One of our favourite things to do on cruise ships is explore the drinks menus because most of the pubs around our way don’t really cater to the extravagant cocktail-drinking demographic. Not that we’re cocktail drinkers most of the time, of course, but if you’re going to do a cruise you need to do it in style. Well, we do.
A few years back I started a tradition that for any formal occasion on ship or special meals when out I would have a Vodka Martini with three olives. I don’t like Vodka Martinis and I despise olives but it just feels right. You have to leave the olives in the glass until about halfway down it, then throw the olives as far away as possible. Those are the rules. I carried on my tradition aboard Azura although, as with all the other cocktails we were drinking, I instantly discovered that the difference between drinks measures on Princess as opposed to P&O was very, very noticeable. Now, you do pay more for drinks on Princess but you get more too. Quite a bit more as it turns out. My Vodka Martini looked quite petite next to my wife’s gin and tonic.
A surprising – pleasantly surprising! – discovery were the beer and wine flights offered on the ship in, respectively, Brodie’s Bar and The Glass House. Some of the beers are shown in menu photos further down the page. We were a little disappointed that not all the beer flight offers were available. Had we picked up the ship in the Caribbean we could have understood this but we embarked at Southampton and all the beers were British; there didn’t seem to be a decent excuse for a non-fully-stocked bar. For the wines we originally simply had the intention of reading our books with a single glass each but the lure of finding the flights available – three 125ml glasses of a particular theme (e.g. South American Reds) – was too hard to resist.
A few shots of some of the bar menu pages showing a sample of what was available and prices for the drinks on board because I’m now a seasoned travel blogger and know that this is the sort of information that makes people weak at the knees and giddy with excitement.
Since this short cruise on the Azura took us to Belgium and since we visited Ghent and since we happened to find ourselves in an alehouse in Ghent (as you do) it feels only right and proper to include a picture of that establishment’s interior and the beers we ended up getting after asking advice from the barman as to what suited our tastes too.
