I have moved from a small, quiet luxury vessel, plying the mostly placid seas of the Dalmatian Coast. Now, I am sitting among 3,000-plus passengers on a giant ship making a crossing in the November winds of the Mediterranean between Spain and Africa.

What a contrast. My previous ship, the Seabourn Odyssey, carrying about 400 passengers, was a floating country club, with a majority of Americans, rather hushed and proper in that manner of the moneyed, as we sailed from Athens to Venice.

My new digs for a week are on the MSC Splendida, which is big, brash and Italian.

As an American, I am clearly in the minority on Splendida, though English is one of the five languages I hear in announcements, and the daily program is printed in English as well as Spanish, French, German and, of course, Italian.

Mon dieu, coffee in a take-away cup

This morning, at breakfast, none of my tablemates spoke much English. They were German and French.

When I asked the dining room waiter to pour coffee into my personal plastic take-away cup – an American invention, brought from home, and seldom seen around Europe – at least one set of eyebrows at the table arched in what seemed to be some astonishment.

Who knows? Maybe the whole table later set out on a mission to buy one of those American cups to carry coffee back to the cabin. Coffee between meals on European  ships costs extra.

On a continent where every swallow, be it water or coffee, carries a fee, owning a take-away cup has its advantages.