We’d never cruised with Celebrity Cruises before so this 3-nighter round-trip from Southampton with an overnight in Amsterdam that was offered at a good price and that wouldn’t use up any of our annual holiday allowance seemed ideal. On top of that we’d heard good things about Celebrity. Things like “They’re a bit like Princess” or “Beautiful ships, great food.” And, finally, my wife’s cousin swears by them as the cruise line to go with. Expectations were high.

Things We Liked About Celebrity Silhouette

There’s no denying Celebrity Silhouette is a good-looking ship. Plenty of artwork – some conventional, some more modern and quirky – dotted around the vessel; the ship-high central atrium with glass elevators off it and a tree growing in the middle was spectacularly attractive; everything was very clean.

The variety of drinks venues was good… in principle (more on that later). We liked the dark, intimate Ensemble Lounge. We liked the contrast between that and the harsh, modern World Class Bar. We liked the look and feel of the wine cellar. We liked the contrast again with the cold Martini bar. The range of alcohol was also excellent but only once you worked out what that range was. Again, more on that later.

Bathrooms and public toilets were fabulous. Clean, bright, spacious, well laid-out. We loved the subtle downlighting in our cabin’s bathroom which meant we didn’t have to switch the light on if using it at night. We loved the flannels for drying hands in the public toilets aboard.

The buffet area, Oceanview Café, was really nicely arranged and with a very large variety of food on offer. My wife was stupidly pleased at being able to get hash browns every morning for breakfast. Even better – and not something we’ve ever really been bothered about on other ships – was having proper plates and glasses. Quite amazing what a difference that made, how much more upmarket it felt. Certainly something Princess should look into.

The coffee machines in the buffet area and elsewhere around Celebrity Silhouette were excellent. Good quality coffee, convenient, surprisingly usefully-placed. We really liked having actual cream for the coffee too.

Being able to order room service on the TV for free (although we didn’t) looked great.

Things We Didn’t Like About Celebrity Silhouette

The embarkation process was painless. Getting into our room was a pain. We’d initially thought that starting embarkation at 10:30 (when we’re used to early afternoon on Princess) would be awesome, especially with us being Concierge Class and having priority embarkation anyway. The reality was discovering we had to trundle our carry-on cases with us everywhere until all the rooms were ready and passengers were allowed to get to them. That was over two hours after we boarded. Why weren’t the decks open as each one was complete rather than waiting for all of them to be done? Why wasn’t there priority preparation on the Concierge and Aqua Class decks? There’s nothing relaxing about having to look after two small cases in more compact conditions than usual (because everyone was in the same boat luggage-wise and all the room corridors were closed off).

With the exception of the Martini bar and wine cellar, the menus in the drinks venues were poor with both a microscopic selection of speciality drinks and nothing at all about everything else on offer. Take the Ensemble Lounge, for instance: four cocktails listed with the rest of the pages being wine or beers. As it turned out there was a dazzling array of drinks available there and you could easily order off-menu but you needed to know this (we didn’t until the last night) and look for yourself to see what they had then hazard a guess as to what price you might be paying.

Drinks were very expensive. We didn’t get a drinks package (despite the half dozen attempts to get us to do so in the first two hours aboard) because we know they’re almost never worth it despite the amount we drink (and we’d be spending most of the day in Amsterdam off the ship). From talking to other people we realised that an awful lot of drinks seemed to be priced just above the threshold for the packages too so that an additional charge often had to be made. There were grumblings on the ship about this.

There wasn’t enough seating near the Martini Bar. It was the most popular bar by far and it had large areas of space around it that really could have benefitted from some standing tables with stools, for instance. Because of this lack of seating a lot of people were hanging around the bar itself making it near impossible to get served (more on that in a moment).

The On-Demand TV service on Celebrity Silhouette wasn’t particularly good. The number of movies was quite small and the ones you had to pay for, in many cases, were movies we’d seen for free on Princess ships or on flights in the last six months. It’s not a major thing, especially on a small cruise like this was, but on longer duration trips it’s sometimes nice to have a cabin day.

