Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 12 – Our First Day At Sea
December 6, 2009
Yesterday was our first day at sea – and a fabulous one it was. With four straight port days behind us, we were certainly looking forward to a nice relaxing day at sea. They tend to be our favorite days of a cruise. This was to be a precursor or the upcoming six days at sea when we make the Atlantic crossing.
Having stayed up late the night before at the Sizzle Dance Party, we slept in until after 9. Sean and I ran up to the buffet for a quick breakfast on the stern of the ship enjoying the beauty of the vast ocean. After breakfast he disappeared to the Fun Factory. I walked the ship again checking out the various views of the ocean and the freighter traffic in the distance. The water was very calm, almost like glass. The weather was partly sunny and slightly cool so a jacket came in handy.
Suzanne had her Cruise Critic group get together at 10:30 and I chose not to go – mainly because there was a hot glass blowing demonstration at 11:00 that I wanted to see. Being the first demo of the cruise, it was a special session for the kids in the Fun Factory. Each of the kids drew a picture of something they wanted the gaffers (hot glass blowers) to make. The demo team would take two of the kids drawings to make and explain the process as they did so.
Savannah was lucky enough to get her drawing picked as the first item to be created. Savannah had drawn a guitar. The gaffer, Brenna, was excited to do the guitar because she said she had never done one before and was intrigued by trying to do it. The demo team consisted of 3 people. One was the narrator, one was the lead artist and the third assisted the leader. It was pretty fascinating to watch them work and listen to the story behind glass blowing. To make Savannah’s guitar took about 30 minutes and I got the whole thing on video. The guitar looked pretty amazing. We don’t actually get to see the finished product until the next day as it has to slowly cool in an oven for almost 24 hours. We could see pretty much what it looked like, but the color will change as it cools. The best part about Savannah’s drawing getting picked is that she gets to keep the blown glass item!
I have to say, the hot glass blowing idea seemed pretty gimmicky when I heard about it, but it was actually one of the highlights of onboard ship activities thus far. I have found it to be quite interesting – certainly more so than another climbing wall. They do two shows daily on the top deck in their little outdoor theater for two hours each. In that time, they will make about 4 items of blown glass usually taking ideas from the crowd. During the show they hand out raffle tickets and at the end of the show draw to give away the items made the previous day.
The set was pretty amazing and took two years to develop. Since its on a cruise ship, they had to design all new special electronics for their furnaces and equipment. They didn’t want any of the normal gas type furnaces since it wasn’t exactly the safest idea to have all that gas on a cruise ship. The show is done in conjunction with the Corning Museum of Glass. The Solstice was the first ship to have such a demo/theater. The Equinox was the second Celebrity ship and the upcoming Eclipse will be the third. The comment was made that five ships were planned. All because the president of Celebrity was at the Salt Lake City Olympics, saw the blown glass show and that it would be a neat feature on his cruise ships. He was right!
After lunch, I took another rare nap. That makes two on this cruise! Having been out late the night before – actually every night thus far, it felt good.
Savannah asked if she could have dinner in the Fun Factory and we agreed to let her do so. While enjoying a glass of wine in the Cellar Masters lounge, we ran into Larry, one of the wine distributors to Celebrity, once again and had some more good conversation. He doesn’t have a specific table for dinner so we asked if he wanted to join us. He agreed and brought a very nice bottle of Burgundy wine to dinner. It was a lot of fun. Larry will be helping out with several of the upcoming wine seminars and events on the ship so it was fun to talk with him.
For dinner, Suzanne and I had a Veal Cordon Bleu that was absolutely wonderful, probably the best meal thus far for me. Sean must have been hungry as he had shrimp cocktail, escargot, baked potato soup, four cheese penne and a filet mignon for dinner (plus two desserts).
After dinner, we headed up to the Sky lounge to check out the Country and Western night, but was they were concentrating mostly on teaching folks line dances instead of playing good music. Remember, in my book, there is two kinds of music – Country and Western. So, we decided to turn in early for the night.
Today will be our last port of call on the cruise before we begin the crossing of the Atlantic. We will be stopping in Funchal, Maderia which belongs to Portugal. We also stopped there last year on our transatlantic cruise, so we will likely get off the ship and just walk around town and maybe do some souvenir shopping. Then, we will have six heavenly days at sea as we trek across the Atlantic to Fort Lauderdale.
Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 11 – Cartagena, Spain
December 5, 2009
Yesterday, we made a port of call in Cartagena, Spain. It’s a relatively small coastal Spanish town that dates back to before the Romans. We were not really sure what there was to do in town. There were not many tours, so we had decided to just walk around town and take it in.
