Day 4 (5/17/22): Cruise Day 2 - Day at Sea Continued
Tonight was formal night so we got dressed up and headed up to watch the Golden Mickeys at 6:15. The cruise was nowhere near full so seating was plentiful. We had seen this show on our very first cruise which was on the Dream and it did not play on the cruise we had just taken 2 weeks prior on the Dream, so it was nice to see again. Afterward we took advantage for the only chance of free booze on this cruise and went to the Captain's reception. It was nice milling around and speaking to the officers while everyone was dressed up. We took advantage of the time to get a picture of the chandelier in the atrium. After whiling away some time and heading over to the French Quarter themed bar right by Tiana's place, it was time for dinner at Tiana's place.
We had already eaten here for lunch on embarkation day, but we were super excited for dinner here. Tonight wasn't the night with the full show, but our waiter let us know that Tiana and Louis would be coming out to take pictures. My wife had a silent freak out about this as Tiana is her favorite, hopped immediately out of her chair, and practically ran up to the stage to be the first in line for a picture. I've never seen her move this fast and it was lucky that no small children were in her way because they would have landed flat on their back!
After getting the picture, we went back to our seats and ordered. Again, not a banner night for food photos, but I will show all I can. My wife had the cream of spinach soup (pictured below), and the vegetable turnover (pictured below). I had the cheddar cheese and bacon tartlet, and both the turkey and sirloin steak (wanted the turkey but the sides from the steak dish so had to get both). The desserts here were a mixed bag. I had the flourless chocolate cake (pictured below) which was delicious and my wife got the berry financier which was just alright. We also got the root beer creme (pictured below). Our waiter's eyebrows raised darn near off his head when we ordered this which didn't bode super well, but it sounded interesting. Andrew was right, it tasted kind of like nothing. The texture however was super weird in a kind of fun way. It was pretty inoffensive in your mouth, but was super fun to just poke, which we proceeded to do for about 2 minutes, laughing at how weird it was the whole time. We were just being dorks, so take from that what you will.
Next up we had booked the whiskey tasting that was taking place at Cove Cafe. I will give another shout out to our service team here. We like to take our time over dinner and usually are out of there around 9:45. The tasting was at 9:30, so we let them know we needed to be a little quicker and they were right on top of it. We left dinner at about 9:20 and went up to Cove Cafe. We really enjoyed the experience, even if we didn't enjoy all of the whiskeys we tried. I can't remember the name of the woman who ran the tasting but she was from Thailand and extremely knowledgeable about all the whiskeys. We tried 4: Suntory whisky toki from Japan (nice taste but extremely burny), Glenmorangie single malt scotch (smokey, not for us), Yellowstone bourbon (really nice, we enjoy bourbon at home), and Whistlepig rye (super smooth, best of the night). They also brought up some super expensive bottles to show us such as Royal Salute scotch and Poppy Van Winkles Family Reserve bourbon, but were not offered these as they sold for anywhere between $250 and $600 an ounce on the ship (understandable why they didn't give these out at a $25 tasting). This wrapped up at about 10:00.
The whiskey was making itself known in our blood alcohol content so we decided to cut our losses and call it a night as the ship was still moving quite a bit and didn't want to chance anyone falling down, lol. We made it safely back to our room and found our towel animal for the night and a note that maintenance would be performed in our area throughout the cruise. I appreciated the note, but we didn't hear or see anything throughout the rest of the cruise, so it must have been minor.
Next up, Dawes Glacier Day!