Food quality was average at best. We’d heard good things about the food on Celebrity ships but our experience on this taster cruise didn’t match the expectation. We had the wrong food delivered once (that’s the waiter’s fault) but the food in the main dining room both for our “Exclusive Concierge Class Lunch” and the first evening (the only time we dined there) was okay taste-wise but definitely on the colder side of tepid and that had to be a general dining layout/management issue. The other people we were dining with said the same thing. While we liked the variety of food available in the buffet we certainly avoided a lot of it as it didn’t look particularly appetising (fried eggs, for instance, looked grim). We had speciality dining in the Murano restaurant on the last night which was far tastier, served by friendly staff, and the sort of thing we’d generally been expecting but even there the meat we’d ordered was more well-done than we’d requested.

We like to identify where the smokers go so we can avoid it. On Celebrity Silhouette we couldn’t work that out. As far as we could tell everywhere on the top deck seemed to be fair game for the smokers, of which there were loads, which made being outside somewhat unpleasant.

The One Thing We Hated About Celebrity Silhouette

The service was utterly abysmal aboard this ship. We are used to finding a bar or lounge, grabbing a seat, then waiting for one of the staff to come to us and take our order. I know that some people like to sit at the bar and order there but we’re not those people. What we very quickly discovered was that there were so few staff actually taking table orders in the various venues around the ship that going to the bar was the only option if you didn’t want to expire through dehydration. And at the bars, of course, it was rammed because everyone wanted a drink and nobody wanted to move away when they got one because there was nowhere to sit. With places like the Passport and Martini bars having central bar areas open on all sides there was also nothing even resembling a queue to order drinks or make it easy for the staff to spot who had been waiting ages while the pushy and/or beautiful people had somehow managed to be served twice. On three occasions we had to leave the bar we’d wanted to drink in because we simply couldn’t get served.

It wasn’t just us feeling this way.

The attitude of the staff in the bars was equally bad. Perfunctory order-taking, drinks-making, bill-producing was the standard for most of the cruise. I have nothing but admiration for the quality of drinks produced and our drinks orders were right every time but there were no smiles, no banter, quite often not a single word at all. We know why, of course. Because they never seemed to get a break. There was nothing but constant drinks-making because they had no service staff working the tables. It almost never felt welcoming.

Would We Choose To Cruise With Celebrity Again?

This was a 3-nighter taster cruise. We had made allowances for the passengers cruising with us; we knew they’d be more boisterous, more Brit-heavy than on a conventional cruise. Other than breathing in smoke too many times from some of the filthier animals on board we had no problems with our fellow cruisers. But we couldn’t overlook the issues we were seeing. Of the things we liked on Silhouette there was nothing there that factors in to us choosing a cruise line and ship. The important things for us are destination, price, food and drink, and service, and on those last points Celebrity Cruises were a huge disappointment and we’d already decided before we’d left Amsterdam that it was probably the worst cruise we’d been on and it would have to take something really special for us to consider cruising with them again…

… and then a miracle occurred.

On our final day as we cruised for home we’d spent some time wandering around, taking photos, enjoying going through the locks at IJmuiden, generally relaxing. We’d tried without much success to get a drink or two but places that said they were open weren’t and places that were open were painful. All the usual stuff. And then the clock got to around six in the evening. We had a booking at the Murano restaurant so we went to get a pre-dinner drink at the Ensemble Lounge and just went straight to the bar because we figured there’d be no point grabbing a seat. And the barman smiled as we decided to go for a bourbon each. And he poured the single measures. And then he free-poured some more. “Nobody saw,” he said. Now this was more like it.

After our enjoyable and mostly good dinner we returned to the lounge, sat down, and a steward appeared who we’d not seen before and took our order. And did it again. And again. And again. We were suddenly getting friendly, prompt service. We were often getting measures far larger than we’d been asking or paying for. This was great. We listened to the jazz duo for their entire set and they came across to talk afterwards. Wonderful. I mean, it’s the sort of thing we’d hoped and expected would be the norm from the start based on our experiences aboard other cruise ships but it was wonderful compared to the previous few days aboard this one.

So giddy with joy and alcohol by this experience were we that we ventured up to the Sky lounge where we’d previously had to abort any attempt to get a drink, only to find it both filled with happy, dancing people but also still suddenly possible to get served. We drank more, we danced (which typically follows the drinking more), we got talking to a Brazilian couple celebrating their wedding anniversary. We have no recollection how we got back to our room or where that huge bruise on my leg came from.

