Spent the last eversomany days aboard the Disney Cruise ship, the Magic. Let me tell you, there's probably no better way to spend one's birthday, especially if one's birthday is in the middle of winter and, usually, there are no flamingos anywhere nearby. Here, flamingos aren't that far away, and dolphins swim alongside your ship and you can even have High Tea on the High Seas, which is precisely what I did.
We had high tea at Palo, the ship's exclusive restaurant for "grown-ups" only (we appear to fit the bill, but are actually just overgrown children with credit cards, so we pass muster). I'm served my own pot o' tea, Jasmine green. Then the sandwiches arrive: baby shrimp salad and cucumber and ham on foccacia and more. Scones, delicate and fluffy, soon follow, accompanied by jam and double cream. Ben eats most of the double cream by the spoonful, never mind the scone. And after these, the actual desserts follow: eclairs, brownie fudge cake, and a blueberry cheesecake that equalled perfection, along with fruit tarts topped with tropical fruits. We were entitled to seconds, thirds, a continuous stream of plenty, but we finished right there and then, requesting to take our remaining pastries with us (where they sat in our stateroom fridge)
This was at 3 o'clock. Our scheduled dinner seating? 5:45. Can you see a bit of a difficulty here?
We arrived at dinner at Lumiere's which boasts an incredible French menu. Somehow Ben managed to order a full dinner. I had a simple green salad, which drew raised eyebrows from our server and giggles from our tablemates (who blissfully ordered full meals as well).
Dessert time came and, by then, I decided I did, in fact, have a teensy bit of room for, well hey, creme brulee is small most of the time, right? So I ordered it, cracked through the burnt sugar on top (the best part!) and poked through only about a quarter of it.
And then the clapping began. And our entire waitstaff, from far away places like the Philippines and Serbia, all gathered around to celebrate, what? My birthday, of course!!! And what did they bring?
See above photo.
This glorious cake was approximately 6" tall, 6" across, 6" deep. White cake with a creamy strawberry center and smooth vanilla frosting. With a white chocolate ship to top it.
After our merry waiters sang "Happy Birthday" to me, I slowly scraped my fork along one side of the cake. Offered as much of my cake to our tablemates as they would like, but they just had their own separate desserts and were also jam-packed (quite possibly with actual jam!).
So the photo of this generous amount of pastry is one for the ages now. It was awfully sweet of the staff to remember my birthday and, well, at least I had room for about one thirtysecond of it. Plus the aft end of the chocolate topper.
I was doing just fine with my food choices that trip until the tea. that double cream was my undoing.
ReplyDeleteFrom that day forward you can take our photos and stack them like a flip book and watch me get fat.