A summary of the final thirty six hours on the ship to start with.

We’d spent the day over the water from the main part of Amsterdam that most people visit when they hit the capital city of the Netherlands and very much enjoyed the street art museum, STRAAT, and the visit to Oedipus Brewery.

Celebrity Silhouette was due to depart late at night so we didn’t eat ashore, instead making it back in plenty of time to hit the main dining room for dinner, and the remainder of the evening was spent hopping around the bars and making use of our drinks package.

Towards the very end of the evening I took a few photos of some of the more vacant spaces on the ship as she began the slow cruise along the IJ towards the locks at IJmuiden.

The final day on the ship was a typical lazy sea day of quizzes, reading, and watching the world go by, snacking, and drinking, but not going crazy because the following day would be an early departure to get to the car and get home in time for work, and we didn’t want a repeat of the over-the-top experience of the last night of our first cruise on Silhouette a few years earlier.

It was nice to pass between Dover and Calais and to see both coastlines from the ship as well as just how busy the route was with ferries.

There were other cruise bloggers on this cruise and there had been talk amongst them all of meeting up to discuss god-knows-what or network or whatever. Fortunately for us, only one of those people knew what we looked like as we’d met before, knew we’d probably not want to join in, and she came to warn us about the meeting because it was due to take place at a table next to us in a bar we were sitting at. We decided to just sit and watch from a distance and were glad we did. We like to stay on the periphery of things because you can sometimes get glimpses of the real people that way when they’re not presenting the social media friendly version of themselves. The things we could tell you about some of the things other cruise bloggers have done or said when they don’t realise who you are or what you can overhear!

And finally, the final night’s dinner and proof that we were back on the Martinis.

We had not been impressed with our first cruise on Celebrity Silhouette, largely because everyone had played up just how good Celebrity were in terms of style and food and service, and it had mostly been utterly appalling in those last two categories in particular. This second cruise on Silhouette, to the same place, was definitely better for its lack of outright staff hostility but we were still left mostly underwhelmed.

We avoided speciality dining this time because we’d been unimpressed before, sticking to the main dining room. Our waiters were lovely, but the food was once more not great. Temperature problems, lack of taste. Nothing terrible, but not very good either.

The drinks range on the ship was good, and the quality of the drinks was also good, but service in some of the bars was woeful as there were not enough staff to cover the area so only the people near the bar ever seemed to get any table service. That’s poor management and poor training.

Silhouette has some nice areas, yes, but it also has some quite hideous parts. For what Celebrity tend to charge for their cruises, they’re simply not a line we’re really ever going to consider again because we’ve been let down by the food twice now and the ratio of staff to passengers in bars was awful. Short cruises aren’t always the best way to experience a line but their pricing makes longer cruises a financial risk we’re not prepared to take, and we were only on the ship again this time – like those other cruise bloggers – because it was a good deal.

But we enjoyed Amsterdam, especially visiting different parts of it this time around, and not just posting photos from the same old locations everyone else goes to time after time. The cruise was a nice break, we didn’t come away thinking dark thoughts about the cruise line, but it would take a spectacular itinerary at a fantastic price to tempt us aboard again.

Boarding was uneventful and after dropping off our carry-on luggage in our room we headed up to the top deck for a drink as it was still a little busy inside the ship. A few changes from our first cruise with Celebrity Cruises were that we packed light to make sure we could walk off the ship early and get to work upon our arrival back in Southampton, and we’d opted for a standard balcony rather than the Concierge Class which we’d not considered good value for money based on our previous experience. This will explain why my wife wore the same dress two nights in a row in this post (she doesn’t like to do that, for some reason; I’ll happily wear the same stuff for half the cruise so long as I don’t spill anything on it) and also why there aren’t any photos of the appalling afternoon treats delivered to the room. You can always check the previous cruise travelogue series aboard Celebrity Silhouette if you don’t know what I’m talking about there.

On the top deck we spotted a friend of ours from the blogging world who we’d cruised with before – Steph – and we stopped to have a nice long chat with her. She’d been talking to another couple we’d cruised with before – Cruise Buoys – but they didn’t remember they’d done so (on Valiant Lady) nor that we blamed them for catching Covid, and since we’d not really chatted before we kept it to occasional nods as we passed by during this cruise. Steph let us know who else from the blogging world was on the ship and she’d prove invaluable on the final day of this short getaway by keeping us well away from the others. We’re a bit particular about who we talk to, you see. You can’t just talk to anyone, you know. There are loonies out there and they cruise amongst us.

We eventually retreated to the Craft Social bar because in theory this was our sort of place: it had craft beer. In theory. It had been more of a wine venue before and as you can see from the photos below, we headed back to the wine after one beer or cider each. The options were not great. Service had also been spotty, especially given how quiet the bar was, but this was still embarkation day and we understood from experience that staff are often relocated to help out in other areas at this time.

We were back in our room for more of the sail away from Southampton and down the Solent, and the views of one of the Solent Forts and the Isle of Wight were familiar ones given we lived opposite them and the number of cruises we’ve been on now. It’s always nice to see them from the balcony of a cruise ship, though, and the late August warmth of the hazy evening sunshine was very pleasant.

Dining room menus and food are popular subjects online when people are looking for cruises so you’ll be pleased to see the menu and food from the first two nights on Celebrity Silhouette below.

When we’d first cruised with Celebrity in 2019 it was after a lot of people had mentioned how good the food was. Was it good enough to warrant the additional price of cruising with Celebrity, however? we wondered. No, it hadn’t even been good enough to warrant a reduction in the price of cruising against less premium cruising brands. It had been, frankly, quite poor. But every cruise is different so we approached this cruise with an open mind and an expectation that what we’d previously experienced had been an aberration.

Unfortunately – and we may just be supremely unlucky when it comes to cruising with Celebrity Cruises here, or targeted by them deliberately for some reason – there was no improvement. Some food was good, some was tasteless, temperatures fluctuated wildly from item to item and course to course, and this was true for the whole cruise, starting with day one. Our waiters were lovely and friendly, though, so that was a big improvement. See, I’m not just Mr Negative.

After a disappointing dinner we drowned our sorrows in the nightclub into the early hours. We’d had some onboard spend for this cruise and had put it towards upgrading the basic drinks package that had been part of the cruise deal. We like to try the drinks and we’re very much night owls on ships.

The next morning saw us in the port of Zeebrugge where two things conspired to keep us on the ship while in port. Usually, rain or shine, and whether we’ve never been to the port before or been a dozen times, we will get off and explore. However, there was no free or easily-arranged option to get to Blankenberge from the port. There was a paid option to Bruges but we didn’t fancy that, and the port shuttle would get us to the port entrance where we’d need to take the tram if we wanted to get to the nearest town of any size or interest. All a bit of a faff that we still would have done had we not both been absolutely hanging after the night before’s drinking.

