The food served on the cruise was always displayed very beautifully and always tasted so incredible. Each day, the menu had all kinds of new dishes from crab cakes to lobster to baba ganoush to lamb. It was wonderful to be able to eat such fancy cuisine and experience many different flavors. However, towards the end, I did notice I felt like I was missing out on freshness and seasonal produce. But I’m sure it’d be quite difficult to have totally fresh produce on a cruise ship.
Pictured below was one of Ari’s dinners. He started off with a smoked salmon and potato au gratin appetizer.
Then he had the special of the night, grilled duck paté with a salad, The sauces here were delicious, especially from the onions which I got to try!
For dessert, he had a chocolate mousse cake which was heavenly.
I wanted more of a fresh dessert so I had the poached pear with almonds. It was sweet and light and fresh. I appreciated that they preserved so much of the original pear shape and I just really enjoyed eating it.
The cruise had really decadent food, but sometimes I found myself missing more comfort foods, though I am not complaining about the wonderful dishes we were lucky enough to try.
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After the cruise, we stayed one night in Holland and then headed home. Our flight had a 22 hour layover in Dublin which we were planning on really making the most of. We ended up being quite tired so we decided to have an Irish beer, dinner, and a movie instead.
We went for some locally brewed beers, a Carlsberg and a cider. Both were very delicious and not overwhelming. We ended up grabbing a few Carlsbergs in the airport on the way out again because it was really good.
For breakfast the next morning, we enjoyed a complimentary hotel breakfast and it was really interesting to see what they offered. Everything was delicious nonetheless, it was just nice to see differences. I thought pickles were a funny breakfast choice because I didn’t think that many people enjoyed pickles that early in the morning.
I enjoy them whenever though so I had to try them.
In the airport, with our beers, we also grabbed some chips that became quite interesting to read about.
The chips were from Ireland-grown potatoes, hand processed, and were even freshly flavored with Irish vinegar. The family farm’s inspiration was explained on the back and I loved how much care they seemed to have for their product. It didn’t feel like I was just eating another Lays, it felt personal and appreciated. The freshness and care was also apparent in the unique but fresh flavor that I have never tasted from a chip before.
They even label each bag with the variety of potato, the field where the potatoes came from, and who made this batch which I thought was really honorable and transparent of them to do so.
The last snippet here is the meal from the plane, just to show the differences in an Irish traditional plane meal and what we might normally see here in the states.
It was vegetarian chili, brown bread, a salad, and a fruit mix.
But… I had never seen milk in a tube before so this was really funny to me.
Anyway, that’s all the wonderful food I got to experience on my trip to Europe this year. I’m really thankful to have been able to open my palette to new foods from all over the world. It’s such a great way to experience others’ normalities and humble my own perspective of my normalities. It was kind of fun to try and search out connections to agriculture or cultural foods to be able to relate my schoolwork to my travels.