From the title, you may readily guess that wine comes into the picture in a big way on this post. Well, yes, it will -- but first we had to get there.
Source Base Map: https://freevectormaps.com/world-maps/europe/WRLD-EU-01-0002?ref=atr
At a casual glance, it doesn't look very far on the map from Cherbourg to Le Verdon. But then you look again and you see the wild, rocky coast of Brittany (Bretagne) in between the two. Off the tip of Brittany, outside the historic naval base of Brest, lie the saw-toothed shores of the Ile d'Ouessant, often referred to in English as "Ushant." It marks off the southern edge of the entrance to the English Channel. Today, sailors can easily use satellite navigation aids to give the Ile d'Ouessant a safe and wide berth, but back in the days of sailing ships, a captain actually had to come within sight of the island ("make landfall") in order to verify the ship's position. Many shipwrecks resulted -- not surprisingly. In the nineteenth century, it was said that three-quarters of the world's shipping made landfall off Ile d'Ouessant.
We didn't try. Our ship took a leisurely day and a half to make the trip, leaving Cherbourg at about 6:30 on Tuesday night to arrive at the pier in Le Verdon at 7:00 on Thursday morning. And in the process, as the map shows, we gave the Ile d'Ouessant a very wide berth. We turned south to go past the island around 10:00 am on Wednesday while I was enjoying a late breakfast. At noon, the captain gave our position on his daily announcement, with Ile d'Ouessant bearing 25.5 nautical miles northeast (that's 47.2 kilometres or 29.3 statute or land miles). That put the island and its historic lighthouse well out of sight below the horizon, which on the whole I would have to say is a good idea.
Coming down the English Channel during the night was a messy business, as it so often and notoriously can become. Between wind, weather, tide streams, and the shorelines (and unseen bottom of the ocean) that squeeze the water into ever tighter confines as you go east, the English Channel is famously one of the world's more turbulent and unpredictable ocean passages. Lying in bed at night, I didn't so much feel rolled from side to side as I felt like I was accelerating towards my headboard one minute and trying to slide down to the foot of the bed the next. My head is pointed towards the bow of the ship when I'm sleeping in this cabin.
By the time I got up in the morning, we were already into calmer waters and the sun was working its way through the clouds. The ship was still lurching around a bit, but nothing like a few hours earlier. As I was getting dressed, I glanced out the window -- and suddenly noticed that we had company.
This huge container freighter gradually pulled ahead of us on our port side. As I looked around on my balcony, I could see other ships, both ahead and behind, in multiple lines. The English Channel is not only a stormy waterway, but an incredibly busy one, with ship control centres duplicating the functions of air traffic control in the skies above for the marine traffic below. To give you some perspective on that big container ship, my cabin is eleven decks up above the waterline.
Later on, after we "turned the corner" towards Le Verdon during my breakfast, I noticed the same ship off on the other side, similarly hauling down and passing another freighter very close as they headed off towards North America. Is it just me, or does it look like this freighter crossed in front of us? Dangerous thing for big ships to do, considering that they need a good nautical mile to turn and much more than that to stop.
It was a beautiful sunny day in the Bay of Biscay, and the sea gradually softened to the point where the motion became regular and less abrupt and I felt quite at home with it.
Note: Just as I wrote that sentence, the captain came on the PA to announce that, due to heavy swells expected in the morning, we would be boarding our pilot for Le Verdon at 5:00 am by helicopter! There followed a whole slew of instructions, among which the big # 1 was "Flash photography is strictly forbidden throughout the operation." Smart money said that a number of bozos will be out on their balconies, trying to take flash pictures anyway.
With that, here follow a series of photos from different areas around the ship on our first sea day. To start off, a view inside the buffet area, which is a good deal lighter and brighter than the buffet areas on the last couple of ships I sailed on, a few years back. I like it!
The heart of the ship in the evenings is the three main dining rooms, even though one isn't open on this trip. My tour at Le Verdon assembled in the closed room, the Michelangelo dining room, and that gave me a chance to photograph a typical Princess dining room when it wasn't full of people.
Outside the buffet on deck 15 are the two swimming pools and four hot tubs, with the midships elevators in between them. On Crown Princess, the top-deck lobby with the midships elevators has a sculpture of swimming sea turtles at each end. Here, on Emerald Princess, we get something a little different.
