Sea Cloud Dining

Enjoy the outdoors? Sea Cloud is very much an outdoor experience, and you'll often eat two meals a day alfresco in a canopied area on deck. While the buffet is set up one deck below, don't worry about carrying your tray up the stairs. An army of stewards ensures that you merely have to look in the direction you want to go and your tray will magically follow.

With complimentary wine flowing freely at meals, dining is a jolly affair, and everyone feels a sense of camaraderie that can only develop on such a small ship.

Roughly three times a week, dinner is served in the ship's original dining room from a fixed menu. Menus have a European influence, but the cuisine is often tempered by the nationality of passengers onboard. On my sailing, with only four Americans onboard, the dinner menu consisted of offerings such as veal steak with calvados sauce and potato strudel or duck breast with cumquat sauce, leek and risolee potatoes. While the cramped galley limits the number of choices and selections to fewer than are found on competing luxury vessels, the quality is just as good.

Lunch onboard is equally festive -- complimentary wines are poured and the meal, served buffet style, includes a variety of courses, such as a grilled fish, vegetarian strudel, spaghetti with pesto and parmesan and a variety of salads. For brunch, the buffet groans as well (and here wines are offered as well).

Perhaps the most wonderful part of the day is the afternoon snack served on the promenade deck. Every day, the baker would have a new treat, including crepes to order, waffles with ice cream or an elaborate afternoon tea. How indulgent and decadent it was to sit along the deck with your crepes, only a few feet above the blurred ocean racing past, while a towering set of sails strained overhead!

With the ship's small size, room service is not available.