Sailing like a Celebrity -- a non-DCL cruise report

[ChuckElias]

Our most recent cruise was aboard the Celebrity Summit from May 6-15, 2023. Our travel party was myself, my wife Kathryn, and my mother-in-law Dale. We sailed in a Concierge Balcony stateroom. (This was the only balcony option available to us when we made our reservation.) We visited Martha's Vineyard; Newport, RI; Charleston, SC; and Bermuda during our 9 nights.

Day 1 -- Bayonne, NJ
Sunny, high 60s/low 70s

Embarkation Day! Arrival and parking at Cape Liberty were very easy. I dropped Kathryn and Dale at the terminal with all our luggage and parked in the parking garage. ($30/day). By the time I walked back to the terminal entrance, the ladies had already finished their check-in and were waiting for me beyond security. Most of the check-in is done on the cruise line's mobile app before you even leave home, so we just had to show a passport and go through the metal detector and that was it. We were on the ship 15 minutes after walking into the terminal.

Once we boarded, we immediately went to our lifeboat station to check in and complete our muster drill responsibilities. That took all of 3 minutes. You're also supposed to watch a video on your app with more information, but nobody checked to see if we had actually watched it. Our rooms weren't ready yet, but we were allowed to drop our carry-on luggage in the room anyway. This is a nice change from some other cruise lines, which don't allow you to get into your room until all the rooms are ready.

One of the "firsts" for us on this cruise is that we rented a scooter for my mother-in-law. We rented it for $265 from Special Needs at Sea. And it was waiting for us in the room. This was very helpful for my mother-in-law, but to be honest, I got kind of stressed-out a few times as she nearly -- or actually -- bumped into other passengers throughout the week. But overall, it was a positive aspect of the trip, because she would've been very limited without it.

Might as well also talk about the room itself at this point. The room was definitely smaller than a normal DCL balcony (which is what we're used to), but terribly so. The difference, essentially, was the width of the "split bath" in the Disney stateroom. Other than that, the sleeping area was roughly the same size and the couch/desk area was roughly the same size. Another difference, however, is that there was no dividing curtain between the bed and the couch. So there was a little less privacy than we're used to, as well.

On the plus side, the balcony was comparable in size to what we're used to on other cruise lines (and wider than what I remember on the NCL Breakaway). The bed was VERY comfortable. And as Concierge guests, we had a "pillow menu". Dale was able to get a body pillow which she loved. I hate most hotel pillows, but all of our bedding was great.

TINY bathroom and shower.

One of the perks of the Concierge stateroom is that we got a sit-down lunch, while everybody else had to go to the buffet. So we made our way to the Cosmopolitan Restaurant (the main dining room). It was really nice not to have lug our carry-on luggage with us. I had a Caesar salad and BBQ short ribs for lunch and chocolate cake for dessert. The girls both got the salmon and apple pie for dessert. All were very good.

 

[Santa Raccoon 77]

Following along.

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 1 -- continued

The restaurant is very nice. Touches of elegance without over-the-top decor. (This actually describes the entire ship)

There some minor issues with our lunch. The tablecloth and my napkin had black dust, almost like soot, on them. And my butter knife was stuck to my bread dish because there was dried jelly on it. Kind of gross. Made for a rocky start -- first impressions, and all -- but thankfully, it was not a harbinger. I'm happy to say that this was the only time there was any issue of cleanliness at any meal (dining room OR buffet!).

After lunch, we spent the afternoon wandering the ship, trying to get our bearings. We visited the pool deck and checked out a few of the lounges. I'll probably talk more about this later, but at 2,100 passengers or so, this ship was almost exactly the right size for me. Easy to walk and easy to find my way around. There's a lot to be said for the really big ships in the Celebrity fleet, or for the "neighborhoods" of Royal Caribbean's Oasis Class ships. But for me, this ship felt just right, in terms of size..

