I also decided to do a play at the New London Theater called “War Horse.” Apparently this just opened on Broadway in NYC as well.  It’s quite an amazing production of a decent play and incredible animation of several life size horse “puppets” (orchestrated by a puppeteering company).  Each horse took 3 people to animate, and the mimickery of of real life was pretty cool.  It’s pretty crazy to watch a guy mount a horse puppet and ride around the stage in slo-mo.

At current, I’m writing this from Canteen (where I get an outlet and free wifi) having a traditional Sunday meal.  I’m starting it off with a carrot and ginger soup which is too brothy.  I would have expected it to be mostly pureed carrot and be quite thick, but it is not.  The ginger is not coming through too much.  I must say that the Roast Beef is pretty good.  Even the veggies (kale and cabbage) are good.  The roast beef is adequately tender and very tasty.  It’s a bit well done for my taste, but good enough.  The veggies don’t seem to be seasoned with anything but salt, but it’s just the right amount to make it good, not bland, and not over salted.  I have to admit that I have no idea what to do with the Yorkshire pudding.  It’s basically a bit of fried dough with some gravy on it.  It really does not do anything for me, but it’s there and I’ll eat it.  The potatoes are quite deep fried, very crisp on the outside, but still ok on the inside.  I think they are over-fried as it’s even difficult to slice them in half, but these are good too.  I don’t think I’m supposed to be eating this at lunch since everyone else is still having breakfast, but whatever.

I also ended up at Jamie Oliver’s new restaurant called Barbecoa (which I’m pretty sure they misspelled).  The place is mostly a meat place, with a nice menu of steaks and other dishes.  Don’t order a drink there – cocktails are about the weakest things I have ever had.  At any rate, the restaurant is quite popular and seems to be a nice hangout spot right across from St. Pauls cathedral.  Given the time, I would have walked around the place, but I didn’t have time.  I ended up having a fillet which I was told was a “very British thing” but in the end it just happened to be a very well prepared fillet that I could have gotten anywhere.  If I ever end up back there, I’m getting either the pulled pork shoulder or the pork belly.

All in all, this trip actually seemed better than the last from an eating perspective.  I decided to give up on British food for the most part, and when I had to, I was much more selective.  Perhaps there is hope yet.

Rather than sitting in the hotel, which is something I almost never do, and risking falling asleep, I decided to hit the town.  Amazingly, it gets dark around 4pm in December here which I think is crazy early.  I headed over to Trafalgar Square where there happened to be some carolers singing carols I had never heard of, but there were plenty of Brits watching and singing along.  I wonder if there are different carols that Brits have that we in the U.S. don’t.  Following that, I proceeded to hit Westminster Abbey where there was an organ recital.  Sundays are reserved for worship services, so tourists are not allowed in.  It was quite nice to be able to enter the Abbey for the recital, but not have to deal with any of the noise or crowds – the only thing present was the Abbey and the organ.  I was not super impressed with the organ, and am not sure if the size of the Abbey and the echo’s generated had something to do with it.

Following that, I headed to Covent Garden in the middle of the city to try and find food, but the city was really quite dead on a Sunday evening at 7pm.  I ended up at the Covent Garden marketplace having some chicken and bacon meat pies which were ok at best.  (What was I thinking getting more meat pies?)

Day 2:  After a morning workout, I decided to walk up to Notting Hill and the Portobello Marketplace.  I was here briefly before, and had breakfasted at a place called Gail’s and decided to return.  I’m typing this over a hot chocolate, apple hotcakes, roasted pear and a bit of crème fraiche.  The hotcakes are crisp on the outside, soft inside, and great flavor.  They go nicely with a bit of sour from a rhubarb compote.  The pears are not roasted down to mush – they actually still have a bit of crunch to them.  Perfect!!!

Kensington Palace was ok.  I had totally forgotten that it was the residence for Charles and Diana for so long.  The palace has been set up as a museum currently, and the tour is a bit juvenile (just aimed towards kids), but the concept is interesting.  Rather than a history of the place, the target is a history of various queens and princesses to give you a perspective about life in the palace as opposed to the normal commentary on place and structure.  The Orangery is now a restaurant, but used to be a green house for one of the queens.  Tea there was mediocre at best – the cakes and sandwiches not so good, and the suggested chocolate tea was just weird – too chocolate for me and I would have preferred something more normal.

