The previous part of this short travelogue series covering our weekender cruise aboard Virgin Voyages‘ cruise ship, Scarlet Lady, was titled The Test Kitchen And Late Night Drinking. Late night drinking. Late. Night. Drinking. Yeah, there’s something that tends to follow on from late night drinking, and more so as we get older (and, apparently, no wiser), and that’s early morning hangovers. Or mid-afternoon hangovers. Or both.
For some inexplicable reason, despite not heading to bed until the third hour after midnight, we were up bright and early. To clarify: the weather was bright. We were not bright. We were somewhat zombie-like. We decided not to go for brains, but had some breakfast anyway then thought a bit of a walk on the open decks and some sea air might do us the world of good. Or kill us.
The early hour lent Scarlet Lady a little bit of a ghost ship feel. We are not nature’s early risers on cruises – there’s usually something so soothing about the gentle rocking motion and the odd creak of metal as ships cut through the waves gently overnight that we’re quickly pushed into pleasing comas – so witnessing a ship with so few people around until bright sunshine was unusual. The only time that typically happens for us is when we cruise in Asia and our body clock is so out of sync with the local time zone. Cruising off the coast of England? Unheard of! Maybe we were still buzzing with excitement at how this ship was making us feel. Maybe it’s just another symptom of old age.
You’ll see from some of the photos here the wide variety of and large number of seating options on Scarlet Lady. While everything seemed a little lower than we’d really have liked – we’ve got knees to think about – we can overlook that a little as we realise we’re not precisely Virgin’s target demographic. The range and number of seats, though, we loved. Even though it was sailing at nowhere near capacity on this cruise we generally thought that you’d not struggle to find somewhere to sit or lie down even if it was.
But, while we may not be as young (or wealthy, or healthy-minded) as Virgin seem to aim at, we do still have a streak of the young-at-heart about us, and so, even with raging hangovers, we tried out the swing chairs and the see-saws and played table football. And really enjoyed it all. We’re pretty introverted normally so that lack of anyone else around probably helped here too.
One thing I didn’t enjoy as much – and given how much we like art in general, and love modern and abstract works – was the artwork that Virgin selected to showcase on their ship. You could see examples of this outside the elevators where a wall was decorated in the same style with a single piece accented to indicate the floor, but there were some pieces on the top deck too, one of which is shown below. I like minimalism, I like modernism, I like the bubbly feel of late 1960s and early 1970s art, and so there’s no reason I shouldn’t like this. But I don’t. It’s pretty dull, really. For a generally flashy, highly stylish ship as Scarlet Lady, this felt basic and cartoonish. But it’s art. And we all react differently to it. I don’t doubt that there will be some people who “absolutely love” it, and perhaps genuinely so and not just because they want to come across as super-positive for reviews. Oh me! I’m such a cynic.
We weren’t the only people awake, of course. You’ll always find those achingly desperate to stake out their spots around the swimming pool (or XL-size bathtub on Scarlet Lady) even when they’ve got absolutely no intention of using it (the selfish bastards) and those utterly bizarre folk who have to start a day with a jog on a treadmill.
The mid-morning and early-afternoon parts of this sea day aboard Scarlet Lady were a blur of quiet moaning – it helps the body process alcohol – and reading and relaxing on our balcony, and perhaps an hour’s snooze, but we reached a point where we thought we might risk a hair-of-the-dog so made our way to the Draught Haus for a beer each. This didn’t go down as well as we’d hoped, and resulted in us nursing our pints for the best part of ninety minutes.
However, what was nice was that we got to experience some of Virgin’s pop-up entertainment that we’d heard about. This was in the form of some close-up magic from Andy, one of the many entertainment staff aboard whose remit is broader and more individualistic than you’d typically find on another cruise line where everything is managed by one cruise director. The tricks were good, we couldn’t see the sleight-of-hand nor work out how all the backs of the cards changed pattern, and Andy was nice enough to create a fancy fan-shape and pose for a photo too. You can also see from this photo just how casual the general look of the crew on Scarlet Lady was, although it’s worth noting that there was never any problem with identifying one from a fellow passenger.
Another lovely element to the close-up magic was that it reminded us of our very first cruise – and we chatted to Andy about this after his tricks – when we’d also seen some close-up magic. That had been on Diamond Princess, off China, in the atrium, with my wife and I sat with the magician under the watchful gaze of tens of dozens of people on the staircases and levels looking down. We liked this quiet, more personal approach more (that introverted thing again), and we loved that we got to reminisce about that first cruise. There were a number of times on this weekender cruise that we felt like that. Virgin did a spectacular job of making everything feel fresh and exciting.