I went to Welcome Aboard Trivia in the afternoon, but I didn't have a team, so I just played solo. It was fun, and I only lost by one question, even though I was by myself! The host was good, too. Funny, but kept things moving. After that, we all went up on deck for Sailaway. We left from Bayonne and could see the Statue of Liberty from where we were docked. We also sailed under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. I have video, but I'll have to add it later. . .

Our luggage got to our room at 6 pm. A little later than we're used to, but we weren't going to dinner until 8, so we didn't need to change clothes or anything before that. After unpacking the evening show was a magician, Jason Bird. He's been on a bunch of TV magic shows like "Masters of Illusion". He was very good. He didn't do any "big magic", like making a person disappear or sawing a lady in two. But he did very good close-up magic and did some fun interaction with the audience. He also seemed like a pretty nice guy, as I got to talk to him briefly on two separate occasions later in the cruise.

When the show was done, we hustled to the Cosmopolitan Restaurant for our 8 pm reservation. Unfortunately, this first experience didn't go well. There was a mob of people waiting outside the restaurant, and the staff didn't seem to be handling it well. There was a line for people with reservations and another line for people without reservations. Even with a reservation, it took us 20 minutes to get to the hostess station. And then another 5 or 10 minutes for someone to take us to our table. I don't know if the delay was due to everybody arriving at once from the show, or because it was the first night and too many people showed up without reservations; but a lot of people were not happy.

Thankfully, for us, we had an 8 pm reservation every night of the cruise (except our night in Bermuda), so after that first night, they knew we were coming and what table we were going to, and there was never another delay after that. But I did hear multiple people saying that the "Anytime dining" (that's not what it's actually called) was not handled well throughout the entire cruise. So I was glad that I had made our reservations prior to boarding.

Our serving team was Reynaldo and Glory, and they were outstanding throughout our entire cruise. I'll say more about the level of service compared to our expectations later in the report. But the entire restaurant staff was great to us. (Our sommelier was Meena and our Head Server/Maitre D was Eva. Both excellent.)

I had a shrimp cocktail appetizer and the pasta bolognese, which were both very good. I've had better bolognese at Trattorio al Forno or Tutto Italia, but for a first impression, it was very good. Kathryn had the Thai coconut soup as her appetizer and it was spicy, but she enjoyed it. Dale's entree was a cheese ravioli dish, which she also liked very much.

My chocolate mousse dessert was excellent, but Kathryn's banana-blueberry cobbler was inedible. The bananas were hard, and the crumble topping was like rocks. It was the only truly awful item we were served during the cruise.

Pasta Bolognese:

Cheese ravioli:

The horrible cobbler:

Chocolate mousse:

First dinner:

Interestingly, there's no evening entertainment planned. On a lot of cruises, there's a 10pm or 11pm cabaret act, or an "adults only" comedian or game show. But after dinner, the only entertainment that was offered was "silent disco" or a singer in a lounge. This was actually ok, considering the demographic of this sailing. But I just found it interesting. Some people on this forum have complained in the past that the Disney ships basically go to sleep at 11 pm. Well, so did the Summit

So we headed back to the room, finished unpacking and called it a night.

 

[lostpro9het]

Day 2 -- continued
. But after dinner, the only entertainment that was offered was "silent disco" or a singer in a lounge. This was actually ok, considering the demographic of this sailing. But I just found it interesting. Some people on this forum have complained in the past that the Disney ships basically go to sleep at 11 pm. Well, so did the Summit

So we headed back to the room, finished unpacking and called it a night.

We’re big silent disco fans and even on celebrity they can run through midnight. We actually get put out if they only offer it once a cruise. For our experience, Celebrity usually offers a couple nights.

You mention demographics. Are you implying the mean age on this trip is pretty high?

 

[ChuckElias]

We’re big silent disco fans and even on celebrity they can run through midnight. We actually get put out if they only offer it once a cruise. For our experience, Celebrity usually offers a couple nights.