Those last six or seven hours on Celebrity Silhouette went a long, long way to redeeming it in our eyes. The consistency is a concern (I’d love to know exactly why it was so Jekyll and Hyde) but if that last part of the taster cruise is more in keeping with how a Celebrity cruise really is then they’re certainly back in the running for picking cruises in the future.

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.

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.

We didn’t have any excursions booked in Amsterdam as we’d been to the Netherlands on Azura a few years earlier and made great use of a city card to take in a lot of sights and experiences already. But we’re not generally fans of just playing things by ear, especially after a cruise at the end of last year where we did that a little too much and came away feeling we’d spent far too much of our time wandering when we could have been learning, so we did have a rough plan for the day’s activities.

Our day and night in the Dutch capital city was taking place on Liberation Day which meant there was a music festival taking place on the outskirts. We don’t do music festivals at home because they tend to go hand-in-hand with tents and we really don’t do tents. But a free festival in a foreign country is something for the experience checklist so that would be where we would end up and that will be covered in the next post. Ahead of that, though, we had an afternoon and early evening to hit Amsterdam and find some things to interest us. We’d done the canals, numerous museums, and even the zoo on our previous visit but there were always more museums to take a nose at and we had our eyes set on two in particular: something sexy and something violent.

Dam Square

Finding your way around Amsterdam is very easy as the city is effectively a series of concentric semi-circular canals centred on the train station with roads that more-or-less run horizontally and vertically through them. I tend to navigate through landmarks after taking a look at a map and planning an approximate route coupled with my pretty decent natural sense of direction. The less said about how my wife navigates, the better. Neither of us really use phones that much; it’s often only brought out to confirm that we’ve not missed what we were roughly aiming for or to confirm that we have and it was ages ago. Our first target was Dam Square, a large, open space at the southern end of the older, central section of Amsterdam and also a mutterance I’m trying to make popular with the kids. “I was hoping my eyebrows was going to be all on fleek but nah, it’s Dam Square.”

Coming out of the cruise terminal we headed right which took us towards the Centraal train station, then followed the main road as it swung left over tram tracks and under a bridge for the trains, then straight over a wide canal before angling right again onto Prins Hendrikkade.

This brought us outside the Basilica of Saint Nicholas and facing the facade of the Centraal train station across the canal.

We then followed Damrak to the south knowing that it would bring us to the square in short order.

The square is a wide open space intersected by many tram lines and with the clear landmarks of Madame Tussaud’s to the south, the National Monument to the west, and the Royal Palace to the east.

The National Monument is a concrete pillar, 22 metres in height, covered in white stone. It was erected as a permanent replacement for a “liberty pole” that had been raised in the same location to celebrate the end of World War II. With this being the weekend of the celebration of the Netherlands’ Liberty Day it was bedecked with wreaths and attracted a large crowd of attendees paying their respects.

One place we really need to put on our list of places to visit for the next time we hit Amsterdam is the Royal Palace. Originally built in the mid-17th century as the town hall it became the palace early in the 19th century at around the end of Napoleon’s reign over that part of Europe and the restoration of the monarchy to the country.

The square was pretty crowded and the largest group we were attracted to seemed to be formed around a small number of people with microphones. Our first guess was that this was something specific to Liberty Day again as we’d heard that there were often talks commemorating the war dead on this day but we soon realised this was another one of those “Watch us do some tricksy dances and jumps then grab some people from around for some audience participation then ask for money” things. We didn’t stay long as it started to rain quite persistently at this point.

“Raining,” I said to my wife, pulling my hoodie up and trying to protect my camera from the worst of the inclement weather. “Dam Square.”

“Nobody is going to start using that phrase,” she replied as we left the location. “Just stop it.”

We headed south along Rokin past an interesting-looking sculpture and didn’t stop until we reached the first of the museums that we were interested in and the one that would satisfy our search for violence in Amsterdam.

The Torture Museum

Amsterdam’s Torture Museum isn’t the first museum dedicated to the history of torture through the ages that we’ve visited. In fact, it’s precisely because we’d found our trip to the Torture Museum in Bruges so interesting that we wanted to compare it with the Dutch take on the same topic. Plus, as anyone who knows me will attest, I’m a dedicated misanthrope and atheist and anything that reinforces my conclusions about the barbarity of humans in general and organised religions in particular is fine by me.

