groryjm

This morning we woke to another great breakfast brought to our balcony by the excellent Mudit Just to give you a bit of background we are not zenith and don’t expect to reach that hight until late 2024 or perhaps early 2025. We have amassed quite a few CC points though and are almost three times Elite Plus. The pandemic has been good for us points wise with a couple of our trips post pandemic being at double points. Seven nights in August last year staying in a PH ( apparently a good thing for a husband to give as a 30th anniversary present) gave us 252 points. Well the note was to in visit to the CC Captains welcome event at lunch time today by a secret back entrance. With this being one of the busiest sailings since the pandemic with 2360 or so passenger’s 750 of whom were cc members I was somewhat surprised as we are this cruises Top Cruisers.

Drinkies and nuts courtesy of our wonderful butler Mudit and a treat for our return from dinner Last night we had a lovely meal in the Lawn Club Grille. We were worried that it would be too warm but as we were under way the breeze seemed to keep us cool. We spent much of last summer on board Silhouette and as we sat at our table on of our favourite members of staff from the LGC on Silly, Randy, greeted us warmly and with hardly a pause our chosen drinks from last appeared. It had been a somewhat amusing last summer that on more than one occasion in the Porch and LCG on Silly my "Campari Soda" arrived as "Cranberry and Soda". Randy had remembered and made sure it was right. It is so nice to reconnect with staff from previous cruises who have made our times special. Randy also pointed out the lack of overhead fans in the LGC which had been so nice last summer on Silly in the Canaries. He said they were due to be added on the next dry dock😎 We finished the evening, before retiring to Michael’s club, at the Ensemble for some light jazz from “seagull” and the excellent and unforgettable Cranston behind the Bar. A random member of main orchestra turned up who had never played with them before and brought his sax . the played brilliantly. In Michael’s, Olympia, the amazing British bar person had managed to find a bottle of my favoiurite vermouth. , Carpano Antica, so it was Negroni time. Despite not being a Negroni fan she made them perfectly Mudit delivered a rather surprising invitation this evening.

some of the beautiful churches of Mesina as seen from our balcony a few random pics of our visit to Tasromina Oh! and some gin🍸😎

Hi @MJSailors yes my Gastrognome is in fact my darling wife and yes she , or I should say we, very much enjoy gourmet food. Indeed she is also a extremely good cook. Where my passion is making wonderful drinks, her's is making wonderful food. The other reason is that like many posters on these and other platforms we both choose to anonymise our real names and avatars; she chose gastrognome as her identity but mine was a bit more random. I do think of myself a swashbuckling cool cat 😎 with a hat though others might not totally agree A case in point: while shopping yesterday in Taromina I chose to buy a bottle of Scillian bitter, a local Amaro, and a miniture campari fridge magnet; my Gastrognome some local herbs and spices and scilian pasta.

I spoke to Joseph at the world class bar and..... Spicy Mangotini 1oz Grey Goose 1/2 oz Roibos syrup 1/2 apricot brandy 1oz lemon juice mango spicy ginger foam for the roibus syrup the use 100g sugar in 1litre of brewed Affrican Solstice tea for the foam you need a cream foamer with 1/3 egg white, 1/3 mango pulp and 1/3 ginger infused syrup

🤞No rocks to get in the way of this cruise.... Captain Nickolaos is doing a grand job at avoiding them😉

Yesterday we had an excelent embarcation lunch at Sushi on 5 with th delicious cocktails provided by Joseph at the World Class bar... The extra eggs with my lobster and scalop Dynamite are from my Gastrognomes Ramen

The ubiquitous masks and sanitisers provided and we have a mix of toiletries With Bulgari and Bigelow for soap We also have, much to my delight, a coffee Lavazza machine and kettle along with all my bar requests. I Love the suite life 😎🍸

Taking on the pilot as we breakfast whilst passing Between Scylla and Charybdis😎 Wild firs on the main land Quite busy in Mesina today. It says "Vos et ipsam civitatem benedicimus" which translates from Latin to "We bless you and your city".

I'll write more about my feelings of the ship compared to Silhouette later but Captain Nikolas took us past Stomboli this morning. The third most active volcano in Italy. Mount Stromboli has been in almost continuouseruption for the past 2,000–5,000 years. And Sunrise was beautifull with Odyssey of the Seas off our Port bow ......

The tension just melts away 😎

Taxi dropped us off at the luggage drop at 10.30 through security and escorted to our suite by 11.10 😎 Got to Michael's, and I mean MICHAEL'S as it is a proper Michael's club pre Revolution, for our security brief by 11.45😎 Thank you Olympia for the first Campari soda. Off to Sushi for lunch

En route to FCO Only an hour late leaving... But the drink's are free🥴

I can’t have the last of cocktail of my countdown in the comfort of my own bar or even a hotel bar as I try very hard, except when actually on a cruise of course, to avoid pouring a drink before 6 o’clock. Our taxi came at 3.30pm and so my countdown cocktail will have to be from the British Airways South Galleries Club Lounge. 🤞🍹 Well its 5 o’clock and it has been a seemingly long day waiting to start so my Gastrognome has managed a sangria ( red wine tonic and a splash of orange juice) and I’ve poured myself a Cuba Libra (rum and coke with a squeeze of lime). Luggage was checked and security cleared in under 20 mins so not to bad. Fingers crossed for no delays Hope to be on board in 19 hours 🍸🍹🍷🍺🥂🧉🥃🍾😎

