What does one do with five full days at sea?
Eat.
Yes.
Eat most certainly takes first place.
But once breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses*, lunch, and poolside snack have taken place, there is this eerie gap in time which food cannot fill.
*You know of hobbit meal times, yes?
Mojito tasting
Fortunately, cruise ships offer plenty of distractions from endlessly stuffing your face with free food.
One of the more informative and exciting distractions, to me, were the drink tastings.
It was our first full day at sea and one-third of our group was sick, so Hubby and I wandered over to the Sugarcane Mojito Bar for their 3 pm mojito tasting.
I’m not ordinarily a mojito kind of girl, but Hubby and I were both intrigued by the ship having a bar completely devoted to mojitos, and kind of wanted to learn more.
The bartender walked us through the basics of the mojito, including his preference to not muddle the mint*, along with several variations on the mojitio.
*Which I totally agree with. I’m not a fan of sipping up pieces of herbs with my drink.
Because of the tasting, we purposefully sought out the mojito bar a few nights during our cruise.*
*Which, based on its location on the ship**, meant we were very much interested in experiencing their mojitos again.
**The different flavored mojitos could only be ordered at the mojito bar which was located in a spot a little further from most of the action on board.
Martini tasting
A few days later, Hubby went to a whiskey tasting at Maltings Beer and Whiskey Bar*. I was going to tag along, but there were so many whiskey lovers jam packed in a small space, I decided to relax in a less crowded spot of the ship.
*Another night they had a beer and whiskey pairing tasting, but since I think beer tastes like a barnyard, we opted out of that one.
In terms of flavor, my favorite tasting was the martini tasting we went to towards the end of our 11-days of sailing. This tasting was held at Magnum’s Champagne and Wine Bar, a spot we visited often to listen to piano tunes.*
*Secretly, my true favorite thing to do on cruise ships, aside from eat.
Again, here we learned a lot about the variations of flavored vodkas and alcohols used to make martinis. Our very last drink was a chocolate martini, which I thought would be my favorite, until they threw together an espresso martini for us to all taste.
Of course, we could have visited any of these bars several times during the trip and tried each of the drinks on our own, but I found the event and the information gleaned to be worth while. And if anything, they gave us something a little out of the ordinary to do during those long days* at sea.
*I make them sound like they were painful, but the days at sea were actually some of my favorite times during our family cruise.
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