Trying to be very fair here with the torture museum comparisons there are certain things that each country’s exploration of one of the darker chapters of mankind’s search for truth does better than the other. The Belgian museum certainly had the more detailed information so if you really want to learn why torture was used and how it both spread and faded from use then Bruges is where you want to go. On the other hand if you like your experience of torture equipment to be in a narrow, squeaky-floored building with red and blue lighting that plays absolute havoc with your attempts to take any pictures then it’s hard to fault Amsterdam. In each of the museums, though, you’ll look at some of the equipment and the descriptions next to them and you’ll wince and clench your buttocks tightly as you shuffle past so they both do equally well there.

American Beer

We’d chosen to visit the Torture Museum first as it was the farthest point from the cruise ship we’d wanted to reach. Heading back towards the centre of Amsterdam for the second of our museums of the day we stopped en route at the Beer Temple because torture makes you thirsty.

Generally, we favour local ales when we’re travelling but we’d been to Amsterdam before and satisfied that desire so we were more open to alternative drinking establishments. This place, specialising in American craft beer and with 35 on draught plus a couple of hundred others available in cans and bottles, was on the way and an easy side-journey to take.

We parked ourselves at the bar and had a very nice couple of drinks each. The staff were friendly and there was some great music being played. When Joe Walsh’s In The City started up and I nodded appreciatively at the barman, remarking it was the end music to The Warriors, this led to the pair of us re-enacting that scene from the film. As you know, that’s a global law when anyone mentions that movie and I’m no lawbreaker.

The Erotic Museum

The Erotic Museum on Oudezijds Achterburgwal, close to the heart of the city’s red light district, was where we headed next. This naturally took us past Oude Kerk, the presence of which in that part of the city still amuses us.

Set in a typically Dutch, narrow, multistorey building, the ground floor was a shop for any of your erotic needs while a staircase – once you’d paid the entrance fee, of course – led upstairs to the floors housing all sorts of erotic memorabilia in roughly-themed collections. I was quite surprised and very pleased to be told that photography was allowed, something I’d not been expecting. The collections covered such broad areas as erotic sculptures or fertility symbols, pornographic photography, erotic artwork, dolls, movies, bondage, etc. It was a little light on information – you won’t find the reason that people have decided to make salt and pepper shakers in the form of penises, for instance – but there was a large amount to look at – such as salt and pepper shakers in the form of penises, if that’s the sort of thing that interests you – and it was all organised well. The presence of sketches by John Lennon was a welcome addition to what some might see as otherwise frivolous and titillating.

If you’ve reached this part of this post and have been at all shocked at any of the pictures here, blushing brightly and maybe even mouthing “Dam Square” under your breath as you scroll quickly past, then may I humbly recommend you read the title of things you’re looking at on the internet in the future?

Dutch Ales

We’d originally had no firm plans beyond this point of our general idea for how to occupy ourselves during our day in Amsterdam other than head west towards the park where the Liberation Day music festival was taking place and see if there was somewhere to stop for a drink on the way. However, our stop at the Beer Temple had alerted us to another location run by the same group of people called Proeflokaal Arendsnest. Instead of American imports this bar only served Dutch ales, fifty on draught and over a hundred bottled. And it was roughly in the right direction for us too. We headed there, passing the usual array of attractive examples of architecture and very photographable canals in the city.

The bar itself was also attractive but somewhat lacking in seating space for the large number of people present. Obviously, a good sign as to the quality of the ales on offer. There was a nice view out to one of Amsterdam’s canals and some outside seating was available but only those with a nicotine fix to address or who laughed in the face of bitter northerly winds braved them.

In the next post of this series covering our short cruise aboard Celebrity Silhouette to Amsterdam I’ll cover our experience of the Liberation Day music festival and, yes, there may just be a little more drinking involved.

Maybe not. We may not be music festival people but we are experiential people, especially when it’s not a common experience, and for the obvious reason that life is short, nobody really knows what tomorrow will bring, but that the good money is on our species dying off in a failed science attempt to undo the damage to the planet before we reach retirement age. Many people have walked on the Great Wall of China (done it) and many people have seen the Northern Lights (that too) but the number who have experienced both is small as a fraction of the planet’s population. We’ve experienced a lot of things that combine to make our travels unique and this opportunity to attend a music festival in a foreign country is just another one to add to the list. It’s that one-upmanship that everyone who travels shares; we all want to be the ones in conversations to have done the thing or combination of things that nobody else has done, to ignite even a mote of jealousy. Don’t believe any traveller who denies it.

