to telling the entire story of Christianity, so dense are they. Details like the word "Sanctus," repeated again and again on the spires, tell us that Gaudi was as religious as he was brilliant. Even in this rough state, is as amazing a church as I've ever been in. And on this trip, I don't have to think back too far. We were now past lunchtime, with no lunch in sight. We'd walked so far that the idea of traveling back to our starting point on the Metro was irresistible. The train we boarded and its tunnel seemed to have been finished yesterday. The cars were joined in such a way as to make the whole train seem to be one car. When the train went around a curve, or climbed a grade, the visual looking back of the long passageway bending was most striking. We returned to Las Ramblas, and there we found restaurants on side streets. I found one that looked good. It was not a tapas bar, but it had typical Spanish food and some Catalan specialties. The waiter handed us menus in English. I found that I knew better what I was ordering if I used the Spanish menu, because the English translations sometimes completely obscured the dish's identity. I fixed on the arroz con calamares. When it came, Mary Leigh said, "That looks like a bowl of asphalt." Which it did. It tasted okay--but just okay. This was not skillful cookery. I think we were in a tourist place. But it was too late to do anything about it. As it was, I had to cut not only the search short, but the meal itself. We had to bolt it down in a half hour in order to catch the last bus back to the ship. I'd been in Barcelona, a culinary capital, a whole day and hadn't eaten in any serious way! But I cannot dictate to the three others all the time. "At least you got to see the Boqueria," Mary Ann said, helpfully. Yes, that was amazing. But. . . What I had eaten, and the lateness of the hour when I had it, made me unenthusiastic about dinner. I was there, but I don't remember what I ordered. Just another couple hours spent in conversation with our people, the most agreeable and sociable group we've ever drawn together. Then a nice period appeared at the end of that sentence. It was hot soufflee night in the dining room. Grand Marnier soufflees, with sauce anglaise. I made a fuss about it, to make sure everybody knew how special this was. For my efforts the waiter brought me two of them. I don't know how they can pull this off for so many people, but they always do. After dinner, I made a beeline for The Cabinet, where the jazz plays and cigar smokers puff. (Fortunately, there aren't many of those, and the ventilation system is very effective.) The trip was once again good enough to send me, with the help of a snifter of Dalwhinnie, into a happy musical reverie. Only Jude stayed up later than I did. And he's impossible to outlast. Sunday, July 16. Walking And Beaching In Cannes. Even Mary Ann was forced into a leisurely beginning of the day today: the ship didn't begin unloading passengers until nine, and then we had to take a short boat ride to the Cannes dock, at the end of a waterfront road with sailboats parked on one side, and restaurants on the other. The restaurants' menus were fascinating. They were very South of France, with mussels and bouillabaisse and salade Nicoise on every one of them, plus a differing collection of other French classics, mostly along bistro lines. It all sounded delicious; I figured that if these places, cheek-by-jowl along what seemed clearly a tourist area, were serving food like this, then what must the restaurants in town offering? So we walked into the old downtown and wove our way through the narrow streets. We needed a stop for some pastries and cappuccino. Mary Ann's greatest culinary passion on this trip has been the patisseries, and we found many to choose from, with elaborate selections. We munched almond croissants and other flaky things, and had various beverages before moving on, the girls in search of shopping and beaches, Jude and I looking for food and under-clothed women. But it was Sunday. And most of the shops were closed. This is a tourist town, but this is France. The only business I was able to negotiate was getting 300 euros from an ATM. (It was the first time I'd done this overseas, and was amazed at how easy it was.) More surprising, after a few restaurants in the old part of town (most of them Italian), we saw few places to eat. Certainly nothing to rival what we'd seen along the waterfront. Then it hit me that the exact same thing happened last time we were on the French Riviera, in the little town of Villefranche-Sur-Mer. All the good restaurants were on the waterfront there, too. Mary Ann wanted to enter and, if possible, park ourselves in the Carlton Hotel, the grand hostelry on the waterfront where the celebrities hang out during the Cannes Film Festival. She begged me to look past the absurd cost of having a drink in the lobby; it wasn't too bad, really. So what's seventeen dollars for a cocktail? We sat around and tried to soak in the glamor, while eating olives and nuts. It was just another hotel bar to me (an