We had breakfast, we took part in the morning trivia, we debated whether we should introduce ourselves to another cruise blogger we saw (we decided against it), we had some coffees and drinking chocolates, we waited for our room to be cleaned, and then we went for an afternoon snooze. Yeah, that’s how rough we were.

Dinner on the second night was no better than that on the first in terms of taste or temperature; there was simply no consistency to anything forasmuch as it looked nice.

A quieter night in terms of drinking was called for and we tried out the Martini Bar. Service was abysmal but the drinks, once you had them, were nice. There seemed to be too few bartenders making drinks and too few taking orders away from the bar – especially if you were sat more than a few tables away – forcing everyone to jostle around the bar to try to catch someone’s eye, and that crowding couldn’t have been particularly nice for those sat at the bar itself. A nice-looking venue but not a wonderful experience when you consider the typical base price of the cruise.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at the second port where we actually make it off Celebrity Silhouette and head ashore to find something new to see in Amsterdam.

It was the afternoon of a sea day, and afternoons on sea days on cruise ships are for gentle, relaxing activities, or they are on the lines we cruise with and if that’s not the case elsewhere then we’re fine with never discovering just what terrifyingly unrelaxed things might exist out there. We had a fancy evening planned as we’d pre-booked speciality dining in the ship’s Murano restaurant so, with all my photographing around the ship completed, we had a peruse of Today, the daily programme guide, and after a bite for lunch in the buffet made our way to the general trivia where we did abysmally.

If you’re a fan of quizzes then the Sky Lounge was the place to be for the afternoon as the general trivia was followed by a Majority Rules gameshow and a “Best of Queen” music trivia. We didn’t stay for either of them, not because we were disappointed with our brains in the trivia in which we’d done so poorly, but because our Queen knowledge isn’t great and Majority Rules games, which we’ve seen before on other cruises, annoy us. I have enough “What stupid thing are all these people likely to say?” thoughts in my working life without carrying it over onto cruise holidays.

Shopping

So we hit the shops. As you might know if you’re a regular cruiser, shops are closed when ships are in port or within a certain distance of shore for legal or tax reasons – this is also why you’ll sometimes get charged extra for drinks if you’re on a ship while it’s in port (that’s caught us out a few times) – so there hadn’t been a huge opportunity to see what was in them until now. We wandered, looking for bargains or things that were a little different and didn’t really find either, not that we expected to. You don’t shop on a cruise ship if you’re looking for the best price for high street items and you don’t shop on a cruise ship if you’re looking for anything not connected with cruising or making yourself look and smell wonderful. I had no problem finding a Celebrity Silhouette shot glass to add to the expanding collection, though, and was quite pleased as its design is nicer than those you find on Princess ships.

Passing through the jewellery store we found we’d just missed a presentation of some kind but were accosted by a salesperson almost immediately. It wasn’t to try to sell us anything, though, as she wanted to know if we’d been given one of the free pieces of Chocolate Quartz that the first hundred people were entitled to. We explained that we hadn’t been at the presentation but got a “Oh, that’s fine, here, have one anyway.” That was nice. I turned around to look at a display. There was another salesperson. “Did you get some Chocolate Quartz?” “No, my wife has one, though, and we weren’t here for the presentation anyway.” “Oh, well, that’s okay. Here, have another one.”

And that’s how we got two carats of Chocolate Quartz. No idea what to do with them but they do look quite nice.

We headed back to the room to drop off our purchase and freebies and found our Daily Delectable Delights had arrived, a perk of the Concierge Class on Celebrity Silhouette. I did not find them particularly delectable nor delightful but I cannot find fault with their frequency. Tastes differ and you might absolutely love them if you’re the kind of deviant who eats olives and cheese.

Our dinner reservation wasn’t until 20:00 because, as I’ve mentioned on occasion, that’s a respectable time to eat if you’re a cultured European. We’re not cultured but we act the part well. This gave us plenty of time to grab a few drinks and get in some reading during the afternoon and early evening although our first day’s experience of trying to get any drinks didn’t give us high hopes that the first part of this task would be an easy one. We needn’t have worried, though, because, in a marked contrast to our time aboard up until this point, we found the bars and lounges were emptier and there were more staff around. We managed to tick off the Passport Bar for a cocktail from our mental list of venues we’d got a drink in but otherwise made do with a couple of beers each that we were unfamiliar with from two other locations we’d previously frequented.

After showering and getting into something closer to smart casual from the casual casual that had sufficed to this point we headed to the Ensemble Lounge for a pre-dinner drink. We didn’t have long until our dinner so opted for shorts.

“Two Woodford Reserves, please.”
“Singles or doubles?”
“Singles, please.”

Single measures were poured out and then something magical happened. The barman looked from side to side then free poured close to another single into each glass. “Nobody saw,” he said with a wink and a smile. This was the first time we’d had anything close to human interaction from any member of staff on the cruise. And it was a good one. This point marked when we shifted from “Probably never going to cruise with Celebrity again” to “Hello!”

Speciality Dining In Murano

Murano is located beside the Ensemble Lounge which was already our favourite place to have a drink anyway so that was very convenient. It was smaller than we’d expected from our experience with other speciality dining venues on ships but that’s not a bad thing. Think of it as more exclusive, more intimate. Definitely think about pre-booking if you’re going to be taking a short cruise as I can imagine it gets sold out early. It was also nice and dark. Evening dining is always nicer when the lights are low and candles aren’t lost in the ambient illumination and Murano was excellent in this respect except for one part of the room set up as a table for ten (I think) that was right beside the bright wine storage. I think our table for two well away from that was far nicer.

I’m not the most positive person in the world. Being a senior software developer for a multinational company with a client who pulls in well over a billion a year through the site that I am mostly responsible for and being a positive person do not go hand-in-hand. I have a more pragmatic and more balanced outlook on life. My reviews are not overflowing with superlatives because the problem with riding peaks all the time is that the troughs are that much farther down. I like to keep things real and manageable somewhere in the middle. If everything is amazing then is anything really amazing? Which is why every now and then a genuine thing of joy will happen or appear and take me by surprise. Like the cone of butter that was delivered to the table. All butter should be conical. Or the stylised M on the fronts of our menus which matched our first names and felt personal and also tied into our social media travel branding (see: Twitter and Instagram and feel absolutely free to follow along there if you haven’t already, thank you for reading this advert). These things made me happy.

To the menu now. You get two options for dining in Murano, those being for a Five Senses 5-course set menu with wine pairing or for a more traditional à la carte menu. We each have things we’d rather not eat and they typically keep turning up in set menus so we always choose à la carte.

As we weren’t going for a pairing (because pairing includes white wine and we’re fussy in that we like our wine to have flavour) we needed a bottle of wine. Needed. We picked a Malbec because we know what we like when it comes to wine and what we like is dark, full-bodied, and fruity. We’ve had better wines on ships – P&O still holds the crown there for wine – and we drink far better wines at home – for some reason, cruise ships really like picking the thinnest of wines to add to their collections – but it was very nice and certainly better than average.