I’ve also been hanging out at a place called Canteen.  They serve British fare, and so far it’s been ok.  While I’ll never order carrots and swede again, the vegetable stew was more than acceptable, and the Welsh Rarebit (toast with lots of mustard and some cheese topped with an egg) was very interesting.  The plus on the place is that they are perfectly happy for you to sit for hours and provide outlets and free wireless, so I sat for hours.

Last stop of the night was Harrods.  The place is just huge, but I also find it inaccessible from a price perspective – it’s definitely high end (or at least the single floor I was on for 2 hours seemed so).  More interesting is perhaps the food areas – I might just decide to go there for dinner when I can’t think of anything better.  There was a dim sum place that was obnoxiously expensive, but not bad in terms of shopping food court quality.  I would never pay that much for dim sum again though.

Days 3 through 10:  I’ve received some great recommendations for good food – and none of them had anything to do with English food.  The first would be Tayaab where the line must have been a 2 hour wait when I first showed up.  That evening I ended up at some crappy restaurant that apparently I don’t care to remember.  However, I was able to go back a couple days later and sample some of the food.  Rather than the 2 hour wait, I ended up only waiting 30 minutes for a table at about 2pm in the afternoon.  Still considerable, but it seemed like it was going to be worth it since I hand’t seen a line for a restaurant anywhere else in London.  They serve home style Indian fare and I just had a selection of items from the Tandoori chicken to a lamb curry dish.  The tandoori was about the best I have ever had, it was moist, tasty, and very well prepared.  The curry was a bit of a standard curry, it was very good but not earth shattering in any way – and perhaps I should not expect anything but “very good” in a curry.  I will say that the Nan was not what I had expected.  I want a bit of a thinner nan with perhaps a more solid texture – what I got was a bit doughy and thick.

I had also ended up at a noodle soup place called wagamama.  Wagamama was pretty acceptable for London fare, and I think the overall quality and taste was about on par with the average to good noodle soup places in the U.S.  I’m not sure it was anything spectacular though.  My soup was a chili ramen with chicken which I thought was nowhere near a level of spice that it deserved to be called a chili ramen.  Still – it was sufficient and adequate.  I also ordered a set of gyoza next to it, but I didn’t want to boiled.  When I order fried, I usually think pan fried, not deep fried.  These came out deep fried and I was hugely disappointed.

The Masala Zone was not something I thought was going to be very good.  Like Wagamama, it’s a chain, although there are far fewer of them.  The menu consists of street food “tapas-like” selection and thalis (which is also the standard home-style meal).  I ordered a Thalis which I have often in San Francisco, as well as a single appetizer off the street food menu, but I can’t remember what it was and can’t find it on-line.  The Thalis was perfectly acceptible, but were I to go back (and I will) I’ll order everything off the street food menu and avoid the thalis completely since I can get that routinely.

My journey ended being stuck in London for 3 extra days.  Apparently, when it snows 3 inches there, the airport shuts down so they can plow the snow away.  This first part is acceptable to me.  What is not acceptable is that the following day, they find out that all the planes are literally frozen to the tarmac and can’t be moved.  So the spend another day de-icing the wheels of all the planes.  3 days lost, and 29 hours in the airport or the plane to get home after that.  There are plenty of airports that can handle much worse – Heathrow is absurd.

First of all, I had a petite filet.  I’m always disappointed when I find out when a petite filet is 10 ounces and the full is 14 or so.  I really believe that a petite fillet should be in the neighborhood of 6-8 ounces of meat.  After all, anyone who asks for petite usually is going for something like that.  At Oak, the petite is a perfect 7 ounces.  I asked for mine medium, and as always, approached it with a healthy amount of skepticism (restaurants tend to not be perfect around their preparation here).  Oak’s medium was perfect.  It was pink almost all the way through, not at all on the medium rare side, and not at all bloody.  This is a pretty hard thing to achieve.  The taste of the meat was excellent.  It was very beefy, and something you would expect out of a rib-eye – not the filet.  Accompanying the filet were the brussel sprouts.  These were also excellent with the bacon (and bacon fat) and a healthy amount of char adding to the already present smokiness.