You mention demographics. Are you implying the mean age on this trip is pretty high?

Yeah. Total guess on my part, but the average was probably in the low 60s.

 

[imahistorygeek]

Yeah. Total guess on my part, but the average was probably in the low 60s.

Our trips have been mainly during holidays, so there's quite a few kids on board and average age is a lot lower. I think even Celebrity is surprised when they have large amounts of children and younger adults. Our last cruise on the Apex, I believe there were 700 kids (3400 max passengers) on our sailing. There were more than we had ever seen in the past.

 

[heatherhy01]

Following along! Great report so far , can't wait to hear more!

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 2 -- Newport, RI
Sunny, low 70s

The morning started out very chilly, so we decided to forgo the balcony for breakfast. Instead, we went up to the Oceanview Cafe, which is the buffet restaurant. There's a lot of what you would expect: scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, corned beef hash, pancakes, etc. But there's also fresh frittatas, there's a station that serves traditional English breakfast items (steamed tomatoes, baked beans, etc). There's a yogurt/muesli station, a cheese counter, an omelet station. And all the baked good like muffins and croissants are baked fresh onboard every day. So there's plenty of options and most of them were very good.

After breakfast, they started tendering people to shore. We had a relaxed morning and headed to the tender around 10 am. The tender wouldn't accommodate Dale's scooter, so when we got to gangway, the crew gave us a wheelchair to use on shore. That was a huge help to us, as she would not have been able to walk very long without some sort of transportation.

We decided not to go heavy on shore excursions on this cruise. I personally like exploring on foot, when possible, and just getting a feel for the port that we're in. So we spent 4 or 5 hours just wandering through Newport. Kathryn really loved some of the small shops that we found, and I really loved the historic buildings throughout the port area and slightly outside. Dale got souvenirs for the grandkids. We grabbed some snacks, since we were missing lunch on the ship, and eventually got back on the tender around 2f:30.

The buffet was still serving lunch when we got back, so we grabbed something a little more substantial. They have pizza every day, of course, and the dough is made fresh. Unfortunately, the crust was consistently undercooked, so that every piece of pizza I got drooped when you tried to pick it up. But other than that, there was always a cheese pizza, a pepperoni, and a veggie; and then each day there was a "special" pizza of the day. The rest of the buffet has an Asian counter, a Mexican station (but the fajitas were insanely spicy), a meat carving station, a salad bar, etc. There were usually several good options to choose from. No soda machine, though, for people who appreciate free soda. Everything comes in cans from the bar.

I also wanted to mention that there are lots of activities planned on board, even during port days. There was trivia and live music in the lounges. On many cruises I've been on, almost all the onboard activities disappear because they expect people to go ashore.

After all the walking on shore, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Solarium. That's an enclosed pool area. There's also an outdoor pool, but there's often music out there, which may be a little loud. And the Solarium is a quieter venue. Also, the Solarium pool is heated, while the outdoor pool is not. That's a bonus for me. The Solarium tended to get pretty crowded later in the cruise. Especially on cool days, people wanted to be indoors and seats got saved and hoarded. (There was some grumbling among our Facebook group.) Lots of people chose it as a spot to nap during the day. (I may or may not have dozed off once or twice.)

But on this day, I was able to find a seat pretty easily and spend several hours there with a book. The Solarium:

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 2 -- continued

The show that night was a singer who performed an Aretha Franklin tribute show. I didn't go, but both Dale and Kath said that she was fantastic. She did a second show later in the cruise on our first Bermuda day. The reason I skipped the show was because of our dining room experience on the previous night. I didn't want to wait in line to check-in for our dinner reservation. So I went to the Cosmopolitan Restaurant about 10 minutes before the show ended and I beat the crowd to the hostess stand. I got seated right away, and Kathryn and Dale were able to join me without waiting.

