Escape From Miami - Kinda, Sorta "Live From" - October 7-14, 2017

No problem. I saw your post and I thought, "Hmmm. That's a little abrupt." However, it was compact and to the point. ;) Most importantly, I knew what you meant.

Sent from my VFD 600 using Forums mobile app

Just out of curiosity, you wouldn't happen to be a comedy writer, would you? That "Escape From the Big Top" review was pure gold!

 

Sent from my VFD 600 using Forums mobile app

Thank you, but no, I'm not a comedy writer. I'm a systems engineer by trade. It's very difficult to be the funniest comedy writer. Being a funny systems guy has a much lower bar.

After the Brat Pack show, our group of theater critics got together at the O'Sheehans bar so we could deconstruct the plot intricacies and discuss the deeper meaning of the characters' development arcs. Despite copious doses of thespian analysis punch, and our combined IQs which - not to brag - have to be in the triple digits for the four of us, we were unable decipher the deep, deep meaning of For The Record: Brat Pack.

If you have ever had the "pleasure" to experience Franz Kafka's work, it's about as easy to comprehend. (Except nobody turned into a giant bug.) We had a hard stop at 2:00 AM because we had the Cozumel Bar Hop Tour in the morning.

 

(Except nobody turned into a giant bug.).

The best opening in literature ever imho! Still enjoying the review and laughing like crazy! Thanks!

The best opening in literature ever imho! Still enjoying the review and laughing like crazy! Thanks!

Thursday found us in Cozumel where our planned excursion was the Cozumel Bar Hop Tour. I covered a lot of this earlier, so we'll get to the pictures part. If you want to read up on the previous commentary, it's in this neighborhood:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=54291188

The website for the Cozumel Bar Hop Tour is here.

http://www.cozumelbarhop.com/

But before we get to the tour, we have to arrive in port. Cue arrival photos:

Ships arriving

Our first stops, Punta Morena and Coconuts

The view from Coconuts

Our least favorite stop was Playa Bonita. They have some enormous drinks. The one that Vanilla Ice is drinking is one of their medium sized drinks. Apparently there's one that's about 4x larger. It's $99 US, which buys a lot of booze in Mexico.

As a general rule, we do not recommend drinking anything larger than your head.

I was on this cruise too. Like you I also was surprised how rarely I saw other people tipping the bartenders, based on what I've read on cruise critic. I usually tipped $1 per drink and there were definitely times when I felt self conscious doing it because no one else at the bar was.

When I am the only one tipping I enjoy the moment to pretend I am a pompous big spender with my roll of $1 bills, secure in the knowledge that I am the bartender's favorite customer for 5 minutes!

Also POA1 I totally get the humor thing. I am the funniest IT Ops Executive where I work. Those who know me (18 yo daughter, looking at you) may try to point out I am the only IT Ops Executive where I work, but when the math works in my favor I am not going to argue with it!

Our last stop of the day was Rastas, where DBIL and DSIL were very excited for the peanut butter tequila. Their excitement was warranted as it is delicious.

Tour concluded, we returned to the ship. The DJ dance line back to the ship was a new thing for us, and were those really jello shots they were handing out as we boarded?

Thursday night's dinner was at Bayamo. Our original plan was to pay a la carte pricing at Bayamo and to save our fourth SDP credit for La Cucina. When we checked in, AlexandNessa told the hostess that she and DBIL were going to be using a dining credit and that everyone else was going to go a la carte. I reiterated this to our waiter when we started our order. So of course, they used our 4th SDP credit. (We didn't know this until the next day when I reviewed our folio on my phone.)

Our reservation was for 7:45 PM, so Huskerchick and I reported to the Sugarcane Mojito Bar for pre-meal drinks. She ordered the raspberry mojito, a crowd favorite and frequent recommendation. I ordered the regular mojito because I am an old fart and don't want to mess with the fancy-schmancy drinks that the kids go for nowadays, with their long hair, bad attitudes and dungarees. Both drinks were very good. I've heard complaints of Sugarcane being slow, but the service was speedy and professional while we were there.