Given another chance, I’d definitely head back to Oak.

I was hoping from the Tuscan farm in “Letter’s to Juliette” (I’m seeing way too many bad movies on the plane these days), where the flat hills filled with grape vines and guys riding their horses around fill my mind.  Instead, this farm was on a steep hill, had a little of everything, and basically made stuff that they sold on the farm but never otherwise got to market.

The great thing was that upon arrival, we were seated for a small sampling of farm made salami, cheese, bread and olive oil.  This farm does a nice job.  The mozzarella might be some of the best I’ve had, very soft and mild in taste.  They used cow’s milk rather than buffalo which might account for the difference in taste, and in all probability, the cheese was fresh from the morning.

Cheese is apparently pretty easy to make.  Some enzymes in the milk, the curd is taken out and dropped into very hot water and stretched and it’s pretty much done.  They didn’t make burratta here – it seems only a specific region produces the stuff, and the difference is the addition of lots and lots of butter as opposed to hot water.

Onto the pizza in Sorrento.  Basically we got a margharita, napolitano, and a meat (some sort of ham).  Great crust which could have been a bit crispier on the bottom for me,

Pompeii was a cool ruin – the place was just huge.  What was interesting to me was it felt like a master planned city – there was an incredible amount of order in the way things were laid out.  While most think that the Romans build the city, it was actually the Greeks and the Romans took over later.

I’ve seen enough ruins over the last few days, and it’s cool, but I’m glad we finally got good food.

One thing that I missed was that I would dearly have loved to see the Parthenon all lit up at night on the top of it’s hill.  I bet that’s an amazing sight, but even just getting there and walking around is spectacular.

I was actually somewhat sick that day and wasn’t really up to doing too much walking around – even though by the end of the day I’d guess we were on our feet for around 5 or 6 hours.  Tam will tell you that I was a pathetic and whimpering mess by the end of it.

We went out to Plaka and tried to walk around to find a restaurant.  We finally found a small hole in the wall (literally a hole that lead into a basement that was a restaurant.  In front of it, an old Greek, grandmotherly lady stopped and said to us, “Good food, I come here often” before walking off.  We decided this was the place.

We went pretty simple – Spanakopita to start which was my first experience with homemade phyllo dough.   It was certainly not as thin as supermarket phyllo, and didn’t crisp as nicely, but it was still quite good.

A few doors down, an old Greek guy with a guitar was singing with rather questionable vocal abilities, but it didn’t matter – we didn’t know what he was singing about anyway.

Tam liked the Moussaka better here than in Mykonos, I liked Mykonos’ version.  Either way – they were both excellent.

By the time we were walking back to the train station to go back to the boat, the city was alive and crowded.  Athens might certainly be a place to go back to and explore a bit more.

I found the street vendors in Turkey to be particularly annoying – annoying is not even the word – I need to find something much stronger than that.  The constant “ni hao” immediately followed by the same in Japanese when I didn’t respond is just the tip of the iceberg.  As though saying hello to someone in their native language (English would have been fine here) would inspire them to buy something from you.  The problem was not that however, it was the guy guy who decided that the way to chat with a prospective customer was the greeting “Hello Jackie Chan!!!”  Or the guy who decided to step in front of me and do feeble karate chops and then try to shake my hand (which I ignored).

Apparently, we missed the best part of Turkey, the wonderful beaches – Turkish baths that were something to be experiences – the ruins of Ephesus.

Instead, we got doner with pita bread.  Doner is basically the predecessor of the Greek gyros sandwich – and you can find them in NYC for cheaper and better.  Rather than the processed (at least ground and spiced) meat that becomes Gyros, doner is basically a pile of lamb cuts on a skewer (as you can see below).