Westerpark

And so to the second part of our day in Amsterdam, the part following on from our successful search for Sex And Violence And Beer. Leaving the bar we headed towards Westerpark, a place you may not be at all surprised to learn is a park to the, er, west of the city, even if you don’t speak any Dutch.

We could hear the music from the very outskirts of the park so the lack of any signs wasn’t a problem at all. A few paths headed in the general direction through the grassy areas and trees and it was an easy enough walk so long as you kept an eye out for cyclists thundering through (well, it is Amsterdam) and obviously drunk or stoned guys swaying and shouting incoherently (well, it is Amsterdam) and veered away from them. We diverted slightly from the most direct route towards the music in order to take a look at a lake in which there was a statue of a headless woman (nope, no idea) and a number of birds present.

Troost Brewery

We’d expected perhaps a little more from what we saw in Westerpark and the music festival area when we entered. There was one stage where music was being performed in front of a small crowd, there was a huge open space of grass, there were some food vans in the distance, there were some buildings to one side, and there was a smaller crowd still in front of that.

On the one hand this was very early evening and the festival was due to continue until late so it might have been too early for most attendees, but on the other hand this was a Sunday so it didn’t seem like there was much else to do. The only thing that we remarked on that might have been having an effect was the wind which had been bad enough when walking in the streets of Amsterdam but out in the exposed park it was decidedly frigid indeed. We ignored the music to start with and walked straight through to the buildings because there was one thing present there that I knew from looking at the map: a brewery.

Brouwerij Troost Westergas, in its own words, “is a brewery, brewpub and shop in one” and a very attractive place indeed. A good range of ales all produced on the site, plenty of seating, food available. Well worth a visit if you’re nearby but worth noting that they only take card payments. We both went for the Brunette ale and it was bloody lovely although we had to sit outside due to the venue’s popularity, some of which may have been due to other people trying to find a way out of the wind.

DJ Stage

The smaller crowd we’d seen upon first entering Westerpark weren’t all just huddled around the brewery; the majority were instead enjoying the sounds booming out of a small stage setup hosting some DJs. Did we know any of the tunes playing? Don’t be so stupid. Did we like it? Actually, yes, because a lot of what we listened to sampled some old school hip-hop and disco and soul tracks which was right up our musical alleys. We didn’t enjoy it quite as much as some people there and when the wind whipped around in a different direction you could get the odd whiff of just why they were having such a good time but, well, it is Amsterdam.

As you can see from the photos and from the video (temporarily removed) there were plenty of coats done up tightly, many instances of gloves being worn, hats and scarfs in abundance. You can’t tell but we were huddled close together and bouncing along with the beat of the music but mostly just to keep warm as we’re not really the dancing types when we’re sober.

I was reluctant to leave the music and the opportunity to take photos of people, something I just don’t do anywhere enough these days, so I persuaded my wife to shift around and closer to the crowd enjoying the DJ to see if we could use them as a form of shelter. It didn’t really work because the wind has scary magical powers that lets it go around individuals who aren’t tightly clumped together so we didn’t stay much longer.

Music Festival Food

We decided to make our way back to the main stage but indirectly, via the food vans we’d seen a little earlier just to see if any of them were producing the right sort of smells that might entice us to part with some Euros. Short answer: no. Longer answer because when have I ever used a short answer on this site when there are sentences and paragraphs just waiting to spill forth from my fingers?: we thought the range of food on offer was pretty decent, covering most tastes and dietary requirements or choices: omnivores and vegans were equally catered for. Given the number of people actually attending the Liberation Day music festival it was probably just the right amount of food offerings too. Simply put, though, we didn’t suddenly turn to one another and say “Ooh, yes! Let’s sit on one of these chairs exposed to the elements while tucking into this fine fare!” and so we walked on by.

Main Stage Music

We reached the main stage area and located a spot at the back of the few-hundred-strong crowd gathered in front of it. We did debate moving in amongst the bodies for more shelter but the choices were either to stand amongst the smokers or the dancers.

