I haven't been wayward, I've been on a cruise. Once upon a time I was so excited about cruising, I'd immerse myself in all the goings on, including checking the webcams, etc. Many cruises later I'm rather blase about it, but not enough to stop cruising once per year. That is why when we drove down to Galveston at the usual time, we were surprised to find a paucity of cruise ships.
Because of the fog. Southeast Texas tends to get heavily foggy this time of year and the Port Authority closed the docks. We were shooed away and told to go have lunch and come back some hours later.
Which we did, to be greeted by this welcome sight.
Btw, that's not the ship I sailed on, that's Carnival Magic. They still wouldn't let us on since now they were running about 6 hours behind schedule so we wandered back into The Strand and found a wine bar.
Nay, not a wine bar, a winery. I should know better not to expect much from places that don't grow their own grapes. Not only that, they didn't purchase grapes, they bought the juice. Needless to say the wine wasn't very good. It was a nice respite and I got a free glass from doing a tasting.
There is a wine bar and a champagne bar both on our ship. Normally I'd spend more time at the champagne bar but the bartenders at the wine bar were a lot more personable, plus it was the first time I'd sailed on a ship that had a dedicated wine bar. Another thing we liked about Vintages was better happy hour munchies. The champagne bar put out caviar which got snarfed up quickly. Vintages had what they called "tapas", not sure about that. Things like olives, shrimp, grilled zucchini, proscuitto, cheese, etc and they'd fix you a big plate.
Somehow got talked into trying a $36 dollar glass (that's glass not bottle) of wine. I realize prices are inflated on ships, plus one tends to be a little more extravagant in one's spending. However, it was hands down the best wine I have tasted in my entire life. I'll tell you until I'm blue the face that I don't like Cabs, but this was a Cabernet. Caymus Special Reserve, OMG, it was awesome.I took it to dinner and took tiny little sips of it, I wanted to savour it that badly. On the ship, the bottle price was $175 IIRC. Back home the cheapest bottle I can find is $119. Ack. Man I don't spend $36 for a bottle of wine! All I can say is, Wow. It was excellent.
Btw, this is the ship we were on, Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas. (docked in Cozumel in the photo)
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