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.
Rome – Transatlantic 2009 Day 8 – Livorno, Italy
December 2, 2009
Yesterday was our first full day onboard the Celebrity Solstice, which is turning out to be a fabulous ship. In the morning, we were due to dock at Livorno, Italy. Most folks would be touring Florence or Pisa, Italy. We had arranged a tour through the cruise line to take a bus to Pisa and then have a self guided tour of the town including the infamous leaning tower. However, weather and other circumstances had different plans for us.
Oddly, around 6:30 am, I was awoken to the sounds of the anchor being dropped. Since our cabin is on the bow of the ship, we are quite close the anchor hold. I thought it was quite strange for the anchor to be dropped when we were docking in Livorno. We had a wake up call set for 7 anyways, so it wasn’t a big distraction so I got and started getting ready since we had an early morning tour. Everyone else was soon up.
While prepping, I heard the cruise director come on the PA system, which generally does not play in cabin rooms, so I had to open the door to the hall to fully hear and we were informed that due to weather, some cargo traffic was unable to leave Livorno as scheduled and thus our docking slot was no longer available. So, the cruise ship had diverted to La Spezia about 30 miles North. They also stated that all cruise line tours were going to operate as planned since they had worked throughout the night with the tour operators to make the changes.
The weather didn’t look too good outside. It was dark and rainy, but we made our way to the theater which was our staging area for the tour. Our tour was scheduled for an 8:30 departure. This is where it got interesting. There were a lot of tours supposed to occur. Livorno had the most tours of any stop for the cruise line on this sailing. We were supposed to dock but were tendering and the weather was rough. So they were having a hard time getting folks off the boat. In addition, it was now thundering and lightning with heavy rain and intermittent hail. They were forced to take less and less folks on tenders to ensure safety.
The only real problem here is that they weren’t communicating (and thus managing) the situation very well. There were some pretty upset folks that the cruise ship diverted to La Spezia which I find pretty ridiculous. Stuff happens. Folks need to learn to go with the flow. I had no issue with the diversion whatsoever. The problem, and not a big one, was the lack of communication from the excursion folks during the process. They should known our tour wasn’t going to a make an 8:30 departure and ‘allowed’ us to leave the staging area and come back closer to when they thought we might get a tender ashore. But they were pretty adamant about staying there. Some folks wanted to cancel outright which they resisted. I think since plans changed, they should have offered anyone who wanted it a refund. And they simply should have communicated throughout the whole situation. With some angry folks, lack of communication was just making them madder.
Anyways, about 10:15, almost two hours late from our scheduled start time, the cruise director came back on the PA and said because of the hail, they were going to slow down the tendering process even more for safety. At that point, we decided we would just try to cancel our excursion. We still had no real idea when that might occur. We weren’t mad or bitter, but were just tired of sitting in the theater and would rather go find something else to do. They were good about it and agreed to refund the excursion cost. I don’t know if they realized the problems or if it was the other 30 folks that followed us up to the desk to try to cancel too. Anyways, there was no issue getting a refund. Or course, about 10 minutes after we had done so, they called for our tour. But, we were still happy with our decision.
So, instead, we set out on the ship to get some pictures and video of the area. La Spezia was a nice little harbor and coastal area. It is quite picturesque. The weather was still fairly foul, but was beginning to show signs of clearing, though the temperature was in the 50s.
After lunch, Suzanne decided to take a nap and the kids and I decided to take a tender tour. We call the tender tour what you do when you take a tender ashore and then come right back on another tender. The kids like riding in the tenders (as do I) and you do get a nice view of the area. We said we would do some souvenir shopping in town if there was any place to do so on shore, but folks coming back were indicating that there really wasn’t. The tender ride in was nice. It had stopped raining and the sun was poking out. They hadn’t opened the top of the tender but the kids enjoyed the ride ashore. We stayed on the dock for about 15 mins and there was not any shopping available there so we rode another tender back. This time we asked if we could go up top and they opened it up for us. The view was pretty stunning on the ride back. With the rain stopped and the clouds parting, it was now possible to see the mountains surrounding La Spezia and they were covered with snow – very nice.
In the evening, we visited our new favorite lounge on the ship, the CellarMasters lounge and enjoyed a flight (small tastings) of French Wines. We also registered for a couple of upcoming wine events. One is a wine tasting with Reidel Crystal glasses and you get a set of crystal at the end. The other is a wine connoisseur tasting and meal. It replaces a regular dinner and takes place in the main dining room in a special section, but it’s a different gourmet meal with specially selected wines. There are some pretty special (and expensive) wines included in the tasting – a couple I have wanted to taste just because of their names and how big/good they are ‘supposed’ to be. It seemed like an ideal way to do so.
Dinner was once again spectacular. I enjoyed a very nice cream of corn soup as a starter. Sean had another shrimp cocktail and Suzanne went for the escargot. All of us had the same entrée, which I am not sure has ever happened before. It was chicken ciao bella – basically, cheese and sun dried tomato stuffed chicken breast with a prosciutto wrapping. It was very tasty. As usual for us, late seating continues to work very well – even the kids prefer it to early seating.
After dinner, the kids went to the fun factory while Suzanne and I headed off to karaoke. She went to sing and I went to listen. Suzanne sang Cabaret, On My Own, Girl in 14G and All that Jazz. She did well except for a couple of sour notes in On My Own – likely a bi-product of the earlier wine tasting and wine with dinner. She did well enough to apparently get picked to compete in the Celebrity Starring You promotion later in the cruise.
We returned to the cabin a little after 1:00 am. Sean was still up watching a movie but Savannah was long asleep. We chatted with Boomer and bit and we all retired for the night shortly after 1:30 am. Tomorrow we are scheduled to dock in Villafranche, France. I don’t think there is a ton to do there. Most folks will be either heading to Monaco or Nice. We plan to sleep in a bit, eat lunch and they go ashore. We plan to stay in Villafranche and walk around town and do some shopping.
Be sure to follow our travel exploits on this blog as I try to make a daily update of our Rome and transatlantic cruise.
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