There's no set table assignments for dinner, but because we had reservations at the same time every night, they were able to give us the same table and serving staff for the entire sailing. This was a huge bonus to us, as we had a great serving team, and we didn't have to have a different waiter every night.

My appetizer was called a beef roulade, but it was NOT a roulade. It was more like beef with gravy in a sauce. It had a very odd consistency, but tasted good. I don't think I would get it again. It was just kind of weird. Kathryn loved the escargot appetizer. She and Dale both got the Mediterranean Seafood Medley entrée. This had scallops, shrimp, and mussels in a tomato broth. The seafood was cooked perfectly, but it was very spicy. In fact, Dale couldn't eat it, so requested the trout entrée instead. This turned out to be fantastic and she liked it so much better. Cooked perfectly. I ordered the veal on polenta and loved it. This was an excellent meal. For some people, it might have been slightly overcooked, but I enjoyed it very much.

For desserts, Dale got the cherries jubilee, which was good. I got the lava cake, which was very tasty, but not what I would call a lava cake. Maybe I'm way off, but when I hear "lava cake", I kind of expect gooey chocolate to come out of the middle of the cake like lava. This was not like that. It was just a solid -- and delicious -- piece of chocolate cake. Kathryn got the crème brûlée and did not like it. The crème was more like whipped cream, and just didn't right. The fruit on top was good, but it just seem like a good crème brûlée.

Does this look like a roulade to you??? I'm telling you -- weird.

Escargot:

Seafood Medley:

Veal on polenta:

Trout:

Cherries Jubilee:

Lava cake, sans lava:

Crème brûlée:

After dinner, we made our way to the Rendezvous Lounge to listen to one of the house bands perform 60s music. They were a traditional rock/pop band with a female lead. They called themselves The Seagulls. The lead singer is from Ukraine. They performed multiple times on the cruise in different locations. We liked them a lot, but when they performed at the pool, I felt it was a little too loud. (I know, that just means I'm getting old.) But when I'm relaxing by the pool, I want to relax. I want background music. I'm not even blaming them. They're performing their normal set. I just didn't think it fit poolside. But in the lounge at night, they were really good.

At 11, Kath and I went up to the Sky Lounge for the 80s game show. This was EXTREMELY silly. They had two volunteers do a lip sync battle, then two other volunteers had a dance-off. We had to vote for the winners by cheering. It was judged a tie, so the tie-breaker was determined by which side of the room danced better to the next song. The whole goofy thing was just an excuse to start the late night dance party. It was very funny, but so silly. I'm not really a dance party kind of guy (remember, I'm old now), so we left to go back to the room at about 11:30.

Our departure from Newport was delayed for a long time. We didn't leave port until well after 9 pm. We found out later that this was because of two separate medical situations. In one case, an elderly woman passed away that afternoon. She'd been traveling with family and her grandson confirmed to me that she had passed. Very sad for the family.

 

[flynnibus]

View attachment 717136

I think I saw this guy on White Lotus Season 2

 

[Phonedave]

When the show was done, we hustled to the Cosmopolitan Restaurant for our 8 pm reservation. Unfortunately, this first experience didn't go well. There was a mob of people waiting outside the restaurant, and the staff didn't seem to be handling it well. There was a line for people with reservations and another line for people without reservations. Even with a reservation, it took us 20 minutes to get to the hostess station. And then another 5 or 10 minutes for someone to take us to our table. I don't know if the delay was due to everybody arriving at once from the show, or because it was the first night and too many people showed up without reservations; but a lot of people were not happy.

Thankfully, for us, we had an 8 pm reservation every night of the cruise (except our night in Bermuda), so after that first night, they knew we were coming and what table we were going to, and there was never another delay after that. But I did hear multiple people saying that the "Anytime dining" (that's not what it's actually called) was not handled well throughout the entire cruise. So I was glad that I had made our reservations prior to boarding.