Inter-Continental, at that). Maybe at night, when somebody plays that piano, it's more entertaining. But if it makes everybody happy, that's good enough for me. We moved to the beach and walked along that, the girls looking for potential sites for lying in the sand and taking a dip. Thousands of people were already doing that. It was had to tell whether the beaches were private or not. We kept moving along, we boys keeping our eyes peeled for toplessness. As always, I never saw a thing. The girls swore to me that they had seen a few, but they wouldn't say where. No restaurants turned up. So we returned to the row of restaurants we'd passed on the way in. I looked over the menus more carefully this time, and found a particularly fascinating one at a place called Gaston Gastonette. Mary Ann made the point with the kids that this was a sop to me, since I'd had nothing interesting to eat the day before in service of their shopping. Indeed, they found little of interest. But I did. I started with a big bowl of mussels mariniere, some three dozen of them, with a delicious herby, savory broth. Then rognons de veau: veal kidneys, prepared just right, not too tough, with a fine cream sauce. Rich, but wonderful. Nobody else at the table even wanted to ask me how they were, because they didn't want to know. Anyway, I was moaning, they said. I think I saw a steak and a fish somewhere at the other points of the table, but nothing could beat this stuff. You don't eat kidneys prepared by a French chef every day. After lunch, we returned to the beach. Mary Ann and the kids changed into swim suits and went to the water. I found a shady spot under a grove of pine trees (just like the ones at home, I thought), and took a nap of unknown duration, the Cotes du Rhone I'd had with the rognons performing its assigned duty. When I awakened, I looked out into the sea and noticed that our ship was pointing in the opposite direction from where it had been before. We found out why this was when we took the shuttle boat back to the ship: a storm had blown up, and the waves were making it hard for people to move from the little boat to the big one. Always something. Another good dinner in the dining room, the better part of which was the camaraderie with the people in our group, who have gone all the way from being strangers to one another to being good friends. Certain couples have paired off with other couples they didn't know before for socializing. This is what I love to see by the end of a cruise. I spent what was left of the evening downstairs in the jazz club again, this being the last night for that great trio. The cruise is very clearly winding down now, and it kills me. Monday, July 17. A Big Steak In Florence. The closest the ship can get to Florence is the busy port of Livorno, which is famous as the place where Galliano liqueur is made, but is mostly industrial. Before the cruise began, I bought train tickets for the trip fro Livorno to Florence, but we learned that the Italian railway workers were inflicting their "lightning strikes." In these, they decide secretly that they will strike a certain line at a certain time on a certain day, but not tell anyone in advance where or when. This brought on the possibility that we would be stranded in Florence, where the taxi drivers were having their own strikes. When we came down the gangplank, we saw that a couple of firms were renting cars on the dock. We were lucky enough to get in line in time to get the last one. And, because the car we were initially to get was a van, and a handicapped person needed a van, and we were willing to take a smaller car, we got it for much less than we were originally quoted. (But still high at about $100.) This suited Mary Ann perfectly: complete freedom to roam. The car had a stick shift (all of them in Europe seem to), and as the only driver in the family who drives such a car, I was the chauffeur. We picked our way through a maze of factories, watching landmarks to make sure we could find our way back, and then were on the hour-long drive to Florence. It was Autostrada most of the way, but that went through the pretty Tuscan countryside, and was very pleasant. We didn't have a problem until we entered Florence. Signing of roads and streets is, to put it mildly, sub-optimal in Italy. We quickly got lost trying to find the train station, which the rent-a-car lady said was the best place to park. Even maps are unhelpful when you can't figure out which street you're on. We asked for directions and were pointed to a parking garage a block away. Which, miraculously, was as close to the center of town as it was possible to park. The fellow running the garage was the most helpful and pleasant guy we ran into anywhere on the trip, and he saved us a lot of wandering around. We were immediately in the shopping district, and my gang took to it as if they hadn't been in a shop in years. Mary Leigh found yet another outlet of this Furla outfit she'd told me was so unique in Venice. "But this one has different stuff, Dad!" Jude became fascinated by Italian suits, and