The first day out of Bermuda is first sunny day we have had on this crossing. The sun is shining, the seas have finally dissipated and all is right in the Pursuit cruise world. The sun decks are jam packed, and we are enjoying our balcony – when the stray cloud happens to come by (not sun worshippers, that’s for sure!). Much of today is spent lounging around, blogging, watching movies and of course going to magic lessons.
The highlight of our day, though is the Cuban Chef’s Table. We have heard great things about the Cuban table, and can’t wait to try Chef Monica’s take on traditional Cuban food (if it is anything like the Italian Table we attended on the last leg, we will not be disappointed). The tables are normally for 12 people, but tonight we only have 8, which makes it much easier to talk to everyone there. And interestingly (we’re not sure why), this table is being hosted by the Art Gallery manager, Crestan, and the artist onboard, Minor-I. We have met the other two couples in passing throughout the cruise – one couple from Ottawa who travel Azamara frequently, and another from Germany (he is German, she is American or Canadian) who live in Hamburg and whose daughter worked for Azamara previously.
The evening starts off with Chef Monica explaining the menu, then Martin (the sommelier who obviously replaced Igor, whom we’ve not seen since Barcelona!) took over with our first wine, a Pinot Noir that I actually liked. Shock!
This time I put protocol aside and took pictures of every course. They were too beautifully prepared and plated not to be the star of the blog! Chef Monica explained that normally we would have a choice of fish or meat for our main, but this menu had too many good dishes to make a choice, so they decided to serve them all to us – and boy was she right. We had 3 starters, intermezzo, 2 mains and dessert. All were incredibly well done, amazingly tasty and surprisingly not as filling as you would think.In order of appearance are: Ropa Vieja con Tostones, Sopa de Frijol Negro (black bean soup with avocado and carrot cubes), Langosta Enchilada (lobster in an elegant enchilada sauce - my personal favorite), Mojito Sorbet (which I didn’t bother to photograph), Camarones a la Plancha con Frituras de Mais (shrimp with fried corn cakes), Lechon Asado (roasted suckling pig – yes – they had a whole pig onboard) and finally Flan de Coco (no explanation needed!).
The paired wines were all excellent (most of them whites) and the company was wonderful. Crestan explained how the new art gallery aboard (Art Waves) came into being, and Minor-I was a delightful dinner companion, talking about how she began painting (at age 2 she was drawing) and how she started painting with coffee (yes coffee – and they are amazing pieces). It was so fun in fact that we sat there eating and talking for the better part of 4 hours, completely missing the late show (ventriloquist – oh well) and the chocolate buffet (didn’t need it at that point)!
The next day was a rather busy day – we had a Q&A with the chefs in the morning (both Monica and the Robert, the corporate chef), magic tricks (it was our overview class – so we got to see how much we forgot!), hanging out in the Mosaic cafe with cappuccino talking to Crestan and Minor-I (we so wish we had met those 2 earlier in the cruise, we really clicked and loved hanging out with them), finalizing our S. African tours with Maritza in ShoreX (system is down, we will do it when we are home), and packing of course (which was pretty painless since we didn’t have much to begin with) and then the seafood buffet upstairs, which was not heavily populated at all, which totally surprised us. There weren’t more than 50 people up there. Greg (magician) sat next to us and we chatted away (nice to be one on one/two with him so you could actually talk). This sailing was not even close to full. We started off with about 500 passengers, then a bunch of British passengers got off in Bermuda to fly home (guess it was easier from a customs/passport control perspective) so the ship was less than crowded. Made for an even more enjoyable cruise overall!
So, the end of our adventures is here. In the final analysis, it was an excellent trip – even with all the re-routing of itineraries, switched ports and nasty weather,we can honestly say that this was one of our favorite (and best trips)!
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