I noticed something about the two pools on deck 15 that I hadn't noticed before on any of Crown, Ruby, or Caribbean Princess. One of the pools is screened on the upper deck (16) with Plexiglas, while the other one is not. Both are so screened on deck 15 where the actual pools are located.
The Deck 16 screening is around the pool which lies below the Movies Under the Stars screen, and is intended (I would guess) to cut down wind interference and allow people to sit up above to watch the movie if they wish. The one that was playing this morning was a concert video, but few people were actually watching.
Sharp-eyed readers will also have noted that the first picture also shows a swimming pool with no water in it. Crew members were doing some scraping and painting in there. This is only one of several facilities shut down, at least for part of this voyage. My own personal favourite, the Terrace Pool at the stern is another one. The Terrace Bar right above that pool is closed. So is the Michelangelo Dining Room. That's the surest sign that the ship is sailing well below capacity: one of the three main dining rooms is unused.
The surest sign that the ship is out at sea, on the open ocean, is when the water in the swimming pool is sloshing back and forth.
And here's a brief video clip to make the point completely clear. Suddenly, you understand exactly why there's a large, flat, walled-in "reef" area around the actual pool.
At four in the afternoon, I celebrated my return to cruising and my first beautiful sea day by popping a cork in advance of tomorrow's adventure. I ordered up a half-bottle of bubbly to go along with my complimentary hors d'oeuvres for formal night.
It recalls to my mind a story about Otto von Bismarck, passing on the sparkling Rhine wine at a formal dinner and asking for champagne. "But, Chancellor, shouldn't you drink good German wine?" his seatmate asked. "Patriotism," Bismarck bluntly replied, "stops at the stomach." After enjoying this beauty, I agree.
Since I really don't enjoy getting all gussied up in a dinner jacket or suit and tie, I get around the formal night rules by going to one of the premium restaurants, where the dress code doesn't apply. On Wednesday night, it was the Crown Grill steak house, which a number of observers have rated as the best steak house at sea. I see no reason to disagree -- from the fresh-baked pull-apart garlic bread, warm and buttery...
...and the scallop and red caviar in cream sauce appetizer...
...to the filet mignon, done just as I like it, with side dishes of creamed spinach and smooth and creamy mashed potatoes.
"But wait a minute," I can hear some of you saying, "he doesn't drink red wine! What's that doing in the picture?" It's true. I don't normally drink red -- not because I don't like it, but because it's given me too many headaches in the past (likely the tannins). But in this case, I was already doomed because I drank my other great headache instigator, champagne, so I figured I might just as well drop the other shoe. And I did enjoy the merlot.
The cost? It's an extra $29 cover charge to eat in the Crown Grill, and for that you can order all you want of the various appetizers and sides, and one main course. If you want an extra main, or lobster for surf-and-turf, that is an additional $10 charge.
In case you're wondering what dinner in the regular dining rooms looks like, here's a sample menu:
Unlike the premium-charge steakhouse, everything is included in your fare. You want one from each group of courses on offer? Why not? You can't decide which of two dishes to order? Order both. You love a dish so much that you want more of it? Order two of them. Apart from the five items listed on the right under "Princess Favorites," everything else on the menu changes every night. There's also a separate dessert menu with four or five sweet choices, plus a cheese plate.
Oh, yes -- the red wine headache? Yes, it happened, but because I drank plenty of water before going to bed, it wasn't too terrible.
Speaking of headaches, though: faced with the possibility of being awakened at 5:00 am by a throbbing helicopter (it was approaching the ship on the port side, where my cabin is located), I was grateful that my tour at Le Verdon wouldn't assemble until 1:00 pm -- plenty of time to get up and doing if I slept in again. As it worked out, I didn't wake up until 8:00 am, so I missed whatever show there was. The ride had become so smooth when I awoke during the night that I doubted if they actually used a helicopter at all. But they did, because when we sailed at 6:30 for our next port, the captain went through the whole helicopter safety speech again, This time, the helicopter transfer of the pilot happened while I was at dinner.
So anyway, on Thursday morning, November 10, we docked at the port of Le Verdon, right at the mouth of the Gironde. Terminology clarification in order:
Source Base Map: https://freevectormaps.com/france/FR-EPS-01-0001?ref=atr
There are two rivers which merge just downstream from the city of Bordeaux. The Dordogne comes from the southeast, the Garonne from the south and through Bordeaux. The combined streams together form the tidal estuary called the Gironde. Both sides of the Gironde, the Right Bank and the Left Bank. are the locations of significant portions of the world-renowned Bordeaux wine region.