Something we’ve found a lot when we’ve travelled in Europe is that smoking seems far more noticeable than back home. I don’t know if Europeans smoke more or if locations abroad that attract tourists just also attract a larger number of smokers through the power of statistical probability, making it more obvious than at home because who in their right mind would visit the crappy sections (that’s most of them) of Portsmouth I find myself in? It’s something we’ve observed less outside Europe, though, but not observed enough to perform any kind of scientific analysis of numbers, nor would we really want to. Maybe we’re all just more stressed here. Perhaps if more of those people travelled abroad they’d have less need to smoke. And they’d want to save their money for travelling. Travel is arguably good for a well-rounded mental state – Mark Twain, of course, famously stated: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime” – but should it be a physical health right too? And should I stop digressing and get back to describing this Liberation Day music festival in Amsterdam?

The smokers wasn’t an option, therefore, and as I’ve already indicated it takes a threshold of alcohol to get us shimmying and shaking so we thought better of mingling with the movers in case our static presences irritated those enjoying themselves. I can care about other people. There’s no need to look so surprised. We slowly edged around the back of the crowd with the intention of cutting our visit to the festival short on account of there being less to see than we’d hoped for and us being too sober to not care about being unable to feel our fingers.

The artists on stage in Westerpark were called Arp Frique And Family. It won’t surprise you to learn that we had not heard of them before but that’s pretty much true for any artist who didn’t have some form of musical success in the twentieth century. But, we quite liked the music. Good mix of African rhythms fused with elements of prog rock to form a genre you can’t find listed as a suggestion on Spotify. And the crowd certainly appreciated what they were listening to with some quite energetic dancing from some members of it near the front of the stage.

The wind was that sort of cold that you think isn’t too bad for a few seconds or a minute but it has the effect of slowly sucking out all your warmth like a sponge so our plan to head “inside, somewhere, anywhere” was still on track, but coming alongside the front of the main stage I realised there was quite a large gap between the dancers and the artists performing. Were the people leaving a respectful distance as part of some unwritten rule of music festivals in the Netherlands? Were they simply not that keen to be looking up so much at Arp Frique or his family because neck health is an important consideration on the continent? Had the bass from the speakers slowly bounced them all away from the stage without their noticing? Whatever the reason, I spied an opportunity to get a lot closer than I’d expected so mouthed to my wife (on account of us being beside the speakers) “I’m just going to get some photos near the stage.” I got a nod that said “Okay” and a tight-lipped smile that said “Be quick. If I freeze to death over here I will come back to life and kill you.”

I was quite surprised to see one of the many clones of Anthony Michael Hall taken during his filming on The Breakfast Club enjoying the music; I had him down as more of a soft rock person.

The sunset was attractive in the western sky beyond Westerpark’s Liberation Day music festival but that signalled a reduction in radiation from our solar system’s star which meant it was getting colder still. Years of marriage have honed my skills and I know the threshold beyond which I cross from irritating my wife to pissing my wife off and this was it so we made our move away from the sounds of Arp Frique and back towards the city.

J.D. William’s Whisky Bar

We could have headed straight to the ship but it felt like a waste of a visit to Amsterdam if we weren’t going to take full advantage of our time in the city. We fancied a drink – don’t feign shock – and had spotted a place that sounded interesting on our earlier walk towards Westerpark so retraced some of that route.

The place we’d spotted was called the J.D. William’s Whisky Bar and in there we dropped. We had a very friendly welcome from the single member of staff we could see working who was helping another group of people to decide what they wanted and indicated he’d be along to help us too, soon. We didn’t need any help but we did need some time to peruse the wall of whiskey (I spell it with an ‘e’) and blackboard listing what was available by type.

We know what we like: Islays. Something with a rich, peaty smell. For me, it’s a memory of trips to Ireland to see family when I was a child and toasting bread over an open peat fire. For my wife, it’s a trip to Scottish islands as a child and similar house-heating methods. The friendly barman could tell we knew our stuff but was happy to chat about options and make recommendations and made small talk as he cleared tables and refreshed drinks in the venue. Whiskey turned up along with water as well as the bottles themselves for those photos for posterity and promotion; a good move from the bar.

