Our final night at sea, and for me, it was fine.  About two days earlier I started getting very lethargic and my Bride was starting to give me static that I was getting old.  I did a quick check and self-diagnosed myself as having Mal-de-Mer or seasickness.  Thankfully, she had packed an entire pharmacy, so I was able to medicate.  On the first business day when we returned, my internist told me that I had a classic case of pneumonia, and then my Bride said that maybe I wasn’t too old.  In fact, she ended up with a chest infection.

We enjoyed our last dinner at Le Bistro, one of the four themed restaurants that we paid for in advance.  When in “France” we opened a bottle of Champagne Veuve Clicquot Brut Yellow Label Reims NV.  Veuve Clicquot is one of Champagne’s best-known houses and founded in 1772.  The house is also famed for inventing the process of riddling, which removed the dead yeast cells and the finished wines with a clear appearance.  The house was started by Philippe Clicquot and later his son Francois married Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin in 1798, and they began taking over the wine business, but then came the Napoleonic Wars, and Francois died in 1805.  Barbe-Nicolle continued on her own, including some smuggling of wines to Tsar Alexander I of Russia, and the brand took off from there.  Veuve Clicquot is built upon chalk quarries established in medieval times and stretch for twenty-four kilometers, maintaining a perfect temperature and humidity and now listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.  Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin is now owned by the luxury giant Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH).  The Yellow Label is their emblematic cuvée and defines their signature of freshness, strength, aromatic richness and silkiness.  The wine is predominately Pinot Noir with Chardonnay and a touch of Pinot Meunier, and it can blend with up to forty-five percent reserve wines (some four hundred wines, aged up to thirty years).  The wine is a golden yellow with persistent fine tiny bubbles and offers notes of white and yellow fruit, citrus like mandarin and grapefruit and brioche.  On the palate this is a fully structured wine where there are tones of pear, peach, dried fruit and a nice medium to long count of fruit and brioche.  

While we were enjoying the bubbles, my Bride and I shared two appetizers: Steak Tartare au Couteau which is hand-cut beef with traditional garnishes and a grilled baguette and an order of Escargots a la Bourguignonne with Herbed Garlic Butter.  My Bride had “Carré d’Agneau Roti et Souris d’Agneau aux Saveurs Marocaines” or Braised Shank and Roasted Lamb Chop with Moroccan Spices, Dried Fruits, Sweet Potatoes and Cilantro.  I had a dish that I hadn’t had since I was sixteen at Anthony’s Pier 4 in Boston, as I had “Homard Thermidor” or Lobster Thermador with a Mushroom Cream Sauce and Rice Pilaf; which even carried an additional surcharge for the dinner.  We then were bad as we tried four different desserts with coffee: “Fraisier” Strawberries with Diplomat Cream and Pistachio-Almond Sponge Cake, “Marquis au Chocolat” Dark Chocolate Cremeux with Rice Crunch and Chambord Raspberry Sauce, “Poire Belle-Helene” Fortified Wine Poached Pear with Spices and Vanilla Ice Cream with Warm Chocolate Sauce, and finally “Ile Flottante” an Airy Meringue Pillow floating in Vanilla Crème Anglais and Raspberry Coulis.  I have no idea how it happened, but we may have come home with maladies, but no additional weight.