As usual, I breakfasted early while the other folks slept in. It was shaping out to be a very nice day as the sun was out and there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. The weather on this cruise, except for the heavy rain in Livorno/La Spezia, has been pretty nice, but cool around 60 degs. In Cartagena, we were going to be in the 70s. I ate a nice breakfast on the stern of the ship and watched our approach into the Spanish town in a harbor protected by a couple of break walls which made for some interesting maneuvering for our large boat.
The town is also home of a Spanish Naval base, so there were several destroyer class ships in port plus even one Spanish submarine though it was quite small compared to the US submarines I have seen.
After our late docking (complete about 10:00 am), Suzanne and I went into town to scout around while the kids stayed behind at the fun factory. Sean has been suffering from a sore throat so he didn’t want to walk around town and there was an event going on that she wanted to participate in. Suzanne and Savannah had plans to go back into town after lunch for some shopping.
I was pleasantly surprised by the town. It was very clean and friendly with some interesting buildings and architecture. Suzanne did a bit of shopping and picked up an authentic, though used, Flamenco dress and some professional castanets for her dancing. She was pretty excited as she always wanted to buy a real Flamenco dress in Spain and we found a nice one for a pretty cheap amount. We were also able to find the black beret that Savannah has been searching for. Suzanne and Savannah would return to town later and find several more souvenirs for Savannah.
After lunch, Sean and I played some Bocce Ball while the girls were shopping. The Celebrity Solstice is pretty unique in the a large section of the top 15th Solstice deck is a lawn area. Yes, its real grass area and quite large. They have 3 Bocce Ball fields set up, plus some toss a sack areas, two croquet fields and horseshoes. It’s real, authentic, green grass. It was kind of funny to see golf course styled maintenance folks running around the lawn area cutting the grass and doing general upkeep. It probably occupies about one third of the top deck with a sunset bar at the backend where you can see where the ship has been or watch the activities on the lawn. I was unsure about the lawn area when reading about it pre cruise, but after several trips back there and playing some Bocce Ball, I can say it actually works quite nice.
There is also a little section of the lawn area where they do hot glass blowing demonstrations. We haven’t actually seen one of these yet, but will likely do so during one of our at days at sea coming up.
After an afternoon of fun, we enjoyed our sail away from Cartagena from the top deck. Thus far, most of our sail aways have been at night, so on this gorgeous day, it was fun to finally get to enjoy one in daylight. With the warm day and the sun setting over mountains and then the ocean, it was very picturesque.
After the sail away, we got dressed for dinner (casual night) and visited our pre dinner spot, the CellarMasters lounge. We had another tasting of Australian wines and actually met one of the distributors of wine to Celebrity Cruises and had some good conversation with him. Sinisa, the ship cellar master that we have been spending some time with, poured all of us a very nice Saint Emillion wine.
Dinner last night was a kind of a featured pasta night. Most of the dishes included some sort of pasta. The kids and I enjoyed a Spaghetti and meatballs dinner while Suzanne had the seafood pasta. The meatballs dish is considered one of the favorites of the Chef. They were all very good though Suzanne felt the seafood pasta she had in Rome was better.
Dinner was kind of interesting tonight because there was a lot of extra scurrying, activity and commotion in our dining area. About twenty minutes after we were seated a couple was seated a couple of tables over from us and seemed to garner quite the attention. The hotel director and our assistant maitre d’ as well as the cellar master were well preoccupied with them. In talking with one of our servers, we found out these VIPs were some multi-millionaires from England. They were staying in the Owners suite to the tune of $150k for the cruise. If was kind of fun to watch the royal treatment they got. To Celebrity’s credit, our service didn’t suffer one bit. They actually brought over some additional wait staff to cover our area and make sure our service remained top notch. After their dinner, the Head Chef came to their table and chatted with them for a few minutes. To my surprise, he then headed over to our table and talked with us for nearly ten minutes before he went back to work. So, we were in pretty good company last night!
After dinner, it was Sizzle Dance Night. Basically, it was some Latin dancing in the Sky Lounge. I had fun watching, but the dancing is not my cup of tea, so Suzanne found some other gentlemen to dance with. For a couple of dances, she just went out there by herself and danced her Flamenco routines to the music. Sean and I just sat back and watched.
It was about 1:00 am when we retired for the night, but it was our lucky night and we would be gaining an hour on the clocks as we slept.
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