We were seated promptly in the restaurant and our waiter came to take our drink and wine orders.

For our appetizer courses, Huskerchick’s opening gambit was a ceviche: Salinas: Ecuadorian Style Ceviche. Corvina. Shrimp, Tomato Gelée & Corn Nuts ($5.95) followed by the Matambre: Beef Carpaccio, Carrot Chimichurrl & Quail Egg ($4.95). My first courses were the Beef Carpaccio followed by the Ceviche de Atún: Tuna Ceviche with Serrano Coconut Sauce, Tostaditos & Lime Sorbet ($5.95).

For her main course, my lovely wife had the Camarones Al Ajlllo: Pan Roasted Shrimp, Charred Tomato, Lime Emulsion & Fingerling Potato ($19.95). My choice was the Vieiras Con Rabo Encendido: Pan Roasted Scallops, Braised Oxtail, & Corn Porridge for $16.95.

Per standard operating procedure, I ordered all the wine up front: Bodega Burdigala "Campo Alegre" Verdejo for our first courses. Muga Viera for my second course, and Rioja Vega Crianza Temperanillo for my wife's entrée course. I later added a glass of the Bodega Burdigala,"Campo Alegre" Tinto Toro as my second-second wine while DW repeated the Temperanillo. (I see exactly none of you saying, "Hey! Did you just pair a red wine with your wife's shrimp main course? Yes. Yes, I did. Pair to the sauce my friends. Pair to the sauce. If you were taking notes earlier, you may remember that I spoke less than glowingly of the Tinto Toro. I ordered just to test my suspicions. That's one advantage of the UBP. You can test out your wine theories at no risk to your wallet. )

At this point, it's about 8:00 PM and we have received our drinks/wine. I remarked that this could be the night when the food and the service comes together at last. Our waiter was great. He was very knowledgeable about the preparations of the dishes and handled the wine service impeccably. Things were definitely looking up.

Then as if on cue, our waiter comes to our table and tells us that he's handing us off because he's finished. That seemed to odd, yet strangely appropriate. We were a little worried, but the waitress who replaced our excellent waiter turned out to be excellent as well. (I'll even go as far as to say she was more than excellent. She was marvelous, magnificent, and outstanding. Take that break-time waiter guy! These compliments could been flowing your way, but you had to abandon us.)

Our food began to arrive and DW and I were absolutely delighted with our appetizers. If the mains could live up to the starters, this meal could be the pinnacle dining experience of the trip.

Huskerchick loved her shrimp dish. I'll warn you that the shrimp is served heads-on, tails off. This isn't unusual for Spanish, Portuguese or even Cajun cooking, but it could throw you if you aren't used to it. The shrimp heads are removed just as easily or possibly even easier than the more common tail-on shrimp. The flavors of the dish were superb, rating a "Yum! Tasty!" on the Huskerchick scale.

My scallop dish was devine, a wonderful blending of flavors.

Based on the meal thus far, we'd eat here again in a heartbeat.

For those of you who have grown tired of all the words lately, here are some pictures!

Due to the food-porn ban in our current operating agreement, you'll have to be content with these pictures of signage. ;)

For dessert, DW went for the Helados y Sorbetes ($4.50) Normally it’s several small scoops of ice cream: Spiced Chocolate, Vanilla, Salted Caramel, Ginger Banana Citrus, and Grapefruit Tequila. Because she takes a medication that may have a reaction with grapefruit – and certainly not because she loves, loves, loves chocolate - she cut the grapefruit tequila sorbet and doubled up on the spiced chocolate.

My dessert choice was the Milhojas De Café y Chocolate ($4.95): Hazelnut, Coffee, and Caramelized Rice. The literal translation is “Coffee and Chocolate Muffins,” but in practical terms, it’s awesome. Huskerchick happily switched desserts with me and finished mine.

I’m not a huge dessert person, so unless there’s a dessert which really appeals to me, my job is to order my wife’s second choice dessert. (Gentlemen: I can tell you from many years of experience, that this is a good strategy. It’s particularly helpful when there’s a first choice chocolate dessert and a second choice chocolate dessert. Many a dessert crisis has been averted in the last 26+ years.)