I am not a fan of the flex dining either - both having it myself and also for what it does to the regular seating (sounds like my opinion of the DDP somehow). I think they do it because other cruise lines now do "freestyle, flex, cruise your way, or whatever marketing they call it.

We have a "system". My wife and I show up about 30 minutes before our scheduled dining time, get a cocktail and sit in the Rendezvous Lounge on the side where the podium is located. We then watch the people arrive, queue up, and wait in the huge line. Then the dining rooms opens, and the line gets seated, and then 5 minutes after the hour we get up and casually stroll to our reserved table.

 

[Phonedave]

After all the walking on shore, I decided to spend the rest of the afternoon in the Solarium. That's an enclosed pool area. There's also an outdoor pool, but there's often music out there, which may be a little loud. And the Solarium is a quieter venue. Also, the Solarium pool is heated, while the outdoor pool is not. That's a bonus for me. The Solarium tended to get pretty crowded later in the cruise. Especially on cool days, people wanted to be indoors and seats got saved and hoarded. (There was some grumbling among our Facebook group.) Lots of people chose it as a spot to nap during the day. (I may or may not have dozed off once or twice.)

But on this day, I was able to find a seat pretty easily and spend several hours there with a book. The Solarium:

View attachment 717137

View attachment 717138

View attachment 717139

We spend a lot of time in the solarium, and that thalassotherapry pool (or as my one friend has dubbed it, the velociraptor pool because she can never remember thalassotherapy).

The towel attendants are usually good about clearing items from chairs that are being reserved but not used. However we did notice on our last cruise that there were lot fewer attendants, possibly as they ramp back up from Covid staffing. We were hoping it would get back to how it was, but it seems not so.

The food offerings in that area at the Spa Cafe are really good too, but it has pretty limited hours. I tell my wife that they are all healthy offerings, but she tells me not when I eat 6 of them.

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 3 -- Martha's Vineyard
Cold/foggy at sunrise. Sunny, 70°, by 10 am

We decided to have breakfast in the main dining room, instead of walking around the buffet. The menu was very basic, with eggs, pancakes, and French Toast. No interesting options. I had an omelet, which was very good; but the chicken sausage (which actually did sound interesting) was dry and crumbly and I didn't eat it.

Tenders were running to shore early, so we headed ashore pretty quickly after breakfast. Celebrity only offered one excursion for the port, and we didn't really like it, so again, we did our own walking tour. We visited a few of the shops that are right next to the dock where the tenders dropped us. Then we walked to the beach and saw a couple nice public parks. My mother-in-law really wanted to see the "gingerbread houses" (which I'd never heard of), but we walked through and enjoyed the cute design details of the houses.

These first two ports weren't all that interesting to me, personally, since we live in Massachusetts and have visited both Newport and Martha's Vineyard many times. We joked with some of our fellow passengers that we drove 3 hours to Bayonne in order to visit a port that's less than 3 hours from our house. But the day was beautiful and our walk was quiet and peaceful. We headed back to the ship around 1:30.

We got back before Oceanview Cafe stopped serving lunch, so that's where we headed. I had some really good chicken teriyaki from the Asian station, and of course, some pizza. Dale tried the quesadillas from the Mexican station, but again, they were way too spicy to eat. One other nice thing about the buffet restaurant is that there is an ice cream counter that serves both soft-serve and scooped ice cream. It's called Scoops (which should ring a bell for long-time DCL cruisers). They always had vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry "hard" ice cream; and then they'd rotate one other flavor each day. The soft-serve was much more hit-or-miss. Sometimes they had twist flavors, sometimes they only had vanilla, sometimes there just wasn't any soft-serve available. But it was nice to have some kind of ice cream as a snack any time we wanted it. Scoops also served fresh-baked cookies to go along with the ice cream. They had chocolate chip, or peanut butter, macadamia nut, or oatmeal raisin cookies.