tried a few on. They made him look mature and even sexy. They made me feel poor. While the shopping was going on, I wandered the immediate neighborhood, looking for likely restaurants. I found a few that had a lot of appeal, but the one that pushed my button was Ristorante Spada, whose logo was a chef wielding a spada (sword). Just inside the door, they had a glass case filled with antipasto, casseroles, and one thing I couldn't identify. "Trippa!" said the chef. Tripe! I looked again and saw it, cut into small morsels. I'd had liver and kidneys in the last three days. Tripe would make the ensemble complete. This was the place. Mary Leigh was less enthusiastic, and so was Mary Ann when it quickly became clear that this was a restaurant patronized almost entirely by regular local Florentines, and that tourists were just tolerated. The table across the room was being served at a much more rapid pace than we were, that was for sure. Mary Ann began getting itchy, wanting to return to sightseeing. But then everything started happening. Mary Ann got her antipasto plate, the spaghetti carbonara arrived for Jude, Mary Leigh received her usual spaghetti al pomodoro, and here came an appetizer of the tripe for me. All delicious. But the big deal here was something I've wondered about for a long time. Throughout Tuscany, restaurants offer bistecca Fiorentina--steak in the Florence style--as a premium dish. It is always offered by the kilogram, for between 55 and 70 euros. A kilogram is about two and a half pounds of beef. But Spada had a luncheon version for 33 euros, as part of a table d'hote repast. What came out was an enormous bone-on steak that had characteristics of both the porterhouse and the prime rib. That explained everything: it was on the border between the two primal cuts. This, I learned, is a classic Fiorentina. The chef also said that it came from a particular breed of cattle, and he showed me a certificate that said Spada used only Chianina cattle. The steak before me was striped with char and innocent of any kind of sauce or even obvious seasoning. It looked like just a steak. But it was not just a steak. It had a flavor and juiciness that was unique in my broad steak-downing experience. A little gamier than usual, a lot juicier--and unforgettable. This simple meal in this rather utilitarian little restaurant rose to near the top of my list for this entire journey. After that, I didn't care what we did or where we went. We walked off a lot of the lunch by going to the Basilica of Santa Croce, which we'd missed last time. (Part of it is incredibly ancient, even by the standards of Italy.) More shopping. More gelato and espresso. Mary Ann backed away from her plan to see "The David," as she refers to Michelangelo's most famous sculpture. (Apparently there are many exact copies around Florence, but to see the real one means a long wait in line.) At last, we found ourselves strolling in a blast of roasting sunshine as we walked to and then along the Arno River, the younger troops getting cranky. There was a brief argument as to whether I were leading us the right way back to the car, but (fortunately) I was. The nice young man at the garage helped us yet again by telling us the easy way out of town, and then we were rolling along through the Tuscan hills. The kids fell asleep, and Mary Ann implemented a plan to take a side trip to Pisa. But we got caught in a bad traffic jam just entering the town, enough to turn the race to the ship before sailing time another nerves-on-edge photo finish, as we threaded our way through the factories (much more easily than I thought we would) to the dock. We made it with five minutes to spare. Which is still too close for my comfort. But I felt good knowing that Mary Ann could not accuse me of wasting a single minute of potential time in Tuscany. The evening was subdued. Everybody was in the dining room there for dinner, happy and looking forward to our two days in Rome, but clearly feeling the end of the cruise blues. After dinner, there wasn't much to do. No karaoke, no jazz in the cigar lounge, not many people gambling even. The hallways filled up with luggage waiting to be taken down by the porters. We bedded down early and slept well. Tuesday, July 18. Rome. I always depart a cruise ship regretfully. I don't know how long I could remain aboard one before I became bored with the experience, but it's longer than the two weeks we just spent. And the times doesn't even seem to fly by. To me, boarding the plane in New Orleans seems to have happened months ago. As usual, they started getting people off early and with strident insistence. (They will have the clean the ship completely and board a whole new tub of passengers later today.) But because we were going to a hotel instead of catching a flight, they saved us till last, giving plenty of time for breakfast and leisurely making ready. We rolled off at about nine, juggled our luggage a bit, and boarded a bus from the port town of Civitavecchia into Rome. All along the way, we received a commentary from an older woman whose English