We’d struggled with our beers so we hit our balcony again for the rest of the afternoon, and we decided to drink water. Water. Us. Anyway, sunshine, drinks, books, the sight and sounds of the sea, and the best company: it’s what cruising is all about.
Scarlet Lady’s Extra Virgin Restaurant
Scarlet Lady may have some fancier dining establishments but it also caters to some more general and widespread tastes, and Extra Virgin is her take on an Italian restaurant, the place we’d booked for this evening’s meal. We’re big fans of Italian food. It’s often our first choice if we’re holidaying in the UK, and we’ll nearly always book into the Italian speciality restaurant, Sabatini’s, if we’re on a Princess ship, so we felt it made sense to see how it compared.
The first thing to mention, of course, is that there’s no cost for the food; like almost all the food on a Virgin cruise ship, it’s included in the price. The restaurant had its own character and was stylish, modern, but not typically Italian in appearance. No problem there, though. The quality of the food in Extra Virgin couldn’t be faulted, and for our tastes there were probably more options in food choices that we could pick from when compared to Princess, but I think we both felt that we still preferred Princess – not by much – over Virgin here. One element we really did enjoy, though, was the build-your-own approach to the affogato; we had a lot of fun interacting with our server to choose the precise types of ice cream and accompaniments to that. We would be extremely happy to eat at Extra Virgin again.
My wife went for the Braised Mini Meatballs followed by the Oxtail Agnolotti, while I picked Smoked Chicken Liver Mousse with Potato Gnocchi as the main course.
At the conclusion of our lovely meal in Extra Virgin we headed to the hub of the ship and discovered, for the first time, that the vinyl store was open. This gave me a chance to peruse and pick up something. Upon returning it to our cabin we discovered that we’d also been left with a gift of a couple of Virgin bags. We’re used to getting these on Princess cruises so it was nice to see them appear on Scarlet Lady too, and they were very nice, very good quality too.
As the sun was dipping towards the horizon and we had a perfect view of it from our balcony we thought we’d enjoy some of it with another drink from the bar. How terribly civilised.
A Splash Of Scarlet Night
This was the night that Virgin called their Splash of Scarlet night. There had been some encouragement for people to add some red to their clothing for the evening and I’d donned a rather appallingly bright Hawaiian-style shirt for our meal – and got an “Oh, that looks lovely” from one of the crew that might even have been genuine and not patronising in the slightest – but decided to ditch it in favour of something that felt more comfortable after we’d returned to the room, mostly because there were hardly any other people doing so. However, just because not that many passengers were in red, the same couldn’t be said for the ship which attracted some mood lighting for the occasion in various locations. We soon found ourselves in the Dock House where we had the chance to sample a few more of our favourite cocktail there, the Fig Sour, and do a bit of people-watching.
And for the second time that day we were treated to some more pop-up entertainment. This time it came in the form of a couple performing folk songs and shanties, later to be followed along by a high-energy dance quartet who reminded us that there would be a pool party on the top deck later in the evening. We had already known about the pool party but those sorts of things don’t appeal to us as much as they do to others so we contented ourselves with something a little more relaxed, even if it meant we’d miss the giant octopus and light show. Maybe we’ll see what it’s like on our next Virgin cruise.
We ended up spending the rest of the evening back in the Draught Haus once more after wandering through to see if there was anything else to see entertainments-wise, spotting some cruise-blogging friends, and joining them for some drinks. We also spotted some existing (and made some new) cruise-blogging enemies, but I don’t want to spoil the overall positive feel of this post so perhaps that’s a tale for another time. You can tell we were still feeling the after-effects of the evening before because we decided to try the bar’s “Shot Tails” in order to keep the volume of alcohol down to a sensible limit.
The evening finished up back in our room (always the best place to find yourself) and one more treat from this Splash of Scarlet night on Scarlet Lady as we discovered that the balconies were also all lit up in red. Coupled with the thick fog we were cruising through this made for a uniquely atmospheric experience. We had a quick drink on the balcony with the door open, listening to the Jurassic 5 album I’d bought earlier. A very nice way to end off a very relaxing day.
In the next post in this Scarlet Lady weekender cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the final full day aboard Scarlet Lady. Another dining venue to try out, some afternoon tea as well, and a lot of video footage taken for a change.
Card tricks, fig sours, and some delicious oxtail, liver mousse, and gnocchi. That doesn’t sound too bad.
I had to giggle about your red Hawaiian shirt. I wish there were a photo of that. Sounds like another good cruise, and the food at the Italian place sounds great!!