The Quest - our water taxi to Barbados

DAY ONE - FORT LAUDERDALE

This afternoon I was standing on a pier at Fort Lauderdale’s Port Everglades harbour and thought, this is a really boring place, I need to go somewhere more exciting, so I stuck my thumb in the air and yelled ‘Taxi!’ And this ship showed up, the Seabourn Quest, and I jumped aboard and said, ‘Take me to Barbados,’ and they said OK. Only six nights. What can possibly happen?

Well, maybe a new resident in the White House. We’ll know that on Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, but maybe we’d rather not know. I wonder what the ship is planning for The Nation Decides Night, which is already scarier than Halloween.

If all goes well, our water taxi will take us for a few soft landings - in Jost Van Dyke, Gustavia and Guadeloupe, two bits of Europe in the Caribbean. And maybe we’ll meet some fellow travellers, though I must say these will be brief encounters as I think most people on this ship are in for the long haul, travelling down to Buenos Aires and even further down, to the Falklands, Antarctica and up the other side. We didn’t fancy the trip between Barbados and Buenos Aires - we’ve sort of done all that as land-based trips which is arguably the better way to do it. This is just a cheapish Windies quickie, with a few days added on at a hotel in Barbados, then back to the UK’s bleak winter.

We like our cabin. It’s spacious, contemporary in design except for one thing and this is a major consideration for people like us, like everyone nowadays, who take computers, phones and cameras. Just as we need to take great gulps of wine or Jack Daniel’s, these gizmos all need to take great gulps of electricity and this cabin of ours, perhaps all cabins, is not designed with the computer or camera in mind. We have just one power point, above a narrow shelf next to the bathroom door, so in order to write these fascinating posts for you Cruise Critic people, I must take my laptop to somewhere else and then bring it back to this shelf to give its battery some nutrition. This is a nuisance. But so far it’s our only niggle.

Well, another niggle was our suitcase which still hadn’t reached our cabin by 5pm. So my wife went out on a search party and brought it to the cabin herself. We unpacked just in time for sail away. We went to the bar in Seabourn Square, got two glasses of champagne, and drank them alone on the outer deck, admiring the ship’s wake and the sunset over America.

Dinner at the outdoor deck of The Colonnade consisted of a needlessly deconstructed shrimp cocktail, a dry and stringy osso bucco, a decent tiramisu and two Austrians who only wanted to talk about Brexit.

I will look forward to more of your musings.

As noted on the recent thread on electrical their is the the plug at the back of the bar cabinet between the bed and sitting area.

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There is also another wall socket close to floor level between the unit which holds the TV and the chairs. Ask your stewardess to show you. Also, if you still have too many items to charge at once ask your stewardess for a power bar/electrical adapter on loan for the remainder of your trip.

We always take a 4-way adapter block which sits happily on the shelf above the fridge and allows us to plug things in as needed. It also has two UBS sockets so up to six different items can be charged at once if needed.

Looking forward to more.........................please continue!:)

Also one at the mirror/vanity table between the bath and closet.

Just realized this was the one mentioned in the original post...confused by reference to 'shelf.' I initially thought that Fletcher was referring to the one beside the shelf in the bath, which may or may not be restricted to shavers.

Also one at the mirror/vanity table between the bath and closet.

I think that is the one the OP said they had found.

First of all I must thank Stamfordian and others for sorting me out, plug-wise. With a little search on my knees and a slight rearrangement of furniture I am now fully operational within the confines of my cabin. Thanks!

DAY TWO - AT SEA

I like sea days for they allow me to catch up on some reading (Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood if you need to know) and to fully explore the ship. Our water taxi, the Quest, is fairly zipping along at a rate of some knottage. It rides beautifully and in the middle of the night, when nature called, I had to pinch myself that we were afloat and not in a hotel room anchored to the ground.

This might be the best ship we have ever been on and I write as someone who just uses ships as conveyances. It’s all about the itinerary, first and foremost and we liked the idea of these three little stops before reaching Barbados. We’ve been to the BVIs several times, but never Jost Van Dyke. Apart from Haiti, the whipping boy of the western hemisphere, St Barts is actually the only Caribbean state/territory we’ve never been to. And Haut-de-Terre in the Iles de Saintes group in Guadeloupe looks utterly gorgeous. So this is why we are here. We just have to put our faith in the weather and the tenders.

We are used to expedition ships with about 100 passengers so the Quest is a fairly big ship for us. But it’s of a manageable size, with 399 paying people aboard, and it looks beautifully sleek and modern. I was up before light dawned, having a coffee in the Observation Lounge, and then it was light and crispy waffles for breakfast in The Colonnade. Roast pork and polenta for lunch. Rib of beef for me, and salmon for her, at dinner in The Colonnade. Our fellow diners tonight only wanted to talk about Brexit.