was well broken, but she had many stories I'd never heard before. The day was brilliant and the scenery all the way to Rome was pleasant. Checking into the Hotel Ciccerone was mildly irritating. Because we arrived so early (it was still well before noon), few of the rooms were ready for us, so we milled about in the lobby, waiting. Too early for lunch, even. Finally, the room opened up. It was nicer than I was expecting (but less so for Mary Ann, who was calculating ruefully just what kind of markup Carnival had made on this deal). It was a European hotel all the way, with the funny plumbing and air conditioning controls that always take a while to figure. At least the rooms was cool enough for comfort, something one cannot take for granted in a European summer. And the location was terrific, a couple of blocks from the Piazza Cavour. You could walk to all the major sights, and the Metro was close enough that you could use that for other destinations. Mary Leigh and I went out to find a farmacia to restock our supplies of sundries, and on the way back we found the place where we would have lunch. We collected Jude and Mary Ann and walked back to Da Cesare, just off the Piazza Cavour. I remembered reading a recommendation of the place in one of our books, and the menu looked good. We started with antipasto and rigatoni all' amatriciana, a Roman classic, usually involving string pasta. This version, however, promised to be served with Pecorino Romano cheese from a certain local producer the waiter told me was especially good. It's in a light red sauce made with a good bit of crushed red pepper--enough to make it distinctly spicy--and bits of guanciale--cured pork jowl, rather like pancetta. This was extraordinarily delicious. While the kids went on with spaghetti pomodoro, I had the veal saltimbocca, grilled with prosciutto and cheese in a minimal sauce. Very good. I'd now held off Mary Ann long enough, and we were off to see Rome. We picked a narrow street that led from where we were to the Piazza di Popoli and the Spanish Steps. It took a long time to get there, because this street was fully lined with clothing and jewelry and furnishings stores, all of which were of great interest to the girls. Jude, who is learning a lot about fine clothing himself, spent a lot of time in the men's shops, and in one of them actually was persuaded by the shop owner to try on a very slick Italian suit. So traversing a distance I'd estimate as being about the width of the French Quarter took a bit over two hours. We paused on the Piazza di Popoli for some gelato and espresso, choosing a parlor that looked as if it were air conditioned (it had the usual hint of air conditioning that Italian shops and restaurants rarely exceed), and ran up a big tab because we were sitting at a table being served. It was worth it to get off our feet. The rest of the gang didn't know it, but I'd led them here because I wanted to take another look at a restaurant I'd seen on our last trip. Trattoria St. Andrea looked so inviting then that I was very disappointed to be told we didn't have time to stop for a lengthy lunch, and the regret lingered to be fixed. I thought it might be a good place to have a group dinner tonight. The restaurant was between hours when I found it. Its building was surrounded by scaffolds and major reconstruction, which took something from the sidewalk tables. I was able to study the menu, which looked very interesting but more rustic than I remembered. Then Jude emerged from another clothing store with the owner walking behind him. Jude was wearing another prospective Italian suit, and telling me that the owner said the restaurant was indeed very good. It took ten minutes of listening to how good Jude looked in the suit to shake the guy off. "It's only 250 euros," Jude implored, for his part. But he is coming at me at the wrong end of this cruise. We're way over budget. We walked back to the hotel by a slightly different, but no less shop-riddled passage. And I left Trattoria St. Andrea behind again, for another trip. As we approached the Tiber, we routed ourselves around the mausoleum of Caesar Augustus. It takes up a very large piece of land, as you might imagine, but the earth is reclaiming it, and it's not outstanding. More memorable was a mini-art display set up by some mysterious person who left tiny sculptures atop every post in the railing. Also, we chanced upon Alfredo's of Rome, the creator of fettuccine Alfredo. It was immediately adjacent to Augustus's resting place, but wasn't open at this hour. Because Mary Ann was captivated by something she read in a guidebook about a pizzeria called Baffetto. The writer said that the locals recommended it as the best pizza in Rome. This is saying something, because in my experience the pizza in Rome is better than the pizza anywhere else in Italy. We couldn't find the place on a map, so we took a taxi. The driver looped around a lot to put is right in front of the place, which he apparently knew. It was almost nine. We wondered whether they would still be open. We should have known