For our dessert wines, we went with sherry. The Hildago "Napoleon" Amontillado for me and the Hildago "La Gitana" Manzanilla for Huskechick. (If you like a sweeter dessert wine, opt for the moscatel based Hildago "Herredad.")

The Bayomo menu

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s88/sh/08c54812-0490-4715-bb90-fbd8a079f4a6/3ef6ba48a77dfb33b6257073f2104fb0

Oh! I so needed to hear this.

 

I tip $1/drink when I'm on a cruise. I'd love to hear if you had this result while tipping in the same range, or if you were tipping more generously.

 

TIA!

 

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Forums mobile app

Sorry...I've been travelling and haven't been on the past few days. But yes, we generally tip $1/drink. Towards the end of a cruise, we will tip certain bartenders/servers more if we've become regulars.

Honestly, I think a small tip and just being friendly and patient (if necessary) goes a long way to getting great service. And I think a lot of workers would settle for cruisers being nice and treating them with respect.

I absolutely agree with you here! I always get great service on my cruises, even when I have run out of ones. It just had never occurred to me to request a glass of wine that was listed with only a bottle price. I am just interested enough in wine that I want to try more glasses than are available by the glass, but not interested enough that I want to pay for full bottles, LOL

Sorry...I've been travelling and haven't been on the past few days. But yes, we generally tip $1/drink. Towards the end of a cruise, we will tip certain bartenders/servers more if we've become regulars.

 

Honestly, I think a small tip and just being friendly and patient (if necessary) goes a long way to getting great service. And I think a lot of workers would settle for cruisers being nice and treating them with respect.

The GLOW Party was being held Thursday night at 11:00 PM outside at Spice H2O. DBIL and I headed to our respective rooms to change out of our big boy pants and put on shorts because it's a little warm outside. We all met up at the Mixx bar. (Mixx on Six) for drinks. Huskerchick ordered a "Mr. 305" which is another of Pitbull's monikers. (She meant the "Mr. Worldwide" cocktail. I'm not sure if she said Mr. 305 by accident or if she was secretly testing the staff's knowledge of the Escape's godfather.) I thought that this was interesting, because it means that the drink was good enough to be repeated. It's also a reddish cocktail and she chose it while wearing white jeans and a pink linen shirt, neither of which would be stain friendly. Her normal go-to drink is vodka and soda, super safe from a stain perspective.

I had a "Mr. 954," which is bourbon over ice cubes. My brother-in-law had Coors Light. Say what you will about our boring drink choices, but (1) Anyone who knows us can order for us in our absence, and (2) We never hold up sipping time by "needing a few minutes to peruse the cocktail menu.

I'm drawing a blank on what AlexandNessa was drinking. Could have been wine. Could have been beer. Could have been flaming shots of Bacardi 151. I really don't remember.

Having loaded up on drinks, and armed to the teeth with high quality, American-made Glow Sticks, we headed up the GLOW Party. (It's always in CAPS. Is it an acronym? If not, can we have a contest to determine what G-L-O-W stands for?)

At GLOW-Minus 10, people begin to file in.

 



At GLOW-Minus-6, it's pretty packed. Is there a secret elevator bank I don't know about?

 



Cruise Director Andre begins to psych up the crowd.

 

 



This is absolutely not a cropped photo from before it got crowded, used to give the impression that we were moving around the party.

 

I absolutely agree with you here! I always get great service on my cruises, even when I have run out of ones. It just had never occurred to me to request a glass of wine that was listed with only a bottle price. I am just interested enough in wine that I want to try more glasses than are available by the glass, but not interested enough that I want to pay for full bottles, LOL

Actually, we didn't request it. We would go in, tell them what kind of taste we were interested in and they would serve. My typical was white, no oak and not too sweet. And they'd give us something to try. They'd tell us what it was and we would take a look at the information on the iPad. It was only then that we discovered that it was by the bottle only. But I think if you are friendly and build up a rapport with the person, you are more likely to have something like this happen.