Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 17 – Atlantic Crossing Day 4
December 11, 2009
Yesterday was the 4th sea day of the Atlantic crossing on this Celebrity Solstice transatlantic cruise. I hate to sound like a broken record, but the weather continues to just absolutely rock. Temperatures were in the upper 70’s with clear skies and continued very calm seas.
After an early breakfast, I headed up to the lawn club to find a comfy chair for more ocean staring. What I thought would be a bit of a gimmick, has turned out to be one of my favorite places on the ship. It’s also quite popular with most of the guests. Who would have thought a huge lawn on a cruise ship would be so cool? Perhaps I should keep more of an open mind on that new mall on the behemoth Oasis of the Sea, which I still don’t really see myself cruising.
When the hot glass show time rolled around, Sean and decided to attend it once again. With every show being different and unique, they are all fun. The area for the hot glass show is also on The Lawn Club. The hot glass show has surpassed Celebrity’s expectations and they are trying make changes to accommodate more folks with better seating and other features from feedback of the glass blowers. With 2 Solstice class ships (Celebrity Solstice and Celebrity Equinox) already having hot glass demonstrations and a third (Celebrity Eclipse) already in the pipeline and launching in April, changes are hard to do and expensive. Still, the glass blowing demo is another winner in my mind. Sean has already told me he wants to go to all the remaining shows.
At this show, one of the gaffers decided to make a clown. Wow, what an intricate and detailed process that was. And the result was outstanding – or at least what we could see when it was put in the annealing oven. The unveiling, after the cooling process, will be this morning and expectations are high. I think part of the reason Sean wants to go to the remaining shows is to try to get the clown in the raffle. If you recall, since the Corning Museum of Glass, who does the show, is not for profit, they raffle off all the glass they make during the cruise. It would be quite a piece to have.
I even managed to stick in a short nap in the afternoon. This has been a very relaxing and restful vacation. I usually hate naps as I don’t sleep at night, but the three or four I have taken on the cruise have done nothing but good things. It is certainly working to recharge my batteries though I had my doubts after our Rome adventures and early port days.
In the evening, Sean and I went to another glass blowing demonstration. The night show, under the lights is slightly less attended due to the conflict with the early seating dinner crowd. This is also the first show where one of the artists actually failed in making their glass and broke it during the process. This was a 30 years experienced glass blowing gaffer. He wasn’t too upset and it explained that working on the glass show for Celebrity was a unique opportunity for them to try new things, to experiment and sort of practice for when they were making pieces for commission or for sale. He said if he had been paying for the studio, the glass, the assistants, etc, he would have been more upset. He said he knows what he did wrong and would improve it the next time. By the time Celebrity has the glass blowing demonstrations on 5 or 6 ships, they will have 60 or 70 glass blowers lined up to support the cruises and demonstrations. The concept is quite popular with the glass making artist community.
Dinner was again smart casual in the main dining room. Savannah had asked if she could go to the dinner party in the fun factory since she hadn’t attended one yet. It was make your own pizza night, so we let her attend. Sean and I enjoyed a wonderful breaded chicken dish with a nice sauce. Suzanne went with a Spaghetti Bolognese and enjoyed it too. So that is another one of the nice things we like about Celebrity, the food is really, really good and the menus are varied throughout the cruise.
After dinner, it was time for the Celebrity Starring You Awards. It’s sort of their Academy Awards for all the various events that cruise guests compete in throughout the cruise. Some awards including joke telling, singing, photography, etc. Suzanne was a finalist in the Singing Star (ie karaoke) competition. The top two singing star performers also got to do another live song in the theater to all the guests. Suzanne performed Cabaret to a rousing ovation. When the winner was announced, it was not her and she took home another 2nd place Singing Star finish.
Next up was the Grand Chocolate showing in the Sky lounge. There were more chocolate and ice carvings than you could shake a stick at. Sean skipped it to hang out in the teens club. Savannah was the only one who actually sampled some chocolate. Suzanne and I just looked.
