The second day at sea – the Mediterranean Sea in this case – on Marella Discovery started off a little overcast. Indeed, stepping out onto the balcony for the bracing breeze to wake us up in a way that trying to focus on the blurred figure staring back in the bathroom mirror while throwing water on the face never does showed us that there was rain on the horizon. Luckily for us, that’s where it stayed and as the morning wore on the threat of it ever sweeping over the vessel dissipated too.
There’s a horrible rumour that we only ever drink alcohol (and lots of it) when we’re on ships on account of the number of pictures of cocktails and beers that decorate these descriptions of sea days and port days on cruises. Let me be clear: that’s only mostly true. We generally don’t have something alcoholic until the afternoon and even reject those offers of free glasses of fizz or light cocktails that are sometimes used to entice passengers into seminars and shops for promotions. As supporting evidence here are the first two drinks we had in the morning aboard Discovery: something hot and a mocktail. These were taken after breakfast in a couple of locations on the ship so that we could give our room steward time to clean our cabin.
We actually don’t usually drink coffee on ships either but our drinks package upgrade to premium included speciality teas and coffees in the dedicated café area off the atrium and it seemed sensible to take advantage of it. While we were sitting there – me with my filter coffee, my wife with her hot chocolate – there was a sudden presence at our table. It was the waiter from the previous night’s dining in the Surf & Turf restaurant.
Mr H, Mrs H! Good morning! You like wine, I’m hosting a wine-tasting, do you want to sign up?
Siegfried, we’d love to.
That’s a very abbreviated version of the discussion. There was friendly small talk there, there were several demonstrations that he’d remembered our names, but it was ultimately a sales pitch for the wine-tasting coming up the following day on the cruise and he correctly suspected we’d be up for it. Sure, we’ve never really had what we’d call an excellent wine-tasting experience on any ship before but you live in hope and this was our first time cruising with Marella; we were always going to say yes.
The morning was spent doing very little other than relaxing in the company of our books and those few soft drinks but we had more of a plan for the afternoon. The sun had burnt off most of the cloud as midday approached so it was nice to take advantage of our balcony once the distractions of late morning entertainment became too much in the public spaces aboard Discovery.
That plan for the afternoon involved two activities: attending a guest lecture and giving the afternoon tea a try. Before we set off to the lecture I decided to snap a few photos of the room and bathroom much to my wife’s confusion.
Didn’t you say you weren’t going to take photos of the cabin?
I might have said something like that. Shift over there or you’ll be in the reflection.
Didn’t you say that if people wanted to see photos of the cabins aboard Marella Discovery that there were loads of examples on the web and you didn’t want to clutter up the site with more?
That sounds like the sort of thing I’d say but I can neither confirm nor deny that those were my words. Do you want to stand behind me?
Didn’t you say that taking photos of the bathroom was the sort of thing a serial killer with a fixation on moulded plastic would do?
I’m pretty sure you’re making that up and it’s not going to work; I’m still taking the shot. Ooh! Look at the moulded plastic!
The Squid & Anchor was the venue hosting the lecture we were interested in. We initially sat off to one side and at the back of the room until we realised there was no clear view to the screen showing images accompanying the talk. A relocation to a spot – gasp! – near other people solved that. The talk was by a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, John Maclean, and was titled A Journey Through The Solar System. We’ve always had an interest in science and while we’re not avid attendees of lectures on cruise ships, those that we have made an effort to watch have tended towards the scientific.
The talk would perhaps have worked a little better on a ship that wasn’t adults only, with elements that might have been more of interest to children, and there was a strange HAL-from-2001 gimmick that played a part early on in the talk then vanished to never make an appearance again. Thankfully. We didn’t learn anything we hadn’t known before BUT there’s a very good reason to recommend this talk if you’re on a ship and John is the guest lecturer. At the conclusion we were told that if we wanted we could gather around the stage area where there were a few extraterrestrial objects we could see and touch. We’ve touched meteorites before but never held them and felt the weight; you could really sense the density of the mass of metals and wonder how John managed to get them through security at the airport. But most interesting was the fragment of rock brought back from the Moon and a piece of Mars recovered from a meteorite that had found its way to Earth after being ejected following an impact on our neighbouring planet. Have you held bits of the Moon and Mars? Are you jealous that we have? Excellent stuff.
After the talk and the excitement of having bits of the solar system in the palms of our hands we made our way to the buffet area where Marella had set up for afternoon tea. We typically try to make one afternoon tea on a cruise and to date would say that P&O do this better than Princess (it’s that British versus American thing). Marella’s idea of afternoon tea is more in keeping with their philosophy of “Yeah, it’s included, but it’ll be pretty basic and don’t expect us to make a big deal of it” and that’s absolutely fine. You’d have to be a special kind of crazy to expect gloved waiters and silver tongs delivering sandwiches, small bites, biscuits, and cakes at your table for the low price of a Marella cruise. Grab your plate, pick what you want, find a table and eat. The staff circling the tables pour as much tea as you want. It was all perfectly pleasant.
Listening in on quizzes without participating (a good thing as we would have done abysmally), reading our books, and making sure we were hydrated filled up the rest of the afternoon and early evening of this second sea day. It’s very important to stay hydrated.
