Update 11/22/08: Tea For 2, and Brenda Gets Even More Beautiful!! 10/20 Part II
We got to Palo for “High Tea” a few minutes early and had to wait for them to finish setting up.
(Now, let me just go off on a tangent here. Palo is an elegant restaurant, I don’t know much about elegant restaurants, but, I believe they qualify. Disney offers three Palo choices on the 7 night cruises: “High Tea”, Dinner, and Brunch. All three are worth the extra money you will have to pay for your reservations here. If you are contemplating a cruise, and are thinking of trying Palo, do so, and make all three reservations if you can. If you can’t for some reason, then try, try very hard to get Palo Brunch reservations! This is the best meal you will have onboard. The Dinner and Tea are fine and I recommend them highly! But Brunch!... Brunch… this is the “Mother of all Meals”!!)
But now, Ladies and Gentlemen, we are having (with our pinkies extended and our noses slightly elevated) “High Tea”. DW did not want to do this. She thought it would be too “hoity-toity”, but I went ahead and booked it, and she was glad I did.
(Another aside: On a Disney cruise, you will not be looked down upon by the CMs. Once you leave your stateroom, everyone is treated the same, with respect. So, you can go to things, like High Tea or Formal Dinner, and not feel out of place. You do have a (really a minimal) dress code, but you will be just as welcome as anyone else.)
We were seated and brought our tea menu. I chose an Oolong tea and Brenda had English Breakfast tea.
Your server brings out a pot of tea each and a tasting of small sandwiches. The sandwiches were a variety of tuna, salmon, cucumber, and a kind of club sandwich. We liked the tuna and club sandwiches, the others were just OK to us.
We got another of the club sandwiches each, they were very good. After a short time, our server brought out the dessert tray...
Now, the dessert tray is two tiered. On the bottom, were small cheesecakes, éclairs, and brownies. Then on the top tier were these coconut macaroon cakes with big blackberries on top, and… let me just say here, that I LOVE berries… all kinds of berries! I don’t think I ever met a berry I didn’t like. If you will notice, in the picture, on the top tier are these tarts with split strawberries on top, and if you look closely, you will see a blackberry nestled inside the strawberry… When I get to heaven, I am going to have this little delight morning, noon, and night forever and ever!! This was the most delicious bite, my mouth has ever tasted! (When we left, we asked if we could take a couple of these tarts back to the room, and our server brought us a bag with 4 inside!) But, we weren’t done with dessert, yet! After our server took the tiered dessert tray away, she brought us each a dish of lemon tiramisu! A perfect end to a wonderful afternoon tea!
We left Palo at about 4pm completely stuffed and only two hours to dinner! We went back to our stateroom and relaxed a while before getting ready for dinner. I think this is when we sat down and went over the “future cruise offerings and deals”. We would really like to do one of the 2010 European Capitals cruises, but decided they were a bit out of our price range for now. The transatlantic cruises, however, looked do-able and interesting, so we decided we would get price quotes for them and if we were comfortable with the quote, we would book the westbound transatlantic repositioning cruise in 2010. The only drawback was it is a looong time to 2010!
Soon it was time to go to dinner. Tonight was formal night, so I put on a coat and tie and Brenda put on a black dress and a very pretty black and white coat she had gotten just for tonight.
We were in Lumiere’s again this evening and arrived a few minutes early. There was a line from the front doors, around the corner and down the hall, so we got in line thinking that it was the line to get into Lumiere’s. We could see that the Captain was set up for pictures with him off to the side of the atrium, so I thought maybe the line was for pictures with the Captain. I got out of line and went into the atrium to see just what was going on and found out the line we were in was for formal pictures, not dinner! And the Captain only had one or two waiting for his picture, so I got Brenda and we had our picture taken with Captain Thord, then went on into Lumiere’s for dinner.
We had to eat alone tonight, as Keith and Marilyn had dinner at Topsider’s tonight. Our servers, Godwin and Marko, were all dressed up in tux’s, so we had them stand still a moment so we could get their picture.
Godwin and Marko
I didn’t write down what appetizers we had, but Brenda had the Duck with cherry sauce entrée and I had beef Wellington. It was very good and we ate as much as we could. Brenda didn’t order dessert because she was so full, but they had this “Crème Brule’ on a bed of raspberries”… I HAD to try it!
Before dessert was brought out, though, they brought out our “Happy Anniversary Cake”!
We had forgotten that we chose this evening to celebrate our 10th anniversary (a little early). They always did that! (On the nights we got celebration cakes, they always took the dessert order first, so you got the cake after dessert!) Well, as I said, I had to try the raspberry Crème Brule’, and ate a couple of bites and we took the cake back to our stateroom.
We opened the door to our “rose petal turndown service”! It was beautiful!
“The Golden Mickeys” was the show tonight so we stayed in our dress up clothes and went on down to Walt Disney Theater. This is really a cool show. They play it up like the Oscars, and even have pre-show “Celebrity interviews” on the “Red Carpet” with many of the kids on the screens in front of the theater. We sat in the second row on the left side of the theater. In the first row was a beautiful family with a couple of small girls. The show was Wonderful, but it turned into Magical when one of the little girls in front of us got up and started dancing to the music! She just couldn’t stop herself! But I had forgotten to bring our camera!
As we left the theater, we decided to go by the future cruise desk to see when we could talk to Jocelyn about our choice. The desk was closed, but, they were taking pictures in front of a picture of the Magic all lit up at night, so we got a picture taken there.
Then we went into Shutters and browsed through the pictures. We stopped by Studio Sea and watched some of the Golden Mickeys party before going on back to the stateroom. We were so tired and full we didn’t even have our Irish coffee, we just went straight to bed!