My wife chose the Wild Forest Mushroom Cappuccino while I went for the Smoked Salmon and Peekytoe Crab Parfait for starters. Both very tasty, with my choice winning in the appealing presentation stakes.

Our cover charge in Murano took care of our à la carte selections but we did have the option to add to that with an additional course at this point, either a whole lobster for 29 dollars or caviar at market prices. We chose neither because a whole lobster at this point seemed like overkill and the market price for the two choices of caviar would have paid for another cruise. Instead we skipped straight ahead to the Trou Normand, a traditional French palate cleanser comprising green apple sorbet and calvados in this instance. And it was very nice.

Our main courses were the Herb Crusted Lamb Rack for my wife and the Five-Spice Crusted Cervena Venison Loin for me. The photos don’t really do them justice as they were both gorgeous with sensible-sized portions and a great mix of textures and flavours.

That only left dessert and the only slight pimple on an otherwise perfect meal. The maître d’ came to take our order here and produced a compelling argument for the soufflés, stating that in all his years across many lines and ships he’d never had such good soufflés as these. These soufflés could stop wars. These soufflés could reverse the climate disaster. These soufflés even had the power to make Brexit voters realise the errors of their ways. I mean, if you knew a soufflé could do this then you’d have to try it, wouldn’t you? I never have soufflés but I did this time. So did my wife.

They were okay.

Murano offered up a classically French-style, speciality dining experience – which is our posh restaurant preference at home – and it’s something we’ve not had on any other cruise line yet. It will be interesting to see the Princess take on this type of dining with their new La Mer restaurant, something we’ll be looking to try for ourselves next year on Enchanted Princess. When we’d booked this cruise we’d done so under the impression that Celebrity did food well but it was only Murano on this short trip that fulfilled that expectation. It’s worth the cover charge and highly recommended.

Ensemble Lounge Entertainment

Our fabulous meal at Murano’s complete we stepped out of the restaurant and into the Ensemble Lounge where a contemporary jazz duo were playing and where seats were available. Since our last drink in this bar just before dinner had been so good and since I’m partial to a bit of jazz and since it was nice to have a band performing who weren’t simply doing pop covers (God knows there are enough of them on cruises) and since I’m quite persuasive when I put my mind to it, I convinced my wife – not the world’s greatest fan of jazz – to have a seat and another bourbon. So we did.

There was a decent crowd in the Ensemble Lounge but none of them really appeared to notice the musicians. We were ordering as the first tune we’d heard upon our arrival came to an end and it struck me that it was met with no appreciation from anyone else, engrossed as they were in their own conversations. Grabbing seats near the duo we listened and watched a fabulous music performance while also chatting amongst ourselves and as the next song ended I and my wife applauded. I think one other person half-heartedly joined in.

We’d barely finished our drinks before we were approached by a bar steward who wanted to know if we wanted another. A silly question and also a shocking one as it was the first instance of someone coming to our table to check on our drinks rather than us having to head to the bar that had occurred on the ship. A shock, but a pleasant one. It was like we’d boarded a Celebrity Silhouette from the Mirror Universe in Southampton on day one and while we’d been ashore in Amsterdam it had returned from whence it had come to be replaced by this reality’s version.

As tracks were performed I continued to lead the clapping which was getting a smiling nod from the guitarist and may have encouraged up to a dozen other people to join in through peer pressure before the musicians took a break. Upon their return they approached our table, thanked us, and we had a chat for several minutes. They were Dallas Bridge, very friendly, very talented, and another very positive checkmark on this final evening on the ship. We were particularly impressed with the brushing technique of the drummer and it’s our firm belief that if you’re ever challenged to a Rub Your Tummy & Pat Your Head competition by her then concede defeat immediately. You can see some of that skill and listen to some excellent music – you might even recognise some of it – plus get a feel for the atmosphere in the Ensemble Lounge in the following video montage (temporarily removed) of several tracks.

Drinks kept arriving thanks to the suddenly attentive waiting staff and the measures were completely random thanks to the bar staff. At some point the bar ran out of Woodford Reserve (can’t think how) and we were offered Bulleit as an alternative.

It is a rare thing for us to pay attention to the musical artists as we find they can be a little samey; good, because almost all musicians who perform on cruise ships are, but after a while every four-piece with a female lead covering hits from the 1960s forward start to merge together. Dallas Bridge were something else and, again, looking ahead to our Enchanted Princess cruise next year with its new jazz-themed lounge, they would be the perfect residents for it.

Sky Lounge

With their set complete and a final quick chat to mostly tell them how good they were and ask about their accommodation on the ship (yeah, I don’t know how the conversation headed there either) we left our jazz duo and decided to see if the Sky Lounge was any more inviting than it had been on the first day. The pool was lit up nicely at night.

By this time we were feeling really quite positive about Celebrity Silhouette but I’m sure the admittedly substantial amount of alcohol we’d downed only played a small part in this feeling; tipsy or not, things had definitely improved on the ship, and we felt confident that Sky Lounge wouldn’t let us down.

I can remember we got talking for quite a while to a couple of young Brazilian guys celebrating their wedding anniversary in Europe. They’d been having a ball on the ship. Everything else is decidedly fuzzy. In fact, neither I nor my wife remember the lights coming up but I did take a photo and some video so we were certainly still there when that happened.

We also don’t remember leaving Sky Lounge, getting back to our room, or indeed anything at all until we heard a ship’s announcement in our room in the morning. What time did we get back? Did we clean our teeth before getting into bed? Where the hell did I get that bruise on my leg from? Questions without answers. Alcohol, eh? Fantastic stuff.

And that concludes our taster cruise on Celebrity Silhouette. It started poorly but really recovered well. The same can’t be said for us. Alcohol, eh? Foul stuff.

Never pass up an opportunity to have ignored again what has already been paid no attention to.

It’s Rule 19 in case you’re wondering.

And so, in the parlance of movies and games, consider this a Celebrity Silhouette Cruise Ship Exploration Redux. Everything in this post was seen on the final day aboard the ship. There will be familiar sights. There will be new sights. The writing will be what you’ve come to expect if you’ve ever read anything here before and if you haven’t then brace yourself for disappointment.

Nothing jumped out at us from the final day aboard’s programme of events and the weather continued in much the same vein as the previous day with plenty of cloud cover and a strong wind that had moved around and started blowing out of the south. With breakfast out of the way and the ship scheduled to depart I asked my wife if she fancied another walk around the ship to keep me company as I grabbed some photos, filed the withering look I received away in a mental drawer marked Well, What Did You Expect, Asking A Stupid Question Like That?, and left her to go back to our room to read while I started wandering. Since we were on the top deck when we parted ways it was there that I began.