by this point that, for Italians, the evening is just beginning at nine. A line extended from the front door of Baffetto, a grubby little place that smelled of good baking pizzas. The ones we saw coming out looked good. So we got in line, and stood there a long time studying the many caricatures of the owner taped to the windows and walls. The pizzas were the very thin style, baked in a brick wood-burning oven, a little burned at the edges (a good thing). But the whole gang was disappointed. "We make better pizza than this at home," somebody said. I agree--and we make them in almost exactly this style. They were of a size that one could finish on one's own. Mine was okay: a basic pizza with anchovies. The kids ate pepperoni. The most unfortunate one was Mary Ann, who ordered the pizza capriccioso. "It has egg on it," I told her. "That's okay," she said, not knowing that the egg would be broken over the pizza as it went into the oven, and emerge not entirely set. She would use this as an example of the most disgusting food she'd ever eaten. As we walked out the door, one of us noted that by changing one letter in "Baffetto," we would come up with a more appropriate name for the place. That name has stuck with us. We were not far from the Piazza Navona, but we didn't know in which direction it lay. Nobody had brought a map. This freaked me out a little: lost in Rome at eleven at night. There was little to fear, however: the streets were full, and the later the hour got, the more people there were. We found the Piazza after asking around (I wished for the directing signs of Venice), and after a few minutes digging on that interesting street scene, we found a taxi and went back to the hotel. Thursday, July 20. Twenty-Four Hours Home. I noticed it the first time I traveled to Europe, and every time since then. No matter what the schedule says, it will be at least twenty-four hours--a full calendar day--from the time you depart your hotel in Europe until the time you arrive home. Here's the synopsis of this particular homecoming. We were on the street in front of the hotel, getting our bags and selves aboard the bus, at quarter to seven in the morning. That's a quarter to midnight, New Orleans time. We pulled up at the Cool Water Ranch at exactly a quarter to midnight. Twenty-four hours of traveling. And waiting. Our first wait was in the Rome Fiumicino Airport, an hour and a half after breezing with amazing ease through the complex check-in and security ordeals. (Delta has this set up very efficiently, I must say.) The airport was full of shops, including yet another Furla store for Mary Leigh to get ideas in. I had a couple of espressos (I'd skipped the horrible hotel breakfast buffet), and decided that the Italian coffeeshop customer service model is terrible. You pay in advance, and present your ticket to the barista, who makes what the ticket says. There are two problems with this. First, the line to pay is always insanely long. Second, when you get to the counter with your incomprehensible, coded receipt, half the time the person actually making the coffee and fetching the croissant gives you the wrong thing. When you complain, they say that they gave you what the receipt says. Oh, well. At least the espresso is marvelous, as it is everywhere in Italy, without exception. The flight to Atlanta was a long bore. The only high point was that the chicken dinner was actually pretty tasty. The movies--"Ice Age II" and the Bruce Willis vehicle "16 Blocks" were only mildly entertaining. And, as has been the case from the moment we left town, I could not bring myself to so much as think about work. I mulled over that fact for awhile, and decided that the reason for this is that when I left, everything was done, and all moving processes had enough momentum to slide along without my pushing. That made this as relaxing a trip mentally as I've ever had. When we arrived in Atlanta, we met a common bugbear of the New New Orleans: our flight had been canceled. We already had a three-hour layover in Atlanta; this pushed it to five. A few of our people managed to insinuate themselves onto a flight that left almost immediately after we'd arrived, thereby getting them home even earlier than scheduled. But we didn't find that option until it was too late. So I fired up the laptop and began plowing through the 2,298 e-mail messages that had piled up in my absence. (I hadn't checked it at any time during the trip.) No surprises, no disasters, but lots of answers needed. I did that until I couldn't anymore. Then, somehow, I bent over and went to sleep for, Mary Ann told me, almost an hour. When we finally got home, we knew what would happen: the dogs would go nuts when they saw us back after these fifteen days. But Susan, the German Shepherd who wandered onto the property a couple of years ago and adopted us, was strangely subdued. And Fudgie, our beloved Chocolate Lab, was nowhere to be found. We were puzzled, but tiredness won over, and we collapsed into our familiar old beds. © 2006 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com