When we are watching English telly, there are many many shows on the obesity problem in Britain. When you listen to the news, there are many little reports on the obesity problem. And now that we are on a ship with 3000 plus Brits, I do see what they are talking about.
On the American ships I am one of the very few obese people. On the whole, there are very few unfit unhealthy people that cruise those ships. We have seen a huge change in the last six seven years, and I must say that its quite something to see hundreds of older folks, all fit as fiddles, going to the ship gym, swimming laps and running round the promenade deck. (there are still lots of old tan panted men that vacantly stand in the middle of the path, blocking everyone though!)
Not on this one. We have not seen one person even walking the decks let alone running. I peeped into the gym area the two times I have been up there and it was virtually empty. On american ships there is a line up out the door waiting for the machines.
The little paper with the activities for each day doesn’t mention any activity involving moving. And this ship is covered with scooters, wheelchairs, walkers, canes and the odd sedgeway (tools). This lovely crowd is so utterly different than their american/canadian/australian counterparts. This crowd is ‘old’, not the spry skinny kind like at home but the soft, gushy, giant tummy type.
Today Bill and I both discovered a not so good something. It kind of fits in with the obesity thing.
After our sit down in the cafe, we came up to the buffet area around 2 for lunch. We totally skip breakfast now. We got our lunch and sat at a table and ate. I suggested to Bill that we just stay at this table for a while post lunch and the crowd had totally thinned out. The crew had closed the lunch buffet counter by 2:30.
At three oclock, a sudden herd of determined people came rushing into this dining area and started to grab seats. This totally perplexed us. What the heck was going on? Then we noticed that the buffet food area was open again. A couple came and sat with us and I asked them what was happening. And do you know what it was? We couldn’t believe it! High tea!!! Another meal!! A fourth meal thrown into the mix!!!
When we went and looked there were hundreds of wee sandwiches, scones, jam, thick cream, fruit cakes, sweets, hot food, fruit, (no salad) and on and on!! They close that down at five apparently and at six it all opens again with a full hot dinner. You just CANNOT eat that much. I eat a reasonable lunch, a tiny dinner and I am so full I don’t miss breakfast. And we see the same people over and over eating all the meals. Crazy!
Another anomaly we have noticed. They love grease. If you eat their fry bread at breakfast, you can take a bite, hold it in your mouth, give an almighty suck in and you can get about a tablespoon of straight fat out that one bite. They deep fry everything, and not the good crispy tempuraesque type of deep fry. Its the soggy dripping with fat kind.
At every single meal they have trays of potatoes that have been peeled, cut in half then deep fried. Plus they have the standard chips. At lunch and dinner they serve at least four out of the eight dishes deep fried...fritters, battered everything, even their rotis...deep fried, not nice and flat and dry and tasty like the ones Cookie makes. I had a triangle hash brown the first morning and it had so much grease in it I couldn’t eat it...and I can pretty much eat anything that isn’t rice pudding.
Another food difference is no rice and no fruit, or at least not much fruit. The fruit they serve is for a dessert option, a little bowl of cut up fruit with ‘pouring cream’ to add to it. On the ships at home you get a lot of rice served in various forms. No rice here. Just soggy greasy deep fried potatoes done ten ways!
And seeing as how I am being negative right now, a wee word about the staff. They are horrible. They don’t smile, they don’t work very hard, they are incredibly unfriendly, very disorganized. And they are just totally inferior to the Filipino and Indonesian crews we are used to. These guys don’t even do half the work that the Filipino/Indonesian crews do. They don’t serve drinks, they do not help you find tables, they barely clean your dishes off, even when asked. Oh well, will save us money on the tipping.
Enough moaning and groaning! We are in Malta tomorrow...none too soon I say! We have a really loooong shore excursion tomorrow, covers most of Malta. So I shall report tomorrow night! TTYL
No comments:
Post a Comment