I was quite impressed to see the outdoor pool actually in use given the bite to the wind. I assume that the water was heated but don’t know for certain. Perhaps the swimmer was naturally hot.

The main area I was keen to take more of a look at on the top deck was the Lawn Club as we’d given it barely more than a glance on our first day on the ship. People had been swarming all over the oversized chairs and hammocks on that first visit and I was hopeful that there would be more of a chance to get some photos without too many people in the way this early in the morning.

Generally grey weather along with dull-looking and patchy grass didn’t exactly come together to make this lawned part of the ship seem very appealing. In my opinion – the only one that counts – it’s an odd thing to have on a cruise ship anyway. I like getting away from the things I have at home when I’m travelling abroad. If I’d wanted to spend time sitting on grass then I have plenty of cheaper ways to do that which don’t use up any of my annual holiday allowance either, the most obvious one of which would be to climb over the wall next door when our neighbour goes out. There was also the problem of smoking as I saw some people with cigarettes in the vicinity and the thought that a potential picnic spot might be subject to the smell of cigarettes wafting through depending on the wind direction really drove a stake through the heart of this place.

The only other area on the top deck was the Sky Observation Lounge, scene of the previous day’s trivia victory, and scene of the day before that’s utter appalling demonstration of how to run a bar. We did try our hand at another trivia challenge on this day’s cruise back towards Southampton; we were hopeless on that one.

I headed down the stairs by the atrium in order to explore the inside of the ship. This naturally presented plenty of views of the various lounges off the open area in which people could find a seat and read quietly while contemplating the reasoning behind displaying an imprisoned tree in the centre.

Deck five, aft brought me to part of the ship allocated to speciality dining venues. Blu, Qsine, and Tuscan Grille were all in this area, the former restaurant being reserved for Aqua class guests and probably only serving things like scented water and kale smoothies and photos of bread if my prejudices against healthy eating are any guide. We knew a couple who dined in the Tuscan Grille and who found it… not very special. It had all seemed a little too much like a high street Italian chain so we’d passed on that when doing our pre-cruise research, and Qsine was junked for the reason that it seemed very much like style over substance.

“There are animations on the table and then your food arrives!”
“Cool. And how was the food?”
“It came when the animation ended!”
“Nice. But in terms of quality and taste, how was it?”
“Animation!”

We did, however, book a meal at Murano for this final evening on the ship and that will be covered in a later post.

Down another deck and the majority of interesting places – as if you couldn’t guess – were those that dispensed alcohol. With it being early in the morning and all the bars here closed it was actually possible to see them without trying to mentally remove the horde of passengers who had previously obscured all the views. Celebrity certainly do a good job when it comes to designing spaces. They just need a consultant to come in and work with them on functionality at some point. I am available at a very reasonable rate.

The final thing I want to show off a little from Celebrity Silhouette is the artwork that was dotted around. Outside the art gallery on a Princess ship you only really see paintings on each staircase landing and a couple of sculptures here and there. Celebrity have a far more chaotic approach. I’ve got a feeling that the group we toured Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum with back in May of 2018 on Sapphire Princess wouldn’t be too keen on Celebrity Silhouette’s design choices but we liked them a lot. Sculptures of different styles, artwork in a variety of media, classical pieces, ultra modern. It’s a similar sort of approach to their seating in some of the lounge areas where whoever was in charge of procurement thought “I can’t choose between all these options in the brochure so just get me one of everything.”

With Park West being the resident art franchise aboard the ship it was easy to see which pieces had come from their collections. We don’t buy from them any longer – not since The Incident We Only Ever Hint At – but we did like the Romero Britto sculptures on display.

There will be two more posts in this travel portfolio to wrap up this short cruise. In the next piece I’ll cover departure from Amsterdam past the Viking Jupiter that had docked alongside us and our slow trek along the North Sea Canal and through the locks at IJmuiden. The final post will cover the lovely evening meal at Murano, the fabulous entertainment in the Ensemble Lounge, and way, way, way too much to drink.

This was our first time in Silhouette’s buffet area, The Oceanview Café, as we’re not the sort of people who head directly for that sort of venue on a cruise ship when we board and we’d had no need of its services until this point. We know that some people see that the food in buffets is included in the price of the cruise, worry that everyone else will eat it all before they do, and make it their goal to stake out spots in the restaurant for much of the duration of the cruise. We were on a cruise once when we spotted the same woman sitting at the same table every time we popped into the buffet so we started coming up with excuses to pass through the location at odd times of the day to see if she was still there and came to the conclusion she’d eaten herself into a coma at some point early on and the staff had been too polite to move her on.

Anyway, the Oceanview Café was very nice. Large, open, great variety of food in sensibly-arranged food stations, excellent coffee facilities, including real cream to add to it. And proper crockery, Princess, hint, hint. And hash browns. My wife loves them. They had them. Every day, Princess, hint, hint. She was happy about that and I was happy that she was happy. Food quality, though… ah. I skipped a few items I’d originally angled towards when I saw the state of them. Fried eggs, for instance. I know that Americans have that thing where they ask for fried eggs “Sunny side up” or “Over easy” and so on whereas I tend to just like them “Cooked” but I’m not sure why the default preparation for fried eggs on Celebrity Silhouette appeared to be “Compact and grey, like those aliens that probed me”. With no seats anywhere to be seen indoors we headed outside into the sharp wind and faint smell of cigarettes from somewhere to wolf down the breakfast then grabbed coffees and made our way across to the Sky Lounge.

Morning Trivia

There was method in our madness of braving the open deck even more to make our way from the buffet to the observation lounge at the front of the ship. We’d taken a look at the things taking place on the ship during the morning’s approach to Amsterdam and ruled out the port seminar (we’d been to the Dutch capital before and didn’t think we’d learn a whole lot of relevant information) and the various art events taking place (hosted by Park West Gallery and, well, we’ve had a falling out with them which involved so much drama it belongs in an episode of a soap opera and not on this site, but I’ll probably write up about it one day) and the dancing (just, no). But there was trivia taking place and we like a good quiz.

The Sky Lounge was fairly quiet when we got there but people drifted in slowly as the time for the quiz approached, with some seemingly quite fascinated by the skyline we were slowly cruising towards; IJmuiden makes for a wonderfully dystopic sight and if there’s one thing better than cruising to beautiful destinations it’s cruising to places that make you reminisce about all those cheesy VHS tapes your dad used to rent in the 1980s about biker gangs patrolling the landscape of a world where everything except motorcycle repair shops has been destroyed.

A bit of inspired guessing and a smidge of dragging some answer out of some dusty memory hole and just a soupçon of all the really smart people probably nursing hangovers and not turning up saw us achieve a comfortable victory for which we received trivia prizes from across the other side of the world. Exotic!

