Bon voyage, mes amis!

You won't see any new posts here next week, because tomorrow morning, Nick and I are flying to LA to go on a cruise to MEXICO! I am so, so excited - since I started learning Spanish at age 10, I have dreamed of going to Mexico. It's a very big deal to me. We're sailing Royal Caribbean, down western Mexico (so much cooler than east!).

On Tuesday, we'll be kayaking in Cabo San Lucas. On Wednesday, we're taking a walking tour of historic Mazatlán. On Thursday, we're touring a tequila factory in Puerto Vallarta. The rest of the time (through next Sunday), we'll be cruising the Pacific. Oh, and eating.

Needless to say, food on the ship will be abundant and omnipresent. Endless buffets, multi-course dinners, snacks available 24 hours, and of course the completely unnecessary and hedonistic midnight buffet. I'm stoked, ha. My only real goals/limitations are a) TRY not to overindulge and stuff myself, and b) eat almost vegan. I can tell you right now that a) will be many times more difficult than b).

The best thing about having practically infinite food choices is that much of it is naturally vegetarian and vegan. The buffets will be no problem. At dinner, there's always a vegetarian entrée offered, but many of those are cheese- or cream- laden. So, I took the simple step of emailing the ship's "dietary coordinator" to ask about alternative veggie meals. If you ask in advance, they can plan to have an Indian vegetarian option available to you every night at dinner. They even accomodated my request to hold the ghee and cream. So each night at dinner, if there's nothing on the regular menu I want, I'll have another meal option ready to order.

All in all, an almost vegan cruise will not be hard to achieve, and it will be damn tasty. When I come back, I'll have so much to show and tell that I predict I'll have to divide it into at LEAST three entries. Until then, happy eating!