The Left Bank is the large peninsula, or "thumb," if you like, which separates the Gironde from the open ocean. This region is known as the Médoc. The port of Le Verdon lies just inside the tip of the Médoc, and is useful to cruise companies because it saves cruise ships the necessity of spending many extra hours navigating all the way up the estuary to the docks in Bordeaux.
And here we are at Le Verdon. Looks exciting, doesn't it?
Plainly, there's nothing here. There's a tiny village north of us with the Pointe de Grave lighthouse, the small town of Le Verdon-sur-Mer is a couple of kilometres south of us, and we're left with a concrete cargo pier and meadows of salt grass. And fast-spreading sea fog. Whee.
Princess is offering free shuttle buses every half hour or hour to the neighbouring town of Soulac-sur-Mer, about half an hour's drive away on the ocean side of the Médoc peninsula. I didn't take advantage simply because there wasn't enough time left before my tour at 1:00 pm (by the time I'd finished breakfast and a morning deck walk), and besides, I will be spending a good several hours sitting on a coach this afternoon. Enough is enough.
Once my tour rolled out, at 1315, I quickly realized that it wasn't just Le Verdon -- the whole of the Médoc is flat.
The right bank, when it emerged from the sea fog, was flat. The few very low-rise hills were identified by our guide as sand dunes amid marshes that had to be slowly, painfully drained. And the Gironde is always muddy. I put all of that together and concluded that the Médoc is nothing but the waste sand, gravel, silt, etc., dumped into the ocean by the Gironde over the last however-many-centuries in a row, probably ever since the end of the ice ages. Prove me wrong.
It's also a region with no big cities and no freeways, so our trip south for 55 kilometres took close to two hours, with a lot of narrow, twisting back roads and one scenic stop where we could examine a field of grape vines at close quarters. This was at the Château d'Estournel, one of the more pompous-looking wineries.
The low-profile style of cultivation is a deliberate feature to help the grapes appear near the tops of the vines, where they will be less subject to moisture from the leaves and the resulting hazard of mildew, a particular risk of such a low-lying region. A winery like this, with vines on one of the low hills, is thus sitting on an incredibly valuable asset for the Médoc -- because it's self-draining. The gravels on the ground, which must by law be naturally present there, serve a similar aim by collecting heat in daytime and radiating it at night, helping to dry the leaves and vines.
Throughout the drive, our guide gave us a lengthy and detailed commentary on all the ins and outs of the history, organization, biology, technology, and ownership of the numerous "châteaux." Wine-growing/producing estates are called by the name "château," but most of them don't actually have the castle or palace which that name implies to North American ears.
By the end of the drive, and our winery tour, I had learned a tremendous amount about the wines of the Médoc, and of the larger Bordeaux region, certainly enough to realize that I still know very little. It was a tremendously eye-opening and enlightening experience. I wish all tour guides were this thorough and well-prepared at their work.
Our main stop was at the Château de Camensac. See? It's no castle!
There we got a short but equally informative tour of the winery's production and cellarage facilities: the multiple large vats lined with concrete in which the wine ferments and grows...,
...the stainless steel tanks to which the wine is briefly transferred before being put into oak barrels...,
...and the cellar storehouse, with filled barrels on the left and empty barrels for sale on the right.
From the barrel ageing, the wine is bottled and then aged in bottle.
This tour was followed by a tasting. Like many in this region, Château de Camensac produces only two wines: a first and second string, as it were. Both are, of course, excellent. You can buy them in standard bottles, magnums, or double magnums -- your choice.
This winery uses two types of grapes exclusively, of the six that can legally be used for the Médoc appellation controllée: cabernet sauvignon and merlot. The second string wine used 83% merlot and 17% cabernet sauvignon; the first string or premium version used 60% cabernet sauvignon to 40% merlot. Those familiar with these wine types can imagine better than I can how they would find such flavour combinations. I certainly enjoyed both, but preferred the one with 83% merlot.
After we left the winery, we took a much more direct route and returned to the ship in just over an hour. And as soon as I got back to my cabin, I started pouring down water to try to flush out all those tannins before the dreaded red-wine headache could kick in. Sigh.
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