We passed through the indoor pool area, snapped a couple of photos, and headed off back to our room to watch the rest of the approach to Amsterdam.

Approaching Amsterdam

We were on the starboard side of Celebrity Silhouette, the same side of the ship we’d been on when we’d previously cruised to Amsterdam aboard P&O’s Azura in 2017, our preferred side of ships for reasons of tradition and helping someone’s wife not get lost, and, subsequently, we got to see many of the same things on the approach to Amsterdam as we’d seen then. Not that this stopped me taking photos, of course, but I may have taken fewer than usual.

I’m fond of architecture when we travel and I’ve got an appreciation that spans all of history with ancient styles and absolutely modern designs both finding equal favour. One of the most prominent buildings along the southern side of the North Sea Canal on the outskirts of Amsterdam was the Pontsteiger building. The area around this impressive-looking structure was formerly a port where cargo ships would unload timber but is now undergoing renovation. The suspended bridge section of the Pontsteiger reminded us of a building we’d seen in Beijing on our very first cruise but it also reminded me of the shapes I used to make with Rubik’s Snake and I’d like to think that the architect did the same thing and was duly inspired.

The Pontsteiger pretty much marked where the industrial outskirts of Amsterdam were giving way to the commercial and residential areas of the capital. We knew we were very close when we started spotting some of the outermost of the city’s famous canals which, if you look at a map, spread out like ripples as if the central train station had been dropped from a great height onto the edge of the IJ and water had rushed in to fill the trenches. The Dutch are crazy. I would not rule that out as their construction technique.

If you’re on a cruise coming into Amsterdam then the Centraal train station is the final big landmark before you reach the cruise terminal and docking area for ships. Riverboats, though, have a far larger set of jetties and surface area in which they can tie up and allow their passengers ashore on a desperate hunt for beer cheese and this is handy as an awful lot of riverboats visit Amsterdam. Or they did this day. It’s interesting looking at the boats tied up alongside one another forcing passengers to go through (or over; who knows?) a vessel owned and operated by another company entirely. This has got to present some potentially worrying situations late at night if you’re returning to your boat in slightly inebriated fashion (the best way) but your boat is behind another one so you’ve got to remember not just what boat you sailed into this strange city on but also what the boat nearest the dock looked like or was called. “Is this one ours? No, I don’t think ours had a statue of a bear throwing a trident at a dolphin in the central area so let’s carry on. I don’t think this one is ours either as I’m sure our riverboat was built after the fall of the Soviet Union. Has to be the next one. No, this is definitely not ours but it looks a lot nicer than our one. I wonder if we can transfer. Well, this is a problem because there’s only open river beyond this.”

The river cruising bug hasn’t bitten us yet. The river cruising bug hasn’t even shown an interest in landing on an exposed bit of flesh. Perhaps because we’ve grown up beside the sea in a historical, naval port we naturally secrete a pheromone that wards off river cruising bugs.

Holland America Lines Nieuw Statendam

We had one last sight to see as Celebrity Silhouette finally approached the cruise terminal in Amsterdam: already alongside in the city was the newest Holland America Line cruise ship, Nieuw Statendam. We’ve always liked the look of the HAL ships and have read favourable reviews and comparisons with our preferred cruise line, Princess, in terms of itineraries and service but we’ve always worried that we wouldn’t be able to pronounce their ship names and we’d be looked down upon by the staff on board.

It was great to slowly pass so close to the other ship, to marvel at the precision piloting of the vessel, to be mesmerised by the reflection of the Celebrity Silhouette in the glass balconies and cabin doors of Nieuw Statendam, and to fervently hope to catch someone doing something they shouldn’t be doing in one of the rooms we were gliding by. Recording a video walkthrough of their cabin in portrait mode, for instance.

A lovely bit of parking (I think that’s the correct term) then took place as we passed the aft of the HAL vessel and manoeuvred into position at Amsterdam’s cruise dock. The gap between the two ships looked very small indeed from our vantage point on our balcony but I know that the brain’s ability to judge sizes at distance and from unusual perspectives is quite poor and while we drew in deep breaths and made oohing noises (not caught on video) there was no real danger of the two ships colliding with easily ten, maybe even twelve, centimetres separating us.

We got our bags ready and read for a bit while we waited for immigration to clear the vessel to disembark. We hadn’t arranged an excursion in Amsterdam because we were confident enough in our own ability to find things of interest and we had a skeleton of a plan for the day all worked out anyway. That will be covered in the next post in this series covering our taster cruise with Celebrity Cruises on Celebrity Silhouette.

Embarkation

Embarkation took place at Southampton’s City Cruise Terminal, the first time we’d boarded any ship from that particular terminal in the city. As we were in Concierge Class for this cruise we simply followed the signs that indicated where we needed to go and thanks to some spectacular timing we almost never had to stop walking for a moment from the second we entered the terminal until we got to the desk to pick up our cruise cards. We had one brief pause to pick up a Concierge Class welcome pack and meet our concierge host but otherwise it was almost as if we were the first people there as far as anyone queueing ahead of us was concerned. Our timing luck continued as we were directed to a waiting lounge until it was time to board and just as we set foot inside they announced that everyone there could make their way onto the ship. It’s like they were waiting for us. So far everything was looking very good for our first experience with Celebrity Cruises.

We were quite impressed with the cruise card scanning stations at the embarkation point on the ship especially when comparing our experiences on the P&O and Princess ships that we’d mainly cruised with to this point. Our run of luck, however, came to an end as we failed to realise why people ahead of us were ignoring one of the stations and managed to therefore pick the only queue in which people weren’t handed a welcome glass of fizz. Everyone else seemed to be getting one but while there was a tray next to our station there was nobody present to hand out any glasses so we missed out. Disappointing, obviously, what with us being lushes, but not the biggest problem in the world.

A member of staff asked us if we’d like to buy the drinks package. We declined.

The scene that then greeted us was not encouraging. The corridors and public spaces that we found ourselves in were rammed with people, most of whom – like us – had carry-on luggage with them. We scooted around and through the throng and headed in the direction of the elevators. It was puzzling to us why everyone was just congregating in these particular areas rather than heading off and exploring. That would become evident after we’d given up trying to get an elevator and taken the stairs up to our floor instead with only a few breaks to pretend to admire the artwork while catching our breaths. We finally realised that all the cabins were closed off. That explained everyone with bags. It didn’t explain everyone with bags blocking up the corridors just inside the entrance to the ship; that’s explained by people just being inconsiderate. It may be the normal process on Celebrity Cruises and other cruise lines too but our experiences to date had not prepared us for the possibility that passengers would be allowed to embark hours before their rooms were ready and that you wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them until that point. We now found ourselves in a similar situation to many other people onboard in that we didn’t really want to go exploring while wheeling our cases around everywhere plus all the good loitering-in-the-way-of-people-embarking spaces had been taken. Figuring that they couldn’t possibly let us on the ship too much before the rooms were ready and that if they were clearing rooms deck-by-deck there was a good chance with us being in Concierge Class (and therefore better than everyone else not in a suite) that we’d be among the first rooms done we parked our bums in the library.

