Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 16 – Atlantic Crossing Day 3

Yesterday was the 3rd sea day of the Atlantic crossing on our Celebrity Solstice Rome to Fort Lauderdale transatlantic cruise. It was another beautiful sea day with the weather nice and the seas once again calm. Looks like luck will continue to be on our side and we will have another transatlantic cruise without bad weather or heavy seas.

Yesterday was a big wine event day. Since our primary two wine events were looking forward to the entire cruise were in the afternoon and evening, we decided to forego the Captains Club wine seminar in the am. Instead, Sean and enjoyed another hot glass seminar. That show is just pretty amazing and fun to watch. The artists like to create different pieces each time so it really doesn’t get old. It certainly has been one of the highlights on the shipboard activities. The popularity of the show has even surpassed Celebrity’s expectations as they have had to increase the area to accommodate the crowds lest they ruin some very expensive grass.

The afternoon was our Riedel wine tasting seminar. We have done some comparison tasting previously with Riedel crystal vs other glasses/crystal and the difference is quite amazing, but this was our first full blown seminar on the topic. Plus, at the end, each person would get a set of 4 Riedel crystal glasses. It was really interesting to taste the difference in the same wine between the Riedel and ordinary glasses. It was even more so to understand why that was. There’s no black magic. The Riedel crystal is varietal specific – that is a wine glass for each type of wine. By the shape and design of the glass, it focuses the flow of the wine in your mouth and on your tongue to maximize the taste of that wine. It really does make for a noticeable difference in the taste. It definitely was a very interesting and worthwhile seminar.

I spent some time in the afternoon walking the top decks again just checking out the ocean. I even had the luxury (?) of seeing two other vessels going by during the afternoon. According to the Captain, they said we were heading the right direction to get to Fort Lauderdale.

Last night, instead of our normal dinning arrangements, we had signed up for the Connoisseur Dinner. Basically, it’s a specially prepared dinner with specially matched food and wine. The Cellar Master and the Executive Chef prepare a non-standard dinner for the folks who signed up. There were some pretty exclusive wines on the list including a 2001 Lafite Rothchild – the Premier Grand Cru wines. We started the evening tasting some champagne. We then were escorted to the main dining room where they had a back little room set up for us. There was around 25 folks who had signed up for the event.

Everyone was raving about the food. I thoroughly enjoyed the food except for the foe gras appetizer which I reconfirmed that I do not care for. I had veal tenderloins that were just absolutely wonderful especially when paired with the Lafite Rothchild wine. That is such a huge and enjoyable wine and this was probably one of the few if not the only time I will get to sample such a nice wine. Suzanne had a sea bass dish that she said was wonderful. They had paired it with a Chardonnay which she enjoyed but she was also able to wrangle a glass of the Lafite to try. All in all it was a three hour meal/tasting and quite a treat.

After dinner, we went back to the cabin and called it a day about 11:30 pm. Seems hard to imagine but we are already down to the last three days of the cruise.

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