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When I woke up around 4am the seas were not too bad. But just a little later, the seas got extremely rough. It became like an amusement park ride! Some things fell over in the bathroom and after we both got out of bed a little later in the morning, we almost fell over several times. I would not be surprised if many on the ship had become seasick and some might even have gone to medical after falling and hiting things. It didn't feel so bad while lying in bed, but once we got up, we both took a couple of Dramamine just to ward off any sea sickness that might come up later. We ended up being just fine.
We didn't go to the Vines Wine Bar today as we were already scheduled to go to a wine and a whiskey tasting. I just wanted to point out that the Vines Wine Bar now features some food items as you can see above. They hand't featured any food in the Vines Wine Bar on any of our prior Princess Cruises. Also, this cruise had a good selection of wine flights at the Vines Wine Bar. We missed having wine flights on our prior Princess cruise as they were not offering any wine flights at the Vines Wine Bar on that cruise.
Thank you for booking this entertaining and informative event, where you will be sampling twelve wines from six different countries. Due to the exclusivity of this event a $29 ++ 18% Gratuity per person non-refundable fee will automatically be applied to your shipboard account. We look forward to your graceful presence. -- Sapphire's Sommelier Team
By the time of this wine event, the seas had calmed down a lot but there was still some occassional rocking and rolling making it a little difficult to pour the wine at times. We got to the event early, just a little after 2pm. They said to just take a seat anywhere in the Skywalker bar. We sat at two seats right by the windows facing out the aft of the ship.
Theh staff set up 6 wine tasting "stations." Each would feature a white and a red wine from different nations: the United States, South AFrica, France, Chile and Italy. Did you only count 5 nations? That is because one of the staff members didn't show up. I have no idea what country was supposed to be at his table, but as a result we only tasted 10 wines from 5 nations instead of 12 wines from 6 nations. They weren't offering any refunds due to presenting only 10 wines instead of 12 as they were allowing you to have as many tastes as you wanted of those 10 wines. Various cheeses, chocolates, and cold cuts were served along with the wines.
Attendees were asked to just go to each "station" to obtain their pours and food. You could go to the statins in any order and as often as you wished. If you preferred the servers to pour the wine at your seat, they would do that. Some people who were not steady on their feet opted for this service.
Neither Barbara nor I liked any of the 5 white wines. We aren't big white wines to begin with, but we do often run across white wines that we like at wine tastings. But not at this one. We mostly used the "dump bucket" with the white wines, just having a sip and dumping out the rest. We didn't take a fancy to any of the red wines either, other than the 2018 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, California. We've had wines from all over the world that we've loved including the nations featured at this tasting, but these wines didn't come close to the best of what each of these nations has to offer. The only one that we considered enjoyable to drink was the Robert Mondavi. So, it was a bit of a disappointment at this wine tasting.
The 2018 Napa Valley Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon was our favorite of all the wines we tasted. They said we could go back for as many tastings of each wine that we wished, I went back for 3 tastings of this wine. It was the only wine that I went for more than one tasting.
My wife and I went to the buffet for dinner figuring we had better not be consuming additional alcohol at this event on empty stomaches. While we were eating, one of the someliers came to our table asking us how we enjoyed our earlier wine tasting experience. He then apologized, telling us the Single Malt Whisky Tasting had been cancelled. Because of the very rough seas this morning, many people had not felt up to the wine tasting that we had attended. He said that only 19 of the 60 people that had signed up for it had shown up, and already many had canceled attending the whisky tasting. He also said that most of the tasting are going to be held again on the second section of this cruise and said we could probably sign up for that one. We were disappointed, but it worked out for the better. We wanted to go to both tastings scheduled for today, but weren't exactly happy that two events featuring alcohol drinking were scheduled for the same day.
Another reason it was good that they cancelled the whiskey tasting is that my wife and I were alrady so sleeping from the earlier wine tasting that we just fell asleep after dinner and din't go to any of the evening events. But we didn't miss much. Because the ship had been so rocky in the morning, the cast was not able to rehearse the performance for today and it was also cancelled. Instead they were just going to feature the same performer as last night.
Because of the very rough waters this morning, the Captain had to slow the ship to a safe speed to reduce rocking for the safety of passengers and crew. We were supposed to arrive at Cape Horn around 6:30pm, well before sunset, but because of our reduced speed, we were not going to get there until well after sunset. Thus the Scenic Cruising of Cape Horn was cancelled. The Captain says we'd be clearing Chilian Customs around 3 AM and arriving at our next port stop on time.
You might notice some spelling errors and other typos in the commentary of any day of this cruise. When I have some time on a Sea Day, I'll run these pages thorugh a spell checker and make corrections at that time.
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If in this report you see any typos, misspellings, factual errors or other types of errors, please let me know.
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