So much for that piece of figuring from us. We waited. And waited. Someone came around asking us if we wanted to buy the drinks package. We declined. And waited. An announcement was made that the rooms were still unavailable and that the next announcement would be to tell us the rooms were ready and that we should feel free to visit the lounges and bars in the meantime. This announcement was repeated several more times over the next 90 minutes making a lie of every previous iteration of the announcement. This didn’t encourage us to believe anything we heard from there on. The views from the library area looking up and down into the atrium were pleasant but our general conversation as we continued to wait was along the lines of regretting either arriving early or not just dumping everything into a larger case and checking it in. Hindsight, eh?

Concierge Class Welcome Aboard Lunch

One of the perks with the Concierge Class was an embarkation day lunch in the main dining room. To be honest we weren’t particularly hungry but I was keen to at least experience it because I write up about these things. You probably didn’t know that. But I didn’t really want to experience lunch while still trundling luggage around. The problem was that with only fifteen minutes left for the lunch there was still no sign that the rooms were going to be ready so we reluctantly made our way to the dining room anyway. We weren’t sure what would happen with our bags until we saw that plenty of other people were in the same boat (metaphorically; I’m aware that Celebrity Silhouette is a ship) and that an area had been set aside for us to leave them. We were then directed to a table set for twelve. We admired the surroundings, perused our menu, placed our order, and listened to the general small talk around us without really engaging in any ourselves as we weren’t exactly in the right frame of mind at this point.

The waiter came around and asked us if we wanted to buy the drinks package. We declined. I ordered the butternut squash soup for starters while my wife went for the salad. The soup had plenty of flavour but was on the cooler side of tepid. I wasn’t the only person to observe this temperature problem on the table. For my entrée I chose the broiled salmon. The salmon was okay but the mashed potato it came with tasted about as appetising as it looks in the photo below. I am, however, half-Irish and forbidden by heredity from not eating any potato-based food and cleared my plate swiftly as a result. My wife ordered the chicken and also received the salmon because the waiter hadn’t paid attention. As the announcement had just been made at this point that the rooms were finally ready we elected to not alert the waiter to this, try to finish the meal as quickly as possible, and get rid of our bags. The chocolate cake for dessert was very nice. See: not all doom and gloom.

Concierge Class Balcony Room

We’d been assigned room 1074 on Celebrity Silhouette, the result of a minimum bid for an upgrade from the original balcony room we’d paid for. This resulted in us effectively moving up a deck and across to the starboard side from our original position and moved us from a standard class of cabin to Concierge Class. The Concierge Class perks of priority embarkation and welcome aboard lunch had already been experienced and this was now our chance to see a couple of other perks that came with that step up: free bags we never use and the Daily Delectable Delights. The free bags we never use are always taken nonetheless. We have a pile of them from various cruise lines at home. We may make cruising-themed clothing from them after the apocalypse so that as we shuffle around the ruined landscape other survivors will be encouraged to come up and ask us if we ever saw dolphins in the ocean before they rose up and overthrew us all. The best thing that can be said about the Daily Delectable Delights is that they were daily.

An obligatory activity when entering your balcony cabin for the first time is to head outside onto the balcony and see what it and the view are like. The balcony depth was very good and the seats were comfortable although because there was no way to move the foot rests under them like you can on a Princess ship they did get in the way a little. I wasn’t too keen on the frosted glass and curved shape and gaps in the balcony dividers. I prefer a little more privacy on the balcony for when the urge to stand outside naked and feel the wind blowing everywhere takes me, as it surely must. There was a very minor obstruction in the shape of the angled beam leading upwards and outwards to support the deck two above us. Very minor and hardly worth mentioning except that we had to wonder what the view from the Aqua Class cabins above us would be seeing. I don’t know but it seems to me that an uninterrupted view of the horizon and even any real ability to see the sky look to be in short supply on the top deck of accommodation. I might be wrong. There’s always a first time.

As for the room itself there were aspects we liked and aspects we didn’t. I’ll start with the things we didn’t like so that I can end on a positive note as I don’t do that nearly enough, and while I’m proud of my reputation as a grumpy bastard I do like to mix things up every now and then and keep both readers of this site on their toes.

We really didn’t think much of the storage space in the room. The wardrobe was small and we missed the availability of drawers either side of the bed. The presence of the cupboards over the bed was a little baffling as we couldn’t think what could sensibly be stored in them without worrying if the doors would open sending everything inside onto your head in the middle of the night on a choppy sea. And you’d pretty much have to stand on the beds to use them anyway which my parents told me never to do. We didn’t think much of the On Demand offerings on TV either; very limited selection and quite a few movies you’d have to pay for with many of them being films we’d seen on planes or on Princess cruises for free.

The way the door opened out from the room was odd. That’s obviously something you get used to but we always had this fear that someone would knock or the people in the next cabin would be leaving and we’d open the door and hit them. Fear, or hope. I can’t remember how many times we pulled the door trying to leave or pushed the door trying to return. There was a similar familiarity issue with the balcony door and the way the handle had to be lifted up to lock it, this being the opposite way to every other balcony door we’ve had. This led to exchanges such as “I’ll just head out onto the balcony and damnit! Other way! Right, ooh, it’s a bit nippy out here so I’ll just duck back into the room and lock the balcony and damnit! Other way!” Neither of these things were bad; just a little jarring to our expectations and potentially a problem if you take swear jars with you on holiday and consider damnit a swear word. It isn’t, though. It’s not even really a word.

We did like the ability to order room service through the TV (although we didn’t do this). The bathroom in the cabin, though, was the stand out feature as far as we were concerned. Large, light, big shower cubicle with glass doors so you could grimace at your reflection while you scrubbed your nethers, good amenities. We particularly liked the low-level lighting around the counter which meant you didn’t need to switch the main light on if using the toilet while your partner was sleeping. There seemed to be an awful lot of storage space in the bathroom, though, which was confusing as we just don’t have that much stuff we’d like to keep in that room. Perhaps Celebrity are targeting the older demographic with their multitudes of pills trying to fend off nature’s plans for their bodies.

Unfortunately, for reasons unexplored I forgot to take any photos of the bathroom (I’m prepared to blame a subconscious reaction to my wife’s repeated question of “Why are you taking another picture of the toilet seat?” on previous cruises).

Exploring Celebrity Silhouette

So, as mentioned, this was our first time on Celebrity Silhouette and our first time cruising with Celebrity Cruises too. This meant a new class of ship in which to get confused as to the direction of the pointy bit and a new design aesthetic to become accustomed to. With a while to go until the obligatory muster drill we went for an explore around the ship to get our bearings, starting, as we always do on any ship, with the top deck.