There's also a place on Deck 5 where you can get gelato for an extra fee. We didn't partake. It's directly across from a really nice coffee location (Cafe al Bocio) that also serves small sweet snacks. We enjoyed the coffee and snacks there frequently.

After lunch, I headed to the Solarium for a long afternoon of doing nothing. It's a great location. I swam, I hot-tubbed, I caught up on my trip notes. Kathryn says I napped, but I think she made that up.

The evening show was comedian Orlando Baxter. He was funny! He did a clean show (even though there were no kids in the audience for our show). You could tell that it was an edited version of a more adult show, but it was still very funny and well-written. It was a story-telling style of humor, as opposed to one-liners or "bits". We all liked him a lot.

Straight to dinner for our regular 8:00 reservation. The menu didn't really grab me on this night. Kathryn was excited about the shredded lamb in a puff pastry, and she loved that. The only thing that interested me was a chicken pasta dish, which turned out to be quite good. But the appetizers and desserts were uninspiring, so we skipped dessert. The nice thing about the dinner menu in Cosmopolitan is that there are a few items that are available every night. So when the appetizers aren't to my liking, I would just choose the Caesar salad or the shrimp cocktail.

Kathryn's lamb. She loved this.

My pasta dish, topped with arugula. I hate arugula.

After dinner, we sat in one of the lounges to listen to Ocean Beat, another of the live bands onboard. This group is a jazz quartet. The singer, drummer, and bassist were all women; only the pianist was male. They were really good and not having any guitar at all made it very interesting, with the bass really coming through, almost as a lead instrument, instead of just being support in the background. I liked them very much.

The casino was running a promotion that night, giving away $25 gift cards every 15 minutes. So I wandered in and played roulette for an hour. I didn't win a gift card, but I was up $90 at the end of my night. After playing for a while, we went up to Oceanview for a piece of pizza for dessert (they serve until 1 am), and then headed back to the room for the night.

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 4 -- At Sea
Overcast, low to mid 70s

BOOM! We were awakened at 6 am by a loud crash off the starboard side. One thunderclap and I was wide awake. I was surprised at how close it sounded. But strangely, it was the only one. Didn't matter, though, as I wasn't going back to sleep. So I went up to Oceanview Café and got coffee and pastries and brought them back to the room, where we just took it easy to start the day.

At 10 am, there was a Galley Tour, where we got to walk through the kitchens and learned a little from the chef's staff. A lot of people showed up for the tour. Before we actually got into the kitchen, there was a Q & A with the head chef. They talked about how the menus are created, about food waste, about preventing bacterial contamination, among other things. They broke us up into groups of about 10 people, and then we went with a staff member. What we heard was pretty interesting, but I was a little surprised by how loud it was in the kitchen. Not sure why this surprised me, since it's a relatively small enclosed space. In any case, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Desserts:

That's a lot of croutons!

For lunch, we had our only meal at a specialty restaurant. They served a seafood lunch at the Tuscan Grille restaurant. It was really good. There was a menu and you could order as much as you wanted. I had the seafood chowder, which was really excellent. There was also a scallop appetizer, and a watermelon salad with feta cheese. We all got the Lobster Thermador. I also ordered the coconut shrimp, and then Kathryn and I split a fantastic steak. Everything was prepared wonderfully, and all the items I got were delicious. Dessert was a parfait or a mango cheesecake.

Scallops:

Seafood chowder:

Watermelon and feta salad:

Lobster and Coconut Shrimp:

Lobster and steak (with béarnaise sauce on the side).

