{"id":15323,"date":"2012-12-06T01:08:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T09:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=15323"},"modified":"2012-12-06T01:08:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T09:08:00","slug":"thursday-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=15323","title":{"rendered":"Upon Reflection, People are Special"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quite by accident — or by failure to follow directions — we enjoyed our most pleasant evening on the Celebrity Reflection<\/a> in the company of a junior waiter, a waiter and a sommelier. This is typical for us. We make more friends among cruise ship staff than we do passengers, which means either we enjoy working class folks, or we're anti-social, or both.<\/p>\n

This was in the main dining room on the ship, called Opus. We were supposed to arrive at the Deck 3 entrance as part of a group, but we mistakenly went to Deck 4 and were seated \"\"<\/a>in the section manned by our three amigos, so in the end we formed our own group.<\/p>\n

The most animated was the junior waiter, whose name is Paramanandham Jayakumar — Param for short — and not all junior waiters are so outgoing. He came to Reflection from the Millennium<\/a>, a favorite ship of ours, and we ran down a list of people we both knew. Yes, staff people. Param (right) is from Mumbai, India, and two of the nicest cruise-ship people we have ever met are from Mumbai. No, they didn't know each other (only 12.5 million people live there).<\/p>\n

The sommelier was Sandeep Naik (left), who's from Indonesia. If you're surprised that a sommelier is from Indonesia, don't be. There are many, and Celebrity<\/a> specializes in having lots of sommeliers. Eloquent and wine-wise, Sandeep knew two other Celebrity sommeliers we'd enjoyed on the Eclipse<\/a>, only one of whom was from Indonesia. Sandeep recommended a wonderful California cabernet to go with our dinner.<\/p>\n

And don't think, just because there are specialty restaurants which charge extra on cruise ships that you're getting a second-rate meal in the dining room. One of us had decided on seafood until our waiter, Suparsa ("Call me Superstar") recommended beef tournedos from that evening's fare.<\/p>\n

The beef tournedos — in fact, the entire dinner — was outstanding. Just like the people in our group.<\/p>\n

Note: We're also covering the North American debut of the Reflection for our colleague Phil Reimer this week. You'll find more from the new ship at www.ports.andbows.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\tHolland America Volendam<\/a>
\n\t14 nights
\n\tMarch 4, 2013
\n\tKobe<\/a>, Nagasaki, Busan, Dalian, Beijing<\/a>, Shanghai<\/a>, Hong Kong<\/a>
\n\tInside: $799
\n\tCost per day: $57<\/strong><\/span>
\n\twww.hollandamerica.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quite by accident — or by failure to follow directions — we enjoyed our most pleasant evening on the Celebrity Reflection in the company of a junior waiter, a waiter and a sommelier. This is typical for us. We make more friends among cruise ship staff than we do passengers, which means either we enjoy… Continue reading Upon Reflection, People are Special<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1101,138,809,912,72,86,35,231,23,844,360,151,26,2208,302],"class_list":["post-15323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","tag-asia-cruises","tag-celebrity-cruises","tag-celebrity-reflection","tag-cruise-bargains","tag-cruise-deals","tag-cruise-ships","tag-cruises","tag-dining-on-ships","tag-holland-america","tag-holland-america-volendam","tag-main-dining-room","tag-new-cruise-ships","tag-phil-reimer","tag-ports","tag-specialty-dining","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}