The outdoor swimming pools looked very nice and seemed like they would have a decent amount of shelter from breezes while the ship was at sea. We hadn’t packed any swimming costumes for this short trip as early May in northern Europe didn’t seem like swimming weather. Admittedly, Celebrity Silhouette does have an indoor pool too (only for adults) but we weighed up the likelihood of us having a swim against trying to investigate all the bars for research purposes in the limited time aboard and thus nobody got to see me floundering about in my bathers.

We completed a circuit of the top deck. For some reason I always take photos of the area surrounding Southampton port. You would think that there could only be so many times you can gaze out on the nearby car parks and Ikea store and the industrial complexes to the west and think, yeah, this time the photo will be different and I won’t need to take any more after this, and you’re possibly right but I haven’t reached that point yet.

We weren’t the only ship leaving Southampton on that day with the city also playing host to Sapphire Princess as well as P&O‘s ships Azura and Britannia. It was only the latter ship that we’d not cruised on and we have booked a cruise for 2020 that will address that situation.

We’d heard that Celebrity Silhouette had a real lawn area on its top deck and it turned out that we’d not been lied to about this. It didn’t look in the greatest of condition and there were areas that were roped off to stop further damage. I’m not sure how I feel about taking living elements of the land out to sea and I wonder how they feel about this forced relocation away from their natural environment with danger all around too. If we ever find a way to hook speaking machines up to plants we may be able to ask them. Does grass get seasick? Ooh, an exciting Blade Runner sequel from Philip K. Dick in the works.

We made our way back inside for more of a look around now that we didn’t have to worry about running our luggage into other passengers’ legs or creating a trip hazard during one of my inevitable dozen or more photos of almost the same thing. Heading down the atrium stairs took us past the Library, the Hideaway, and the iLounge (which, as you can guess from the name, was horribly geared towards overpriced Apple crap). The Hideaway seemed to be the sort of place we’d like as it had lots of quirky-looking seating options including those spherical chairs that looked like they’d been rescued from a long-cancelled late-60s/early-70s sci-fi show. My wife has always had a thing for those chairs, dropping hints about us needing to get one, remarking just how comfortable they’d be, how ideal for snuggling in and reading her Kindle. I’ve always liked them too but have refused to allow them into the house as thanks to our narrow doorway and hall we’d need to hire a team to remove a few walls first and I love my wife and would not want her to go without but, you know, walls cost money.

We tried the chairs and they were too low plus we’re not as flexible as we’re sure we must have been at some point so we looked like tortoises that had been flipped onto their shells trying to escape into an upright position and as a result my wife has decided she’s fine with the sofa we have.

We normally like to have an early drink once we’re aboard a ship primarily so we can post it on social media and remind people who aren’t on cruises that we’re better than them but we decided to wait a while during our initial exploration of Celebrity Silhouette. And by “decided to” I mean “came to the realisation that we were going to have to” because several attempts to find a bar or lounge with any indication that it might be possible to get a drink proved fruitless. We did bump into one member of staff who wanted to know if we wanted to buy the drinks package. We declined. Our first few hours on this ship were not persuading us that the Celebrity experience was all it was cracked up to be. Still, there was no getting around the fact that she was a good-looking vessel so we made do with slowly wandering between venues on the lower decks and edging towards our muster station as that time was approaching.

The variety of dining venues was good at first glance. We’d pre-booked a meal in one of the speciality dining locations for the last night of this cruise which will be covered in a later post.

There was a lot of artwork around the ship which we appreciated and I particularly liked the digital bird cages for the obvious reasons that they invoked the themes of technology and the descendants of the dinosaurs, both of which were things I used to think about a lot when growing up.

Quasar was a very funky-looking place indeed. The cool blue lighting, variety (if not quantity) of seating, the shapes and textures all combined to form something very appealing aesthetically. Everything except the location, that is. It looked like it was a nightclub but because it wasn’t closed off in any way from the area around it there was something puzzling about its functionality. We vowed to return late at night to see how the venue was used. Sadly, we vow a lot of things and never carry through with them and this was one of those occasions.

Celebrity Silhouette Muster

Our muster station was in Celebrity Central, a smallish room with comfy seats, a projector screen, some TVs, and a little stage area. Other than mustering we didn’t head in here again but I gather it showed films. There was no need to bring life jackets which is a good thing (I can only speak for the muster; it may have been mandatory for movies). The mustering attendance was checked off on a sheet of paper which is a medieval thing. Unlike other musters we’ve been to on other ships there was no direction for seating once we got into the lounge so people – not us, of course – plonked themselves down at ends of aisles rather than moving along or they left single-person gaps in rows because Oh Dear God You Cannot Possibly Sit Next To A Stranger Because That’s How Babies Are Made. The result of this was lots of “Excuse me” mutterings and “Can I just get past?” requests and “There’s one space for you on that side of the room next to that couple who don’t have any basic common sense and I’ll scramble into the middle of this row of inconsiderate people who couldn’t bear to all shift up just one more place” passive aggressive statements. I got to feel hatred towards my fellow humans which, as a misanthrope, warmed me greatly.

The muster took the form of a short espionage action movie set on a cruise ship which was clever, different, reasonably entertaining, and just needed to be about one fifth that length for future cuts, thank you very much Celebrity. Says the man who writes essays when paragraphs will do.

First Drinks On Celebrity Silhouette

No alcohol before a muster? Who ever heard of such a monstrous thing? With the muster over we headed quickly for the drinking venues on board in order to see if we could find one with a seat and someone who might want to serve us something. We were not the first people to think this so we were completely out of luck until we hit the wine cellar. An actual member of staff present and seats meant our first proper drink aboard Celebrity Silhouette was a glass of wine. We were asked if we wanted to buy the drinks package. We declined. The wine was okay. It wasn’t great. Nobody has yet been able to match P&O for wine quality in our experience but we will persevere in trying to find that cruise line who does or die trying, happily.

Free Fizz And Sailaway

Celebrity Silhouette was moving by this time and we decided after our glass to wine to return to our room and watch the proceedings from the balcony. A lot of people like to head up on top of the ship and join in with a sailaway party but even if we didn’t hate those things with a passion anyway we’d already discovered that there didn’t appear to be any smoke-free places outside on the ship and being close to smokers makes us stabby. It’s entirely possible there are smoke-free places outside on a Celebrity ship but the amount of time we’d be spending outside on this cruise would be so minimal we couldn’t be bothered finding out.

So, to the room and a quick call to our cabin steward because there was another Concierge Class perk we were interested in taking advantage of: the free bottle of fizz. This was promptly delivered in an ice-filled bucket. A pair of champagne glasses would have been nice too but there was only one in our room and the steward had left by the time we realised this so we grabbed the tumblers from the bathroom instead. Pure class.

