Monday December 11, 2023
Hi Gang! Yes, the Wandering Italian and his co-pilot Kathy are doing another cruise. If you’re counting, this is the 11th cruise this year! Crazy!!
For this one, we really wanted to try out this ship so “the ship is the trip”! We decided this year we would try out most of the ultra luxury and luxury cruise lines to see how they stack up. We’ve already done Seabourn, Regent, Atlas and Oceania and now we’re adding Silversea (for a sneak peek we’re also doing Explora Journeys in January!). The cool thing that separates Silversea from all the others is everyone gets their own butler! Well, Lah-Tee-Dah! Lol
Once the dust settles at the end of January we’ll see how they all stack up. Sounds like we should be cruise critics and get paid for these comparisons!
Our trip down was fairly uneventful. We flew standby from CLT to FLL the night before and stayed with Kathy’s sister and also went out to dinner with her family. That was really nice. Then her sister and brother-in-law drove us up the crazy I-95 corridor for an hour to get to the port at Fort Lauderdale (they are saints since the traffic was crazy!).
We boarded the ship in like 15 minutes and it was one of the easiest embarkations we’ve ever had. We went for lunch to this amazing buffet with good food and even better desserts! After lunch we checked out our room and it’s lovely. A nice suite with separate sitting area, a walk in closet and decent sized bathroom. Not too shabby for their entry level suite.
We then toured the ship, did the muster station drill, unpacked and got ready for dinner.
Dinner was really, really good! We both started with this appetizer that had king crab, caviar and watermelon combined. Sounds weird but it was excellent! I had the lobster (of course!) and also the grouper (all seafood dinner!) and Kathy had the prime rib with a lobster tail. The desserts were decadent and delicious! I had the chocolate mousse and Kathy had the hazelnut chocolate cheesecake.
We ended our night like we always like to do. Listening to the resident pianist and playing some slots. We have a sea day tomorrow so we can sleep in and relax. It’s only our first night but we’re very impressed so far!
PS: I’m not sure how great the wifi will be for me to post pictures so I’ll send this write up first and then try to send pictures later.
The Wandering Italian 