What A Market

Let’s get these Wine Pairing dinner photos out of the way. The first course was a curry cauliflower soup. It was awesome. Very strong flavors. We dug into it before getting photo. Next up was a risotto dish. And then the fish course. Risotto was really well done. Unique presentation. The seabass with fennel was good, not great. The fennel was the best part.

Hi Georgia_Peaches! Love your live posts!!! Drinking Rose wine early in the evening. Here’s what they have everywhere. (Whispering Angel in some places.) I’m a fan of dry French Rose wine. This is very drinkable.

Observation Lounge forward on Deck 14 for sail away. Very quiet. Sort of surprised.

Sorry, brief interlude before more on the Wine Pairing Dinner. Brought to you by the Mast Grill and the Mast Bar. 😂 My first for the cruise, so showing some restraint.

Back to the tasting dinner. As for the questions on taste and value, I know the typical answer is “subjective and impossible to answer.” I guess that’s true. For me at least, it’s just trying something new. Particularly with friends and family. The $229 price is expensive, but as a first time Reflection experience, I guess I would have paid even somewhat more. As noted, we only had three of the ten diners doing the pairing. So I think I drank way more than the $60 per person up charge for the wine pairing aspect. That said, there was nothing truly special about the wines, but the 2007 Spanish Cab was nice because of the age on it. The food courses were interesting and well prepared. The dinner started with an amuse bouche and Prosecco, which was served in Cellar Masters as our starting point. (The Prosecco was sort of a weak start.) The poached lobster bite in the left was really tasty.

No excursions for St. Maarten. Walked into Philipsburg for some shopping and drinks. Both successful! 💰 and 🍺 Drinks were surprisingly cheap for a bar looking over water. (The Dutch Blonde) $5.00 for beer and $8.00 for rum punch.

Last night we did the Chef’s Table by Daniel Boulud. (Its full official name.) We elected to do the wine pairing with the set menu. This added $60 to the $169 per person price. Only one other person joined Heidi and I in the wine pairing, which I thought was interesting. The rest of the party ordered bottles. This created an interesting “opportunity” as the Somm was pouring full bottles between just three of us! Here’s a photo of the menu. (Sorry, all photos came out fairly dim.)

Backing up a coupe of days to San Juan, Puerto Rico. As noted previously, we were racing the Apex into port. And they beat us by about 15 to 20 minutes. Interestingly, this seemed to delay our getting cleared by port authorities by about 30 plus minutes. Presumably because they were working on clearing the Apex first. But who knows. No impact to us as we were planning to walk around town and hit up a couple of bars. (We walked off the ship just before 5:00pm, so a reasonable/civilized time to start drinking! 😜) The first we hit up was La Factoria. There is a front bar and then several other bars “hidden” behind a sort of unmarked door. Only the front bar was open when we arrived. Got the last two seats at the bar and ordered a tasty special cocktail.

Heidi got up fairly early (by her standards), so having my third double skinny from Cafe al Bacio out on the balcony. Damn near perfect!😂 (By the way, Rita in Cafe al Bacio is a sweetheart!)

Well, if it’s Wednesday, it must be St. Maarten. Good morning Philipsburg!

This was the Buck Island off of St. Thomas. Very nice for this type of outing. Plenty of fish. Clear water. Almost no current. Sorry about your incident! Scary. Sometimes I’m surprised I get Heidi in the water, but she’s a gamer. Even got her certified in Scuba back in the 90’s for a couple of Windstar cruises in Tahiti. I’ve been diving since the mid-70’s, but mostly stick to snorkeling now.

The view isn’t the best in this port, but sure beats the hell out of the view from my desk at the office! (And yes, as DW would note, the one I was supposed to retire from just over a year ago. She leaves out the part though where it allows us to sail in Upper Suites.) 😏

hcat Great Live report and photos!

I didn’t take phone on the excursion, so no photos to share. Here’s a photo though of a similar (somewhat newer) turbo cat that I snapped from balcony after we got back from our excursion.

Just back from a really nice snorkel/beach excursion. It was called Turbo Cat snorkel excursion to Buck Island. (Or something like that.) Was worried as we lined up on the pier for the short walk to our boat. The line was huge! Turned out there were 92 people on this excursion. Originally I signed up for the afternoon version of this excursion, but the ship moved us to the morning. (Also an initial Ugh!) As I chatted with several others in line, it turned out most of us were moved from the afternoon to morning. The guess was they couldn’t fill both the morning and the afternoon excursions. The ship’s excuse was “shoreside conditions.” Yeah, right! Our boat had a capacity for just over 100, which made for tight-ish seating. I’ve done versions of this excursion before and never had more than 50 people for the trip. But the ride out to Buck Island was about 20 minutes, so easy enough. No rum punch until after the snorkel part of the excursion, but it flowed freely after that. Then it was quick (mildly rocky) sail over to a beach area. This is a “wet” landing. Meaning they back boat up to beach and you jump in. I’m 6-1 and water was up to my chest. It was fun listening to people ask the Captain if he was going to dock onto the beach so they could get ashore. Beach bag on head and rum punch lifted in air and it was wade ashore. Had to wade back to boat for refills on rum punch. (No cabana boys/girls bringing refills — The horror…… LOL) Any way, great crew. They were a riot throughout. Despite the seemingly over full boat, the company was fun which made for a fun excursion. Back in time for quick bite at Oceanview, which was also a plus.

Yep, the “turbo cat” for our snorkeling excursion followed into this port. I can see her tied up now across the way. I think that’s it in the background.

Some other scenes as we pull in. They built a small tourist shop area right at the pier. There is nothing else out here except commercial port stuff.

Gently cruising into the port of Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. I guess this was a purpose built dock by Royal Caribbean. Been out at this pier once before in 2022. It’s a bit removed from the actual town.

Simple scene of the table setting in Luminae for breakfast. I guess I’ll say “just lovely.”

Here’s a screen shot of an App I’m addicted to now thanks to Jim_lain. The App is called Windy. You can look at all sorts of weather and sea condition forecasts while your cruising. Fun or terrifying depending on the conditions you can see coming at you. 🤣 Today is a fun day! This screenshot shows the swells.

I’ll add that the several dinners we’ve done in Eden have been some of the best meals I’ve had at sea. We ask for a table adjacent/facing the kitchen to watch the “action.”

Good morning again from the Reflection as we cruise into St. Thomas. Another amazingly beautiful sunny day with calm seas. Cafe al Bacio is a bit busier this morning. (Ship time is 7:00AM as I type this.) We arrive in St. Thomas at 9:00AM and excursions, including ours, head out at 9:30. Snorkeling today for us on a ship’s excursion. I’ve done a really large number of private and ship organized snorkel/scuba excursions. This type of activity works perfectly fine arranged thru the ship. I prefer to plan private excursions though for all other port activities.

But of course one entree size each! I had to finish Heidi’s. 😋

Pulling into Old Town San Juan

The lobster IS from the entrees. But I usually order as my first course. Then an appetizer (or two). And then my main entree, which was the lamb chops (as you note).