Mexico Cruise Day 3 - At sea

Wow, another full day at sea - my favorite kind of day. We were up with the sun again. I generally slept well but not long on this cruise; unfortunately Rachel slept neither long nor well, so when she woke up early, she headed up to the gym for the 7am aerobics class. We had a wonderful breakfast with my parents, and then headed up on deck to look for whales. We had arrived at Bahia Magdalena, a bay in Baja California where whales spend the winter, and the ship was going to slowly cruise around the bay for an hour and a half for whale watching. We went up to the back of the Lido deck and while I looked for whales, Rachel napped. Unfortunately, none were to be seen - apparently they were all hung over from their party last night and were still sleeping.

As we headed out of the bay toward Mazatlan, it was time for the kitchen tour. The lounge where we were to meet for the tour was already overflowing with people when we got there, but after waiting in line for about 10 minutes, we finally got in. As we went in, one of the staff said that they needed 3 volunteers. Immediately 3 girls shot their hands up - until he added that they needed volunteers for dish washing; a pretty standard joke on kitchen tours, but fun nonetheless. The tour snaked through various stations in the kitchen, many with small displays or samples. We went though the Pinnacle Grill galley, the pastry kitchen, the hot kitchen, the elevators to the store rooms and prep kitchens which are down several decks. We then passed through the bakery, the pot and pan wash station, the cold kitchen, and room service kitchen, the dishwash area, and finally the coffee pantry. Always a good time.

After the kitchen tour, I went back to our cabin for a while, and Rachel went to the vegetable carving demo. She said that it was great, and apparently the guys who do this sit around during their off-hours and teach each other new carvings. Wow.

After a nice lunch, we relaxed for a while on our verandah and ended up seeing a bunch of whales. They were blowing, and breaching, and sticking their tails in the air - the whole show! There's another great advantage of a verandah cabin.

At 2:00 it was time for our next wine tasting. This one was billed as their "Premium Wine Tasting" and we found out yesterday that it would be blind. What fun; we've never tried that. It was again in the Culinary Arts Center, but rather than many long tables, the tasting was setup in the normal lounge seating (there were far fewer of us) with 5 wine glasses, water, and a cheese, bread, and chocolate plate at each setting. Instead of Bernie, the tasting was led by Bermont, one of the sommeliers on board. He was excellent. We started out with a very nice Vueve Clicquot Champagne (which was not tasted blind). For people who don't like Champagne, we sure have changed our tune. It was crisp and yeasty without being bitter - very nice! We then moved on to the all red blind tasting. The first wine was peppery with notes of chocolate and black cherry. I thought it was a Zin, but it turned out to be a Carmenère from Chile. The next wine was minerally with smooth tannins and maybe some red cherry. It tasted like a Merlot to me, but not a big California Merlot. It did turn out to be a Merlot from Washington. The third wine had some candy and spice, and I thought it might be a Shiraz. Wrong - it was a California Cab. The last wine had more subdued fruit, somewhat tannic with with good balance. I guessed at Cab Sauv. and was right, but this one was from Washington. It was a very fun tasting, and I guess 2 out of 4 wasn't too bad. We liked the Arboleda Carmenère so much that we intended to order it with dinner soon (but not tonight).

After the wine tasting, it was up on deck to see the ice carving demonstration (wow, such a busy day!). We even got our children to leave their dark den and come out into the light of day for once. Josh took advantage of the taco and nacho bar nearby to grab a plate full of nachos while he watched the carving. It took only about 15 minutes and I was the first in our family to guess what it was going to be - an eagle.

Finally it was time for a little more relaxation. Rather than our usual seating in the main dining room for dinner, we had made reservations for the 4 of us at the Pinnacle Grill at 7. The later hour allowed us to watch the sunset from our verandah.

At 7 we were off to have dinner at the Pinnacle Grill. We made the boyz get dressed up, and they looked great doing their MIB impressions. As I mentioned before, the Pinnacle Grill is the ship's high end restaurant and has a separate chef (Mahendran) and galley. It's an extra $20 per person, and well worth it. They specialize in beef and seafood, and our waiter wheeled over a cart displaying raw samples of their meat offerings. Two sizes of thick tenderloin, a HUGE Porterhouse, New York strip, veal, pork, and lamb chops. We all ordered and sat back to enjoy the parade of food.

It started with an amuse bouche of tuna ceviche which we weren't sure if Tim would like. It turns out all of us really liked it, and would have enjoyed more of it. For our first courses, Tim had a very tasty French onion soup, Josh had a lobster bisque that was OK, Rachel had ?? and I had a fantastic spicy chicken peanut soup. They boyz had Caesar salad, and Rachel had a nice salad of mixed greens. For our main courses, Josh had the monster 22 oz Porterhouse with fries and mushrooms, Tim and I both had Filet Mignon (Tim had fries and onions while I had grilled asparagus and garlic mashed), and Rachel had the flaming lamb skewers with creamed spinach and grilled asparagus. They were all "double excellent" as Yaya would say, but the best part for the boyz was the green peppercorn sauce. After using it on their meat, Tim collected all the leftovers and ate it on his fries. Mmmm, good! For dessert, the boyz both had the chocolate volcano cake, Rachel had a very nice chocolate bread pudding, and I had a triple creme brulée (plain, vanilla, and chocolate). This was the food that we had expected from the main dining room. Tim said he's willing dress up for this food any day, so you know it was good.

Our original plan had been to swing by John's cabin after dinner and take him to the show (a magician), but sadly our dinner ran over 2 hours and we missed it. Kitty wasn't feeling well, and John decided to just stay in tonight, so Rachel and I did our usual bar hopping. We saw that Taylor Brown was playing blues with a band in the Queen's Lounge, so we had to go listen to that. They were great, and Taylor's quite a guitar player. We'd seen in the daily program that he played guitar every night in the Crow's Nest, but had written him off. I wish we hadn't because he was just amazing.

Another great day on the ship, but it was time for bed. We had to get up early tomorrow because we had a shore excursion in Mazatlan, our first port of call. I was dreading this just a bit because I'd really just stay on the ship the whole cruise if I could. Oh well, perhaps it won't be so bad.