Things I learned from the cruise

Going on the cruise was the best thing that opened my eyes to the world.  I have learned quite a few things from there. There were many European foods I had never tried before.  I particular liked the cold soups. I always ordered the cold soups whenever they had it on the menu at dinner time.  After doing some research online, I have learned that the soups I had on the ship were prepared as bisques,consommé , gazbacho.  The cold soups I had on the cruise ship were melon, tomatoes, pears, and pumpkins, like this:

 

I also learned there were many ways to prepare egg benedicts, such as with German sausage, salmon, ham, nacho chips, etc.  Best of  all, I couldn't say enough about the salads that were served in the buffet area.  I could not believe I liked salad so much.  Now I learned many ways to prepare different kinds of salad.  I literally jotted down what was used in the salad in my head, hoping that when I came home I could mimic the way the salads were prepared.  I also liked herring and muesli.  They were new to me at the breakfast buffet.

(Egg Benedicts)

                               (Muesli)

(Herring)                    (Mediterranean salad)

Besides food, I learned a couple of new things while attending some of the seminars on the days we were at sea.  To lose weight, the body needs to be more alkaline and less acidic. Algae and seaweed are high in alkaline, but the body can't have too much of the alkaline. Water helps lose weight.  The rest was just common knowledge that most people already knew like exercising, and weight lifting to build muscle to help lose weight.

I was very happy to learn about some of the artists and their art-pieces from the art gallery when they were doing some auctioning.  For example, I was very happy to learn more about this artist of this painting , but never knew her name until now: Levi Dorit.

Before we went on the cruise, we decided not to bring the laptop with us so we could travel light. We found out that the ship charges over $15 per day for using the internet and $2.59 per minute to make the call from the ship back to California.  We contacted our cell phone company and found out the rate was also the same if we made the call from the ship, but it's covered under our roaming service plan if when we call on land in Puerto Rico, since Puerto Rico is part of United States. The cheapest way is texting on the cell phone. It only costs fifty cents per text message no matter where we send the  messages. We were having problem sending messages in the beginning and later found out the cell phone provider had not set up the initial roaming service for us.  We were frustrated for a couple of days but somehow the service went through for some reasons.  Next time we will make sure the service order was processed before we go anywhere.

Overall, the trip was very relaxing and rewarding.  Not only did I get to experience the difference parts of the world through food, but I also learned to appreciate everything we have now and that we should keep ourselves healthy so we can enjoy more trips in the future.