In the first post of this travel portfolio covering our taster cruise aboard Celebrity Silhouette to Amsterdam I went through some of the areas of the ship that we’d explored on our first day aboard (pull up a chair and read it here: Concierge Class Cruise On Celebrity Silhouette) but there are many rules followed by diarist bloggers (of whom I consider myself one) and one of those is:
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.