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 4 -- continued

Here are some additional pictures of the Tuscan Grille restaurant:

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 4 -- continued

I was supposed to meet a group of people in the casino for a "slot pull". Everybody pitches in $20 and then everybody takes a turn spinning. Once everybody has had a chance, they split up any winnings between the group. Sounds fun, but our lunch went long and I ended up missing it. So instead, I decided to buy into the No Limit Hold 'Em tournament. (WARNING: I love poker, so this may be a bit boring for most of you.) It was a $60 buy-in. Eight players and the last two players get paid. The last time I participated in one of these on a cruise, the casino took in $480 (8 people x $60 each) and paid out $380 ($230 for 1st place and $150 for 2nd place). But on this cruise they paid out $440 ($270 for 1st, and $170 for 2nd). Not a huge difference, but I felt a little better about my return on investment. The tournament itself is a terrible format. You get 12 big blinds to start, and the blinds go up every 10 minutes. So there's not a lot of time to develop a strategy. You just have to hope you get a hand and go with it. In any case, I finished second; but the other player offered to chop the winnings, which is what we did, and I pocketed $220. (I won't go into details about the guy who flopped quads, or how I knocked out 2 players in one hand by turning a straight )

When my poker game finished, I went up to the pool deck, got a chocolate/strawberry twist, and relaxed by listening to The Seagulls for a while.

The evening show was a song-and-dance performance. My personal experience with this type of show on a cruise has not been especially good. Most of the time, it seems kind of "thrown together", and either the singing or dancing is just ok at best. So I opted to skip this one. Kathryn and Dale went, and they said that the performers were very talented, but that the show was confusing and not cohesive. (At one point, one of the performers said, "Hey, that was really good, right? It's ok to clap! Yeah, come on!" The audience just wasn't following what was going on.) Between numbers, however, there were two very talented acrobats who did short performances between the musical pieces. I was sorry that I missed that part of the show.

Like a lot of cruise lines, Celebrity has done away with Formal Nights in their restaurants. However, they replaced them with Chic Nights. This is not necessarily to dress formally, but just to dress up as you like: fancy, showy, whatever. So we dressed up and headed to dinner.

Kathryn had a pâté appetizer (although, like our Royal Clipper sailing last year, it was called a parfait) and she said it was amazing. I had the corn soup, which I liked a lot. The corn was almost pureed and the soup was very thick. I really liked it. Several entrees sounded good, so we ordered 4 entrees for the table and just shared them all. We got the roasted lamb, the shrimp scampi, the beef roulade, and the BBQ salmon. Kathryn said the lamb was excellent. The scampi was also very good (plenty of garlic!), but the shrimp had a slightly spicy coating that they really didn't need. I don't expect my scampi to be spicy. The beef was also excellent. The bbq sauce made the salmon really unusual, and Kath didn't really love it, but I enjoyed it.

The pâté

My corn soup

The lamb

Shrimp scampi

Beef roulade

BBQ salmon

For dessert, Kathryn got a fruit flower. This was fresh fruit inside a filo dough cup shaped like a flower. It was light and fresh and Kathryn liked it a lot. I got the apple crumble, which was fine, but nothing too special.

The evening show was an ABBA tribute. It was very fun and the girls loved it. Lots of energy, lots of fun music. The next day one of the restaurant servers was singing "Dancing Queen" all night. The show got out around 11:15 or so, and everybody just went back to the cabin by 11:30. Very fun day at sea!

 

[ChuckElias]

Here we are in our Chic get-ups. Not a great shot, as a crew member took it for us.

(Kathryn hates this picture because she's not smiling, so please don't tell her I showed it to you.)

 

[RememberWhen]

Here we are in our Chic get-ups. Not a great shot, as a crew member took it for us.

(Kathryn hates this picture because she's not smiling, so please don't tell her I showed it to you.)


View attachment 717548

You both look great!

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 5 -- Charleston, SC
Sunny, 80°

All ashore was at 8:40 am, so there was a lot of activity at the buffet restaurant early in the morning. One of the nice things about this stop is that we were docked at the pier, so we could just walk off the ship, rather than tendering to shore. Once again, we opted not to purchase a shore excursion. I would have loved to have visited Fort Sumter, but we wouldn't have been able to do that all together. So instead, we again did our own walking tour of the area; and we got to see quite a bit. We visited the historic Charleston City Market. This is a series of buildings that extends 4 or 5 blocks and is filled with local vendors. We walked through two of the buildings, but you could've spent multiple hours if you wanted to see all of it.

