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Harters

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Everything posted by Harters

  1. I don't recall seeing any. But then, I wasnt looking for them.
  2. I get that. Looking at the photo, it seems a very unbalanced plate of food. Just too much meat for me and not enough of everything else by comparision.
  3. Funny you should say that. Havent seen a milk float for, literally, years but passed one last week in the middle of the evening, loaded up and presumably just starting to deliver.
  4. We did a Barcelona round trip cruise on Nautica last year. Nice ship. We'd read about the small showers in the lower priced cabins, so booked a penthouse (for a relatively small amount more) - no problem with that. The food is not awful, although claiming it as the "finest cuisine at sea" probably over eggs it.
  5. Indeed so. UHT milk is readily available in UK supermarkets, We usually take a carton if we're taking a self-catering holiday, just in case we can't readily get fresh milk. Or just to have an "emergency stock", say over the Christmas holidays when we might have unexpected visitors .I can't taste any difference between UHT and fresh - but that may say more about me than it does about the milk.
  6. It's not something grown here, nor does it often appear on restaurant menus, so I'm glad to have it whenever I come across it. I have eaten stuffed artichoke in Rome. Does that count?
  7. Try and book Ember. It's really good. To be honest, we've had disappointing meals at Red Ginger on both Vista and Marina and have said we won't bother making a reservation there when we're on Vista again next year.
  8. I'll not discuss that as it'd cross the "no politics" rule. But there are 16 European countries (according to the United Nations list) that are not members of the EU
  9. Just an example of Vista's Simply Less. 😀
  10. I don't really regard 8.00 as being late for dinner and that (or 7.30 earliest) is our usual time for reservations on land or sea. You do see people arriving after 8, of course, although not that many. When we've had 8pm reservations, there's still been a goodly number of people in the room when we are finishing. No sense whatsoever of feeling rushed or the restaurant closing down.
  11. Sorry but I must be missing something. If AMHuntFerry reported a quintet (5) yet I reported a quartet (4), I reckoned that meant I had one less than they did, which suggested a cutback. Maybe my four were bigger than their five, so no loss of calories? 😀 FWIW, O's website notes that POlo's dessert is also a quartet not a quintet.
  12. I love it when someone resurrects a thread many years old. If you're saying that Oceania focuses on American tastes and expectations, then I'm sure you're absolutely right. After all Americans form the overwhelming majority of customers, followed some way behind by Canadians. Australians, New Zealanders and Britons are then a long way behind them, so it's not really a surprise that our tastes go pretty much unnoticed. I always think of an Oceania cruise as being just like our trips to America over the decades. As for coffee, I'm surprised how quickly the Australian "flat white" has become popular in the UK. Even the American owned chains, like Costa and Starbucks, have it. I never order a cappuccino these days.
  13. There must have been cutbacks. It was a quartet earlier in the year. 😀
  14. I'm sure they have. I used to work for a government agency. Like all other arms of government, we had strict anti-corruption rules. No bribes (which would have been criminal offences), no gifts, no inappropriate hospitality, etc. Most folk followed them of course, but there were always "bad apples".
  15. There's much to recommend that. It's got hermit appeal. I go some way towards it. For example, I don't carry a mobile phone. And I don't use the internet at all when I'm away on holiday.
  16. Thanks for posting those definitions. So, based on that, extortion is definitely the right word to describe what the porters are up to.. Threat that your bag might go missing unless money changes hands. My apologies for wrongly describing it as a bribe in #29.
  17. Here's the Miami porters thread I referred to Extortion is the right word https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2953787-tipping-porters/#comment-65813755
  18. Toscana is the only one of Oceania's restaurants that passes our "holiday restaurant" test - if it was near home would we become regulars. On Vista (and previous cruises), we've always gone the traditional Italian four course route - starter, pasta, main course, dessert. We order a small portion pasta course. Their bread basket is the best on board to my mind - I don't think we ever leave any. Worth a note that they do the American thing of offering olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip your bread in. It was a surprise on our first cruise as we'd never seen it before in the UK or Italy, so gave it a try. We decline it now. FWIW, earlier in the year on Vista, one of us ordered stuffed artichokes, gnocchi with pesto, veal escalope with roast potatoes and the Toscana quartet for dessert. The other had roast vegetable salad, lobster risotto, Dover sole with potatoes and the berry tiramisu.
  19. I think the thing that most resonated with me about cruise related tipping was the mentions on CC of the porters at Miami port pretty much demanding a tip "to ensure your bag didnt go missing or get damaged". It's outrageous demand for a bribe - but I still coughed up $10.
  20. You may well get a better response if you post this to the RC forum as well.
  21. Correction: Whilst P & S published my Cheshires book (and two others on the war), the Manchesters book was published by Reveille Press.
  22. And that's now it's modern name. Some years back, each Belgian province was designated as either Dutch speaking or French speaking. Flanders is one of the Dutch speaking ones - you'll find all the road signs, etc, now in the Dutch version. The whole thing is a touchy political issue in the country, with the main political party in Flanders campaigning for independence. It's often said, with some justification, that every battalion of the British Army fought in the Ypres area during the war. My grandfather's unit, the 17th Manchesters, played a significant part in the attack on the first day of the Third Battle of Ypres - on 31/7/17. My local Territorial Army battalion, the 6th Cheshires also attacked that day - it proved to be Stockport's worst day for casualties in the whole war. My histories of both units are published by Pen & Sword.
  23. Good point worth sharing. Our guy on Vista earlier in the year always seemed ready for a few words but, on a couple of occasions, he mentioned how busy he was with the number of cabins to be looked after. We can take hints
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