I use something called MyBar (My Cocktail Bar Pro on the Playstore) on my phone and a tablet next the bar but to be honest it is heavily customised by me with some extra ingredients added to the list and cocktails added and ammended. The version on my phone has 152 ingredients and 570 or so cocktails. https://mybarapp.com/ I also spend a lot of time reading old cocktail books and of course Simon Diffords book and website https://www.diffordsguide.com/

The whole testing before we board process has been very tense and my Gastrognome will tell you I have not been the easiest to live with but all is now well as our negative test results are in and all is now go.The packing is done and now I definitely need a drink. Well as we hope to be in a plane in a little over 25 hours it had better be an Aviation. 😎 45ml gin, 15ml Maraschino, 15ml lemon juice and 7ml crème de violette shaken with ice and strained into a coupe and garnished with a Maraschino cherry. Created by Hugo Ensslin, who worked as the head bartender at New York’s Hotel Wallick , and is mentioned in his 1916 Recipes for Mixed Drinks. It is said that the cocktail was named after the sky-blue colour is takes on when the crème de violette is added Hope to be on board in 40 hours 🍸🍹🍷🍺🥂🧉🥃🍾😎

Packing is under way but we have to pause to nip into the village to do our tests 🤞 🤞 🤞 🤞 🤞 🤞. Going on a cruise used to be so easy…. Now I’m going to need another cruise to relive some of this stress. Oh that the world could go back, but I suppose this is the new order that we will have to live with for some time to come.

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Hi @sunlover33 If you are a lover of whiskey and wine try asking for a Boulevardier at some where like the WCB. Slightly off menu but a lovely Burbon based drink never the less and the WCB should have the ingredients. My prefered recipie is 2 parts Woodford reserve, 1 part Carpano Antica sweet vermouth and 1 part campari 😎

Not quite in time for us as we sail on Monday and have 29 registered for the meet and greet. I will try to contact the CC host when we board, but most people on roll calls tend to disapear and go off line once they board due to high WiFi costs, and wlll I post on our rollcall any timings for meet ups. These meet ups are the finale of months together on our CC roll calls and much valued.

Had a slight upset to our plans today..... we had booked a tour for sicily entitled "Beautiful Taormina and Blue Grotto" checked on the Plan your cruise on the app and it now shows as "Beautiful Taormina by Land and Sea" 🙄 We booked this because my Gastrgnome has always wanted to see the "Blue Grotto" andwe had £250 of OBC spare to use up otherwise we would have booked independantly Does the change in title now mean it isn't going to the Blue Grotto?. I suspect a complaint on a previous tour has prompted X to clarify the details. In order to save the hassel we have canceled and rebooked Taromina on your own, I am looking forward to a propper Sicilian cannoli, and we'll book a private tour to the Blue Grotto next year when we are back in sicily.

my fingers are crossed 🤞 that we get to go. In these interesting times of Covid testing and flight uncertainties no cruise is certain until one is on board glass in hand

Cases are down from the attic and all marked up. I don’t want to miss them on the carousel at FCO! Am I being paranoid?🤪🌈🤪 Three nights till I can have my first Negroni at the Michaels Club, well in this case it is in fact a Boulevardier. The story then runs that in 1919, one Italian-born Count Camillo Negroni, one day asked for a bit more kick in his Americano. The bartender, Fosco Scarselli responded by switching the soda water for gin and thus the Negroni was born. The Boulevardier first appeared in Barflies and Cocktails, a 1927 book by Harry MacElhone of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris and Harry replaced the Gin with Bourbon. Sorry I can get a bit obsessive about cocktails. Fingers crossed as tomorrow is testing day. 🤞 Hope to be at the airport in 48 hours 🍸🍹🍷🍺🥂🧉🥃🍾😎

After all the telephonic exhaustion of the last few days the British Airways website is now showing our outward flights correctly Yesterday 🙄 Today 😎 But to add to the confusion on checking our return flights the plane has been changed, again, from an Airbus A321 back to an Airbus A320. Not really a problem but each time the assign a different plane the seats I had so carefully chosen are released and I have to select again. Luckily this time I’ve moved our return seats from row 6 to 5 so this time a win. As it is so long since we’ve flown to a cruise on our return from Silly in May I thought I’d weigh our cases before we unpacked them so as to know whether we are in the right ball park weight wise . I’m glad I did as while the cases fit size wise even with the Business allowance of 32kgs per case we need to pack a little less in each. I now intend to add loads of bubble wrap to pad things out a bit and I suspect we won’t be bringing quite as many hard back books. So with 4 nights before we board its time for a cocktail, this time a favourite long drink of mine, an Americano. The Americano was first served in the 1860s at Gaspare Campari's bar in Milan, Italy and before anyone gets confused the Caffè Americano didn’t make its debut until the 1940s. You’ll find an Americano on the menu at Tuscan Grille too Hope to be on board in 88 hours 🍸🍹🍷🍺🥂🧉🥃🍾😎

@Redking if you like a Division Bell this is another favourite of mine. Similar but with a herbal hint from the chartreuse