From drinking to eating. There’s no reason at all to eat the same food every single night on a cruise. We’d dined in the Italian area of the main dining room on the first night, mostly enjoyed the steakhouse experience on the second, and for this third day on Discovery we had picked a speciality package for the second night in a row with a visit to Kora La. As with the Surf & Turf, this was located adjacent to Bar Eleven and as you might be able to determine from its name Kora La specialised in food with Asian influences. There was no one specific country or region represented with the meals fusing elements of China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and India.
It’s worth mentioning that my wife and I aren’t fans of hot, spicy food. We enjoy the smells of Asian cooking and suspect that there’s a lot of interesting flavours hiding in the sauces but we’ve long suspected that this region of the world’s cooking has evolved along these lines:
This is quite nice. Although, I wonder…
What? You’ve got that look. You’re thinking of a way to make this food better, aren’t you?
Well… Okay, so what if while you’re eating you sweat profusely from every pore on your face?
Ooh! Ooh, I like that! That’s probably healthy in some way I’m not understanding. Anything else?
I’ve sometimes become aware of my lips when I’m eating and it can be a distraction so if we could also render it impossible to feel your lips during the meal and for some time afterwards…
Of course! Food appreciation will be so much higher when you shut off your brain’s capacity to process information from unnecessary body parts! Genius!
I was wondering about shooting pains in the tip of your tongue. Like someone holding exposed wires sending electric shocks to the tastebuds at the end making them unable to appreciate any taste.
That makes sense when you think about it. Because not everyone likes every food but if you can remove the ability to taste any of it you can enjoy the vitamins and other goodness without flavours becoming an obstacle.
And I don’t know whether you actually taste food as it passes through your oesophagus but if we tweak the recipe so that whatever you eat makes it feel like someone is ramming a white hot, rusty, metal skewer down your throat and scraping the lining we eliminate any chance of that.
You are on fire! Just like anyone else eating this food will feel. That’s some good chef work there. And can I make an observation?
Please do! I’m open to any suggestions on how we can develop food the whole world will enjoy.
I’ve always liked the colour brown.
Man, you are reading my mind! Everything brown. Every shade of brown. I mean, who doesn’t like brown!?
We won’t, however, let preconceptions about something stop us from experiencing it – it’s that scientific slant to our thinking again – and since we knew that if the food was terrible we could still go and eat somewhere else on the ship we sat down at our table with its views out over the pool deck at night with as near open minds as we could dredge up.
We made sure to order the K2 Cooler cocktails because they had sake in them and we both looked at each other and sighed “Ahh, sake” at the same time, remembering our cruise of almost exactly a year before on Diamond Princess and the sea day with sake (and, coincidentally, another lecture with a science twist; spooky!) Bread and dipping sauces for an amuse-bouche prawn-based appetiser was delivered. We quickly surmised that only one of the sauces didn’t hurt us.
I correctly guessed that my wife would go for the Crispy Pork Belly as her starter course in Kora La. The fear of the accompanying Korean BBQ sauce didn’t put her off and she liked the flavours and texture. The Vegetable Samosas I chose were very nice too, and suitably cool thanks to the cucumber and mint sauce. Both dishes were presented very prettily on banana leaves.
We decided we’d both take a risk and pick a curry for the main course. There was a modicum of method in our madness in that we’ve been talking about trying the Indian speciality dining on P&O cruises for a long time (and if we can ever book a table we still intend to) so we want to give ourselves the best chance of coming to terms with plates of brown agony. Moreover, the curries could be cooked to order and the level of spiciness requested which meant we were able to say “How mild can your chef make this? Excellent. I’d like it milder than that then please.”
Side dishes of rice and vegetables appeared along with Chicken Kashmiri for my wife and Lamb Madras for me. We both agreed that my choice was tastier as my wife discovered she doesn’t like the taste of coriander and her dish was overpowered by the flavour. We reached the ends of our curry dishes with tingling lips but overall a good job from the chef at Kora La.
Those tingling lips from the meal needed soothing so we asked for another cocktail each while we perused the dessert menu. In a surprise to literally nobody who’s read any of these dining diaries on this site before my wife went straight for the restaurant’s take on crème brûlée, the Pandam Cream. The lure of chocolate and matcha flavours sent me scurrying towards the Green Tea Fondant. They were both lovely.
We’d had some slight trepidation in the lead-up to the meal at Kora La on Discovery but it was a very enjoyable speciality dining experience with the big plus points being the location with its views, the presentation of the courses, and the very different courses from what we’d usually pick. The service was perfectly acceptable though not a patch on the night before, but we thought that for the cover charge Kora La was arguably better value than Surf & Turf overall. We’d have no qualms with booking into Kora La on a subsequent Marella cruise.
As we were next to Bar Eleven it would have been rude not to grab a drink or two to finish off the evening.
Upon returning to our room we found that our steward had prepared a towel animal for our amusement. I think this is the first towel animal we’ve ever had on a cruise. We argued over whether it was supposed to be a dog or a superhero pig that delivered chocolates to those in need.
In the next post in this cruise travelogue series aboard Marella Discovery I’ll cover the final day on the Mediterranean Sea before we hit the Suez Canal. It turns out to be a day of wine-drinking. Lots and lots of wine. So very much wine. Ridiculous amounts of wine. It wasn’t our fault. We were corrupted by other cruise bloggers.
I adore spicy food–the hotter the better. You wouldn’t like Laotian cooking very much, I fear; it can get pretty spicy, as can Cambodian food. You’d have to watch out in Mexico too; some of their dishes can even turn *my* hair, and I can take the spice.
We’re old-fashioned eaters; we prefer flavours over masochistic tests of bravery.