Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/474

 The cooking is the best I have ever enjoyed on a steamship or hotel, and the attendance perfect. Our waiter is a Frenchman who speaks almost no English, but the chief steward (a German, by-the-way) speaks English, and sees that we are not neglected. The meals are French, except that we have an English breakfast; which means that we have eggs, chops, fish, bacon, etc. On the continent, breakfast almost universally consists of coffee, bread and butter, and jam. At the fine Hotel Vesuve, in Naples, we had this sort of breakfast, although we could have eggs if we called for them. In Paris it is almost impossible to get anything to eat before noon, except at hotels patronized by Americans and English Our rooms are in charge of a woman; we see a man in overalls occasionally, but the woman is in charge. On German ships, the dining-room stewards not only care for the rooms, but play in the band; on the "Canada," waiters in the dining-room have nothing to do with the sleeping-rooms The first-class passengers have two big decks. In the rear of the upper deck is a handsome smoking-room. At the rear of the next deck below, the deck on which our rooms are located, is a music-room. At the other end of the deck is a writing-room. Just below the writing-room, and reached by a grand stairway, is the dining-room. All these rooms are very handsome, as the ship is less than a year old What do we pay for all this luxury and magnificence? Less per day than we paid on the "Maunganui," between Wellington and Sydney, where I shared a room 9×10 with three others. Adelaide shared a room of similar size on the "Maunganui"