The drinks and ambience were fabulous and we stayed for a couple. Let’s be clear, though: come with deep wallets if you’re planning on spending any time here because, like everywhere in the Dutch capital, cheap it ain’t. Still, where else could you find such a wide range of wonderful whiskies? If you do like whiskey and want to try something a little different then this place gets our seal of approval which, while worthless, does give you an excuse and someone to blame if you’re disappointed.

It was dark when we left and we decided that would be the end of our day in Amsterdam. We made our way back to the ship at the cruise terminal where we weren’t at all surprised to see a giant clog but were somewhat perplexed by the Union Jack-decorated cow. Is there a Dutch legend about a British cow swimming to the Netherlands? Let’s just assume so.

That concludes our day in Amsterdam; a day of museums, drinking, music, and occasional periods of not having any sensation in our fingers. In the remaining travel portfolio posts the final day of this short cruise aboard Celebrity Silhouette will be covered, including departure from the Dutch capital, travel along the North Sea Canal and through the locks at IJmuiden, and speciality dining in the Murano restaurant followed by the evening’s entertainment on the ship.

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.

When we’d arrived in Amsterdam the day before, the Holland America Line cruise ship Nieuw Statendam had already been docked and we’d needed to slip past her and come alongside at the port, butt-to-butt (or aft-to-aft in nautical speak). The HAL ship had already left prior to our departure but its position had been replaced by the Viking Jupiter. Those ships had both been facing roughly west which meant they could simply cruise away from Amsterdam without any issue but our ship was facing roughly east with the bulk of the city on our starboard side and Java-eiland to the port. I’ve no doubt that the captain of Silhouette and/or the pilot could have negotiated the entire length of the canal and passage through the locks backwards but you usually have to pay extra for a Showing Off cruise and they don’t tend to include those sorts of manoeuvres on 3-nighters. Getting out, therefore, involved moving away from the dock, reversing back past Viking Jupiter until Java-eiland was cleared, then moving forward, putting Java-eiland now on our starboard side until the width of the waterway was sufficient for Celebrity Silhouette to perform a 180 degree turn.

Viking Jupiter

We happen to live just ten minutes walking distance from Portsmouth Port. What we’re really hoping is that more cruise lines start to use Portsmouth as a turnaround port rather than just a cruise stop to increase our opportunities to experience new cruise lines from a fabulous location for us. Sure, there’s the challenge of trailing cases through the edges of Buckland while waving a nail-studded club around threateningly to ward off the local youth but the convenience of being able to leave the car outside the home (or somebody else’s home in whichever street we managed to find a parking space in the night before travelling) would be worth it.

Why am I talking about Portsmouth Port? Well, very shortly before we took this taster cruise there was a new visitor to our local port, that being Viking Jupiter. Our local port can only take ships of a certain size and while there are plans for some expansion this will still leave it on the short side for our preferences. We’re Goldilocks cruisers, looking for something not too big and not too small, a not too young and not too old demographic, not too basic and not too pampered. Viking Jupiter is probably a little on the small side for us and perhaps a little too luxurious for us (read: expensive; we’re not tight-arses but we do like to get value for money) but it was nice to see her gleaming in the port and it was a pleasant surprise to then discover she’d followed us to the Dutch capital during our departure. She’s a new ship in the Viking fleet and a very attractive one too.

Leaving Amsterdam

Passing Viking Jupiter left us with views of the main part of Amsterdam with its canals and church towers prominent and also a large number of riverboats. Some people call them ships, some call them boats, some call them barges with ideas above their stations; whatever you call them, there were a lot of them and we saw examples from Viking river cruises, Amadeus, and Scenic, among others. We still can’t get excited about river cruising despite the obvious push from various lines in the early part of this year to promote them with TV advertising and appearances plus freebie trips handed out to influencers. The sea is in our blood; rivers are in the countryside. We want waves. We want uninterrupted views to the horizon under cloudless skies at night. I’m sure river cruising is just lovely but it would have to be a spectacular price in a spectacular location to tempt us and right now the former looks exceedingly unlikely and the latter is limited to Russia, India, and China.

On the opposite side of the ship (starboard if you’re keeping track) we passed the A’DAM Tower and the Eye Film Museum, both wonderful buildings from an architectural perspective and both places we’ve not yet visited on our two trips to Amsterdam. Should we return – the Dutch government seem to be going out of their way to reduce tourism to the city so that’s not a given – then there’s a good chance we’ll take advantage of the ferry that transfers passengers across the water to check both locations out.