The US Customs House is directly across the street from our pier, and we walked by on the way to the Market.

We enjoyed Washington Square, named in honor of George. There was a Confederate Memorial Day ceremony about to start, but we didn't stay to observe.

We then stopped into a couple churches and the Rutledge House. Originally owned by John Rutledge, who was the first Governor of South Carolina. He also served on the South Carolina Supreme Court and later served as Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.

We got back to the ship for a late lunch at Oceanview, and found some really nice options on the buffet. The Asian station had a great fish curry, and there was also a really good beef and pork stew, both of which I enjoyed a lot. After lunch, I decided to grab a chair in the sun, next to the pool. Was really nice, but there was one thing that bothered me. When there's no live music by the pool, they play classic rock/pop hits, but they're re-mixed with dance club beats. It's really kind of awful. They're songs that you love, but they're ruined by adding the ridiculous "club version" rhythm track. And it wasn't just once. That's the music that we heard on Day 1 when we first explored Deck 10. So it's used repeatedly. I heard "Don't Stop Believing" five times in four days at one stretch. It didn't ruin the experience, but it was a little annoying.

I wanted to get in the water, but the pool was COLD! So I went into the Solarium for a dip. (The Solarium pool is salt water, by the way.) Then went back outdoors to sit in the sun for a long time. Felt so good after the cool days in our New England ports.

 

[ChuckElias]

Day 5 -- continued

Our evening started by relaxing in the Rendezvous Lounge and listening to one of the ship's live bands. This one was a male guitarist and female vocalist. They were ok, not great. The most memorable moment was when they performed The Police's "Roxanne". It was memorable because the vocalist pronounced it "Rox-aine" for the entire song. Very odd rendition.

Anyway, after the musical entertainment, the main evening show was a second performance from the magician Jason Bird. I thought he was very good. I enjoyed his interaction with the audience. (Although one of his jokes fell completely flat, which in itself was kind of funny.) To me, the highlight of the show was a close-up trick where he covers 4 coins with 4 different playing cards, and each time he picks up one of the playing cards, the coin under it has disappeared and "moved" so that it's under a different card, until eventually all four coins were under just one of the cards. It was honestly amazing.

Later in the cruise, I was waiting with a group of people for an elevator. When it arrived, Jason Bird was already in it. The whole group of us got in the elevator and Jason was pushed all the way to the back corner. I said, "Ok, nobody's getting off this elevator until you tell us how you did the trick with the 4 cards and coins"! Everybody laughed and he was very good-natured about it. But no, he didn't tell us. Sorry.

There were lots of interesting choices for entrees at dinner, but no appetizers that caught my eye. Dale got the pâté, which she said was excellent, and Kath got the quinoa salad. She liked the Celebrity dressing so much that she got the recipe from our Head Server Eva. (Unfortunately the recipe makes 500 servings, so we'll have to adjust it when we try to make it at home.)

For my entrée, I got the beef bourguignon. Reynaldo warned me that some people like the dish, but some don't. I liked the description, so I took a chance, and turned out that I enjoyed it. The meat may have been a touch dried out, but the sauce had a wonderful depth of flavor, and I would get it again. Kathryn got the sea bass, which was excellent; and we shared the pasta in cream sauce, which was just ok.

For dessert, I got the chocolate cake, which was pretty average. Dale got a wam apple crumble, which she liked. And Kathryn got the coffee pot-de-crème, which she loved.

Quinoa salad:

Dale's pâté, with fruit cubes.

Sea Bass

Beef Bourguignon:

Disappointing pasta and cream sauce

Apple crumble

Pots-de-crème

Chocolate cake

After all the walking we'd done in Charleston, nobody had a ton of energy for late-night activities, so we called it a night a little early at around 10:30pm.