It was about 12:15 when we headed back to the room to end the day – another fabulous cruise day at sea. Unfortunately, there are only 2 more left before we arrive at Fort Lauderdale and the fun will come to a close – until the next cruise!
Next Cruise Planning
June 22, 2009
Well, as mentioned here before, we currently don’t have a cruise booked yet for 2009. We have been planning on waiting until around the September time frame to see if prices were any better due to being inside 90 days for the cruise. That all sounded good and well, until this weekend when we decided to start researching now.
A couple of things have driven us to ‘consider’ booking a cruise now. One, the economy seems to have quit bottoming out and the cruise prices may have hit rock bottom already. Cruise occupancy rates seem to be inching back up. And two, but more importantly, I am planning on using frequent flier miles for any required air fare to and from the cruise. I have been periodically checking availability of free air fare just to make sure that is doable. Over the past month or so, the amount of available frequent flier tickets has been dwindling – especially if the cruise starts or ends overseas. So, this weekend we began researching and found some combinations of potential cruises and frequent flyer tickets already not available.
Thus, we figured we better do a full research effort and consider booking the cruise now based on those two items. So where are we thinking about cruising this year? Good question! We know we want to cruise in the last quarter of this year, which narrowed it down considerably. We also want a cruise duration of 10 days or more. We didn’t have any pre-conceived notions about where to cruise. We were happy to consider repeating a cruise if it fit in right – remember our favorite cruise days are days at sea! We also decided that we wanted a balcony cabin. We also wanted to cruise our favorite cruise line Celebrity.
Throwing all that data into the mix and considering the options, we were pretty quickly able to weed the list down to about half a dozen cruises:
- 15 Day Panama Canal Cruise
- 14 Day Transatlantic Cruise from Barcelona (very similar to what we did last year)
- 12 Day Eastern Caribbean Cruise
- 10 Day Mediterranean Cruise
- 14 Day Transatlantic Cruise from Rome
- 11 Day Western Caribbean Cruise
After some more detailed research, we have narrowed it down to two or three. They would be the Transatlantic from Rome, the Eastern Caribbean and the Panama Canal cruises. We have been wanting to do the Panama Canal cruise for some time, but it is quite expensive compared to the others. In the end, I think that will eliminate it. The Caribbean cruise is on the Mercury and there is always a limited number of cabins with balconies on the Mercury that can sleep 4, so we may run into issues there. Both of those cruises start and end in the States, so the free air fare is no problem. The Rome transatlantic is very intriguing. I have been to Rome half a dozen or so times and would love to show the kids around Old Rome. Free air tickets are already scarce though. We already have to fly in 3 or 4 days before the cruise to get free tickets. That actually works in our favor if we want to tour Rome beforehand, but is a good indicating that the limited free air tickets will disappear soon. The cruise itinerary is also quite different from last years TA with numerous different ports plus it has 8 straight sea days! Along the same lines, if we did the Eastern Caribbean cruise, since its out of Baltimore, we would likely tack on a few days beforehand and take the kid around Washington DC.
We also want to check on a Nordic Circle cruise in the Spring that had caught our eye before. This is probably the last year for a while that we will cruise during the school year as Sean will be entering High School and we aren’t as likely to pull him out of school for a cruise. Which means shorter cruises over holidays or cruising in the Summer. The kids are heavily voting for the ROME TA as their favorite which surprised us since they do want to see DC. I believe Suzanne is leaning towards the Panama Canal cruise as her favorite but also sees it quite expensive. Me, I am probably leaning towards the Rome TA as I haven’t been to Rome in over 5 years and would like to see the city again. Of course, more sea days is good too. However, food and lodging in Rome will add to the expense so we have more research to do.
Anyways, no cruise selected yet, but we have begun the process. Its still possible we won’t do anything currently and delay a bit or perhaps go for the Spring cruise. Stay tuned as we go through our decision process!
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