I opened the bottle and about a third of it exploded over the balcony leading us to assume without any evidence to back it up at all that our steward had shaken it all vigorously before delivering it as punishment for some slight. Two thirds of a bottle of actually not bad champagne substitute was then consumed as we watched the very familiar sights of the world off the Hampshire coast pass us by.

First Night Food And Drink

Which brings us to the evening and night of our first day aboard Celebrity Silhouette, one mostly geared around food and drink. I’ll start with food.

We much prefer flexible dining but there was not that option on this cruise so as we are wonderfully European we had chosen the late sitting. Early sitting is for losers. You know it. I know it. I said it. We headed to the main dining room a couple of minutes ahead of the appropriate time and I think we got within about twenty metres of the doors before the crowd of people stopped any further progress. We were packed like sardines for several minutes before there was any movement. We didn’t think this was very good. We were led to our table, a table for six in the far right corner of the room, and with a sea view. We did think this was very good.

The dining room started to fill up around us but for a long time it looked like we had the table to ourselves. Then I saw the waiter leading a couple over. They looked in their mid-forties. They looked happy. They looked like they were making far more of an effort than we were. They looked utterly crestfallen when they realised they weren’t getting a table for two and that they’d be sharing with us. Totally understandable. It turned out that he had many cruises under his belt but that his new girlfriend was a cruising virgin. He’d wanted to impress her and now he had us to explain. I pointed out that they’d get a few more chances to enjoy the dining experience on their own as we wouldn’t be eating there on either of the following two nights, with plans to eat ashore on the Sunday and a booking in one of the speciality venues the day after. That seemed to cheer them up although I also pointed out that whoever the other two people who should have been on our table that night were might be making an appearance on both the following days instead. I consider it my duty to not have people thinking too positively about any situation. It’s just better that way.

The menu appeared and our waiter asked if we wanted to order a drink then, when he realised we didn’t have one, if we wanted to buy the drinks package. We declined.

We struggled with finding food we actually wanted because nearly everything had something in it that one of us didn’t like. For starters I risked the French onion soup while my wife had the beef ragout. Mains for me was the fried Masala potatoes while my wife went super safe with fish and chips.

Now, it’s true that our unwilling partners on our dinner table were a little slow eating their dinner but a lot of that was because they talked a lot. That’s good. That’s fine. That didn’t bother us at all. That’s part of the shared dining experience on a cruise ship. I know we generally hate people but we don’t mind that unless they’re bigots. Which has happened. More than once. Anyway, we were happy to wait as they edged closer and closer to clearing their dinner plates. Someone with slightly less patience than us, though, was our waiter who took mine and my wife’s plates away and handed us the dessert menu before the other couple had finished the main course. When she finished before him the waiter reappeared to take her plate and the dessert orders and the man in that couple had to order while looking at the menu as he finished the last spoonful on his plate whereupon it was taken away too. To our cruising virgin we explained this wasn’t normal etiquette in a dining room but as we were all on a Celebrity ship for the first time I’m only guessing that that’s accurate.

Dessert for us was chocolate lava cake.

We waited again for our slow-paced partners to finish as politeness dictates. I was about to remark that the food had been average at best when the other man on the table mentioned that his apple pie was the hottest thing he’d eaten that night. It transpired, from a little discussion thereafter, that of the four of us there only my food had apparently been served at a decent temperature. Everyone else – my wife included – found their courses warm at best.

Our experience, therefore, of the food on Celebrity Silhouette, following a lunch and a dinner on this cruise embarkation day, was that it was very poor. Experienced Celebrity cruisers had told us prior to this trip that the food was excellent. Those people all made the list.

The rest of the evening was one of lounge-hopping in search of drinks and to get a feel for where we might like to call our place on the ship. You need an our place; that’s the lounge or bar you feel most comfortable in, the one where on a longer cruise you hope to get to know some of the staff and get some preferential treatment.

First up was the Martini Bar where we spotted a couple about to leave their seats at the bar and swooped in like people who’d only just that second before been remarking just what a dreadful lack of seating there was anywhere near the crowded location. My similes need work.

Sitting at the bar gave us an appreciation of the drinks-making skill of the bartenders aboard Celebrity Silhouette as they expertly took multiple orders at a time from whomever managed to get in their eyeline (we even managed it once), didn’t appear to get any drinks wrong, and got the drinks made quickly. The people skills of the bartenders was just about as low as it’s possible to get for someone in the service industry (and I think we all know that’s low) but having watched them for a while as we sipped at our drinks we recognised there was simply no break for any of them; relentlessly taking orders, making drinks, taking orders, making drinks. The range and quality of drinks was excellent but the growing fear that one of the members of staff would snap and reach for an ice-pick from under the bar’s frozen surface and go on a rampage drove us off in search of another venue.

The World Class Bar was somewhere we discovered it was always possible to get drinks easily when it was open. The reason for this was because it was a little out of the way from the other evening venues, tucked away near the high-end shops and overlooking the not-so-high-end shops, and, subsequently, completely devoid of any atmosphere. Or, devoid of an atmosphere that appealed to us. Perhaps you’re different. Perhaps you’ve always longed for a bar in a corridor next to shops selling watches for significant fractions of the cost of your home while caressing an alcoholic beverage all under an ambient yellow glow that in many cultures is associated with sickly death. If that’s the case then this is your place.

Yes, I’ve mocked the place but the drinks here were very good, really quite different, and because it was mostly empty it was fabulously easy to get served.

However, our place ended up being the Ensemble Lounge. We kinda thought it might even before we’d set foot on the ship because we’d watched videos to acquaint ourselves with the vessel (we do that, you know) and both made appreciative oohing noises when we saw the cosy, velvety, luxurious-looking location.

A bigger drinks menu for the venue would have been nice. Drinks prices for all the spirits would have been nice. Staff who engaged with the passengers would have been nice. Actually, on that last point things were decidedly different on the last night of this cruise but you’ll have to wait until I get to that post. And the last night of the cruise also showed us that the Ensemble Lounge was host to some cracking entertainment too. This first night, not so much, but we got a generally good vibe from the place and the soft seating and knew we’d be back.

One final location we visited on our first night on Celebrity Silhouette was the Sky Observation Lounge. We’d completely forgotten that we had vowed to return to Quasar and guessed – probably incorrectly – that this was the closest thing to our must-visit place late at night on a Princess ship, Skywalkers.

I think we were there ten minutes with no indication we’d ever get served a drink so we gave up and left and went to soak up those jaundiced rays in the World Class Bar with a nightcap instead.

In the next post I’ll cover the following morning’s approach to Amsterdam along with details about breakfast and trivia. After that will come what we got up to in Amsterdam. May include naughtiness. Then it’s the voyage home, our speciality dining in the Murano restaurant, the sudden shipwide personality change, and The Terrifying Memory-Loss Incident.