Nieuw Statendam: Sea Day 2

Today is a relaxing day at sea and I slept until 7 am. About an hour later Steve and I headed to the dining room for breakfast.

Morning at Sea

Let me say upfront, I did a terrible job of picture taking today.

I decided to go with the English breakfast while Steve had french toast and eggs.

After 10 am, I went to the shops to get a charm and learned that on Saturday you can get the ones missed earlier in the week.

I spent the rest of the morning reading before we met up to go to the mariner lunch at noon.

Afternoon at Sea

We ended up at a table with Jeff and Karen (the couple we chatted with at Happy Hour earlier in the week) and three people from Canada.

We had glasses of champagne waiting for us and they were refilled during the meal.

Steve and I had the gumbo which was very good and a bit spicy.

The entire table selected the mahi-mahi and shrimp which was also tasty. There wasn’t a choice for dessert but it was wonderful and we had coffee with it.

We were given tiles with Koningsdam/Niuew Statendam on it.

I went back to the room and started a movie, The Upside. I love that we could pause it as I had to leave before 2 pm to go to the wine tasting.

It was different than other wine tastings I’ve attended. Instead of a small group sitting and learning about each wine, they had about 80 people and we visited six stations to taste a white and a red wine from that region.

The regions were US, South America, South Africa, Spain, Italy and France. I really don’t care for white wines but tried a few. There was a big difference in the American Chardonnay and another one.

I did like most of the reds. 🙂 They had a table with cheeses, bread, fruit, and chocolate brownie where people could help themselves. The whole purpose of this event was to get people to order wines for dinner; not to educate.

I went back to the cabin afterwards and finished the movie. After our nap, we got ready for the second gala night.

Evening at Sea

The dining room was busier and had a bit of a line but it moved fast. I thought we’d have to wait for a table when I saw a couple of groups leave with pagers but they may have needed larger tables as we were seated promptly.

Our service was very slow tonight and it took 5-10 minutes just to get the menu and another 10-15 to order. We also had to ask the waiter to send the bar server over so we could order beverages.

We both started with the shrimp cocktail which was very good.