Silhouette Jan 17th for 12 nights

[RuffinReady]

We just recently returned from 12 nights on the Silhouette 17/1-29/1. Booked AQ class (1566). Embarked with no problem from Bayonne. Ship is beautiful, elegant. Many venues. The glass elevators that run up and down the interior of the ship are outstanding, really beautiful. Our cabin is quite attractive, but then it is new like the rest of the ship. Like other reviewers I didn't like the three drawers for storage, they wasted space by being too deep. They could have put in six more useful ones in the same space. The spaces over the bed are nearly useless. We ended up using our suitcases for storage. Luckily there was a lot of space under the bed! The closet is good and ours had a lot of hangers. The bathroom had a lot of "cubbies" but almost no useful vanity top space. Useless. But the most useless thing there was the sink, one of those neat looking bowls that you ended up splashing water from when you tried to use it, the faucet ran water out right at the edge of the bowl making it nearly useless, I said that before, repeating myself but deservedly so. The shower is outstanding, we had one with a full body spray, great! :)

 

I have one really serious complaint with the ship, and probably with all "S" class ships. We had chosen "Select Dining". However, when we went there to checkin while the ship was still loading passengers we discovered that there was a line of of people signing up for reserved seating for "Select Dining". What the hell! :( It turns out that when you want to go to the MDR for dinner there are two lines. :( One for people who have reservations and the other for those who have to wait for the "next available" table, which can be a 1/2 hour. So there is "Select Dining Plus" and regular "Select Dining" for the rest of us, a real contradiction in concepts. Who ever came up with the idea of having to make reservations for "Select Dining"???:mad:

 

I know that AQ entitles us for Blu, but we were traveling with friends who were in regular veranda class and they couldn't get into Blu with us. IAC, we went to Blu one night and were very unimpressed. The menu was very limited and I had to return my dinner because the veal was so hard that I couldn't cut it with my knife. The service was good, it was much less crowded and the room was attractive. I got a steak as a replacement for the veal and it was kind of pedestrian, so so. :eek:

 

Theater. There was a very good magician/enterainer and a couple of other good acts. The big show "Velocity" was terrible in our opinion. The cast did their best with a real dud, just a lot of jumping around and noise, but the sets and costumes were first class. It was a real dog of a show, the worst we have seen in 17 cruises on Celebrity, Princess and Holland American. There were other entertainers at various places throughout the ship and they were all first class, so there was no lack of somehing do.

 

A brief note on the bars. I tried to get a decent Manhattan, but they only have French sweet vermouth, not Italian. You can't make a decent Manhattan with French sweet vermouth, IMHO, it is too dry. So, I tried a Rusty Nail, no good as they tried to get by with a poor bar Scotch and too little Drambuie, probably because Drambuie is more expensive. A proper Rusty Nail is 50/50 Scotch and Drambuie. Then I tried a Whiskey Sour, too much whiskey. So, I switched to bottle beer, they can't mess that up. :rolleyes:

 

 

I bought a great Citizen Eco-Drive, World Perpetual Calendar watch that is radio controlled. It changes from the last day of each month to the 1st day of the next month, including on leap year! And the battery charges itself with ambien light. It receives a radio signal from Denver from the atomic clock each morning at 2am to reset itself. It is always in exact time and has the ability to let the wearer choose a city anywhere in the world to set its time zone, as well as daylight savings time. Very Important, it has a sapphire crystal so it doesn't scratch!! Only $297 and Macys has the some watch on Sale for $371. It is my best memory of the cruise!

 

 

RuffinReady

 

Bahama Star (long time ago, in the 50's!)

S.S. France (Transatlantic -1965)

S.S Atlantic (Transatlantic, Mediterranean - American Export Lines - 1966)

Europa (Caribbean - 1969 - North German Lloyd)

Statendam (Caribbean - 1973)

Sunward (Bahamas - c. 1980)

Song of America (Caribbean - 1988)

Crown Princess (Alaska - 1999)

Crown Princess (Baltic - 2001)

Royal Princess (B2B to South America - 2001)

Royal Princess (B2B2B; Transatlantic, France, Belgium, Holland; Gt.Britain-2002)

Celebrity Galaxy (Caribbean - 2003)

Prinsendam (B2B; Transatlantic NYC to Athens – May/June 2005)

Emerald Princess (Transatlantic, Denmark, Norway, Gt. Britain, Iceland, Greenland - 2009

Celebrity Mercury (Caribbean - October 2010)

Celebrity Silhouette (Caribbean - January 2012)

[portofrome]

Thank you for the review.