Maritime Quarter

By the time I’d taken a few more photos around the ship and returned to our room to rejoin my wife, the ship was coming up on the Maritime Quarter of Amsterdam. My wife had shown no signs of having missed my company nor any remorse at failing to express joy upon my return when I mentioned it and so I felt justified in stepping straight out onto the balcony to grab some more photos of the ship’s passage along the North Sea Canal.

Not quite the first thing that caught my eye in this part of the city’s outskirts was a graffiti-daubed submarine in the water. My first thought was that this was most likely a floating museum but some research after the cruise has determined that this vessel is one of the last of the Soviet navy’s Zulu-class attack submarines, designated 4711 B-80, moved into its current position by owners who wanted to transform it into a party boat, said plan abandoned when it was realised that the risk of drunk people getting launched from torpedo tubes was something insurers were unwilling to cover.

The actual first thing that caught my eye in the Maritime Quarter was Botel, a floating hotel with views to the submarine just across the water from it. Its bright white exterior and fantastically funky font advertising its name and hinting at its functionality are pretty hard to miss. For people who like being on the water this could be an interesting option as a location to stay if visiting Amsterdam for a few days and the area has a regular ferry service running to the main part of the city.

Beyond the Botel was the marina. I love being on or by the water but yachting leaves me cold.

A lot of this area was formerly shipyards and some of that work still goes on to this day. Alongside the marina were a number of dry docks, some of them with vessels in being worked on.

The most interesting ship for me was the MS Deutschland, quite obviously a small cruise ship but one with a fascinating dual role these days and a history that is probably only generally known to German people (understandably, given its name). For part of the year the ship is named World Odyssey and is used for educational purposes taking students abroad to study, and sponsored academically by Colorado State University. For the remainder of the year the ship is chartered by the German company Phoenix Reisen, given the name MS Deutschland, and undertakes more traditional cruising. Until 2015, the ship was the primary filming location for a long-running German series, Das Traumschiff, and if you want to catch glimpses of MS Deutschland visiting exotic locations around the world, blatant product placement, and some horrible disregarding of international cruising regulations then the internet is your friend.

The appearance of the small piece of green land, Keerkringpark, marked the point at which I decided most of the interesting landmarks along the northern side of the North Sea Canal were at an end, plus there was trivia about to start so I took a break from documenting our departure from Amsterdam and returned to the room to gee my wife into action. We did horribly in the trivia but we still had that victory the day before to cling onto.

IJmuiden

I’ve written about IJmuiden before (on the approach to the Netherlands and departing from the Netherlands on P&O’s Azura in 2017). Now, when IJmuiden thinks of IJmuiden and wants other people to think of IJmuiden it probably thinks of IJmuiden in the sense of a port city with a beach and plenty of history and lots of places for tourists to come and spend their money. But when I think of IJmuiden I picture the complex to its north. I picture the beautiful, belching, brutal buildings of that industrial complex and it makes me feel warm inside. Is this because I grew up on a diet of science fiction TV and VHS movies in the 1980s predominately set in places like this and it happens to trigger pangs of nostalgia? I’d like to think so, but I’ll also take “It’s because you’re fricking weird, Mark” as I consider that a compliment every time it’s uttered.

Here’s some video (temporarily removed) of Celebrity Silhouette passing through the locks at IJmuiden in case you’re one of the nine people currently alive on the planet who’s ever wondered just what that’s like.

Something I’d not spotted before when we’d passed through the locks at IJmuiden was SHIP, a place to experience the construction of the new sea lock, the port area, port professions, and even hit the restaurant to watch vessels passing by. Something to bear in mind as a point of interest if you’re ever cruising to Amsterdam on a line that has decided not to pay the Dutch capital’s increased charges so that it can pass on the inconvenience to its customers and dock 45 minutes away instead. No names mentioned. Not even a pair of letters separated by an ampersand mentioned.

That concluded our time in the Netherlands aboard Celebrity Silhouette. There will be one more post covering our time on this ship which will go through the evening’s entertainment and dining and terrifying amounts of drinking. Was there dancing? Yes, there was dancing too, but you’re in luck because the only bits caught on camera were done by other people.

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.