It was served in a completely unexpected way – I had expected a doner wrapped in pita.  Instead, the bread (flat bread that was not a pita – admittedly it was called pida) had been diced up into half inch squares and then the meat layed on top of it.  It wasn’t bad, but you really can do better in NYC.

I’m really not sure I need to go back to Turkey.

The town is yet another tourist trap.  One thing that can be said for cruising is that you get to hit quite a lot in a very shore period of time, and you are relatively well taken care of without wanting much or really lacking anything.  On the other hand, every port seems to be a market of local goods gone mad.  here, it was the kitsch Greek jewelry stores.

The highlight of the day was supposed to be the food.  Unfortunately, there does not seem to be lamb on the island of Mykonos, so all the gyros, souvlaki, etc was pork or chicken.  The person serving up the food said, “there are only 5 lambs on the island and we’re not going to kill them.”  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

Perhaps a highlight was finding the oldest bakery in town.  To be honest, it was somebody’s basement and happened to have a wood burning oven in it.  I’m sure the selection of baked itmes may have been nicer had we gotten there early, but by the time we picked up food, it was around noon and the selection was sparse and frankly mediocre as it wasn’t fresh anymore.

We did manage to rent a car with some of our ship’s dinner table mates and drive around the island, stopping off at some beaches and yet another bakery, getting somewhat lost on the return (navigating in the town of Mykonos in a car is a nightmare – better to have a moped where you can go down any street and it probably does not matter if you’re going the wrong way.

Once again, dinner was about the place, not about the food as has been a theme here I think.  The place was beautiful (The Pelican I think it was called, after the island mascot that lives in town).  Moussaka was excellent, but most of the other meat was overcooked and didn’t have much to recommend it.

All in all, quite an uneventful day strolling the town, looking at less touristy shops, and seeing yet more churches.

The food seemed to be better here.  We got a local tip as we got off the boat and headed over to Osteria Etnea.  Our seafood salad was basically 90% octopus which was quite good although more octopus than I would normally eat in a single sitting.  The pastas here were much better, well prepared, excellent taste, and it felt better than something I’d get a a higher end Italian restaurant in the states – finally  meeting expectations.  Perhaps the trick was always to find where the locals eat – but we already knew that.  Actually – it was funny since none of the wait staff could speak English, and when the one guy who could pretend came out, the rest of the wait staff huddled around the corner to watch.

Given the ability to do this again, I don’t think we would have changed any of our plans, but Rome might be a place where you could vacation for 2 weeks and have a pleasant enough time.  Unfortunately, this is the one city where we didn’t have time to just explore and get a feel of the city outside of the tourist zones.

The tour started with the Coliseum – a site we honestly were not sure we needed to see.  Certainly it was impressive enough, and perhaps I’m just a dork, but I really thought it was going to be bigger.

The good thing is that I didn’t really feel any of the morbidity of the place that others have reported to me.  As a piece of architecture , it’s quite a marvel, and I’m glad I have seen it.  Check (off the list).

The Vatican on the other hand was pretty cool.  Again, it might be a check off the list place, but we got to the major spots including the cathedral and Sistine Chapel.  Really these are amazing places, and we especially enjoyed the colonnade on both sides outside of the cathedral.

Dominating the city were the leather brokers, store after store of leather goods that again, I never have to see again.  For a guy who was actually shopping for a leather jacket not to find one here does not bode well for me.

One thing is certain.  The guys in Florence know how to build a rather grand looking church.  This was possibly the most externally ornate church I’ve ever seen.  I’m used to Catholic churches that are well ornamented inside, but the outside of this one was quite extraordinary.  We appreciated seeing some of the Renaissance “masters” decorating this church including Galileo who was excommunicated at some point in his life.

And any time you have statues crafted by “the masters” hanging out in random parts of the city, I suppose that is something to talk about.  There was a great gallery in the “statuary”, but also spread throughout the city.

All in all, I’m going to say that the food has been disappointing.  I wanted to expect that any pasta dish served up in Italy was going to be at least as good as the top 25% of what we can get in the U.S.  Truth be told, I’d rather hit any of the Mario Batali restaurants any day.  The pasta was above average, but nothing to write home about.