We are not great users of a ship like this. We will never visit the casino, the Grand Salon, the Spa or the gym. Probably not even the main dining room. We won’t partake of a quiz or absorb a lecture. We won’t use the pool which looks rather too small for a ship of this size. The pool deck looks great in the early morning but deteriorates as people start to drape themselves on sun loungers and loll in the hot-tubs. By 11am it’s not a pretty sight. By midday it’s positively X-rated. I remember it was like this, only worse, on the old Legend.

We’ll just slink away somewhere, gaze at the ocean and read a few books. And we’ll walk the decks which brings me to what I think is the only drawback to the Quest and that is the lack of a proper promenade deck. We do like to be able to walk right around a ship and you can’t do that on this ship. This is a ship of two halves.

I think the area I like most is Seabourn Square on Deck 7. What an inspirational space this is, combining a coffee and pastry shop, library, internet station, reception, tour desk, boutique. Plus an outside terrace with Cineramic ocean views. It’s smart and sophisticated and utterly brilliant! We have set up permanent residency there.

My name is Fletcher and I approve this message.

I approve your observations. Watching the aft waters, a cappuccino in hand and a good book on my lap is my idea of a perfect morning.

Good man Fletch. Agree entirely (except your avoidance of quiz and lectures.) Perfect description of our Odyssey (2016) and forthcoming Quest (2017) preferences.

PS. Though Australian, I would probably have also wanted to talk about Brexit!

PPS. Also, not keen on Truman Capote writings.

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Unless you are a smoker, Fletch, beware the smokers including cigars and pipes at the lovely outside area behind the Square. You may be lucky and not have any.

Sadly, when the new more restrictive smoking rules come in, this area will be entirely given over to those who want to smoke, not just the starboard side. The bonus being that the Observation Bar and balconies will be smoke free.

The smallish area at the back of deck 10 is also a nice quiet spot to watch the waves.

I wonder if you have tried any of the Thomas Keller experience? Liked by a few, but from what I have heard and experienced, not by many.

Unless you are a smoker, Fletch, beware the smokers including cigars and pipes at the lovely outside area behind the Square. You may be lucky and not have any.

Sadly, when the new more restrictive smoking rules come in, this area will be entirely given over to those who want to smoke, not just the starboard side. The bonus being that the Observation Bar and balconies will be smoke free.

 

The smallish area at the back of deck 10 is also a nice quiet spot to watch the waves.

 

I wonder if you have tried any of the Thomas Keller experience? Liked by a few, but from what I have heard and experienced, not by many.

Hi Lincslady,

I checked the new smoking policy which will be in effect soon. The area on deck seven behind Seabourn Square will still only allow smoking on the starboard side. I have cut and pasted the new policy below.

Inside smoking of cigarettes is not permitted.

Outside smoking of cigarettes is permitted in designated areas of Seabourn Odyssey, Sojourn and Quest:

On the starboard half of the Sky Bar on Deck 9 (Encore Deck 10) including the bar stools.

On the starboard half of the open terrace aft of The Club on Deck 5.

Smoking of cigarettes, pipes and cigars is permitted on the starboard half of the open terrace aft of Seabourn Square on Deck 7. This is the only area on board where pipe and cigar smoking is permitted.

I know the smoke can still waft over but I have found if I sit close to the port side door it doesn't worry me.:)

Julie

Thanks, Julie, if that is the case. We also generally are quite happy on the port side of that outside deck except when there is an occasional pipe or cigar and the wind is in the wrong direction! It is just a lovely area to watch the wash and mostly quiet, comfortable and peaceful. The changeover is around Christmas or early New Year, I think, and on all ships. Still wish Encore had been built with an indoor smoking room, as there is on Regent.

Apologies, Fletch and everyone. I realise I have gone into the usual topic here, and not concentrated on Fletch's time on Quest. I promise no more about s*****g.

DAY 3 - AT SEA

I have worn a tuxedo only once in my life and that was more than 30 years ago for a dinner in London attended by, inter alia, The Prince of Wales, Sir David Attenborough and Orson Welles. That was worth dressing up for, I thought. Nothing else has come close and certainly not a dining room on a cruise ship.

I did buy a dark suit for a ship a few years ago and wore it once or twice, just to vaguely conform to a dress code that was ruthlessly applied right across all decks. It was either that or room service. I quite liked the suit and thought I would wear it to two seriously smart restaurants in London. On both occasions I was over-dressed. At a two-star Michelin restaurant in a five-star hotel people were wearing polo shirts and drinking Coke. As far as I know, only two places in London - the Ritz Restaurant and Wilton’s in St James’s - still require a jacket and tie.

While I have nothing against people who want to dress up a little I am glad to see Seabourn taking a relaxed and realistic attitude to Formal Nights. People can get steamed up about dress codes and tonight I would guess that half the passengers made an effort and went a step or two beyond smart casual. I just wore my usual rig and dined, as usual, in The Colonnade. I’m afraid we avoided our cabbie’s - Dag’s - shindig in the Grand Salon, just as we avoided the ‘Block Party’ held last night.

I can’t understand the cult of the Captain. We’ve been to a few of these bashes and they are always the same - the Captain makes some lame jokes and introduces his team to wild applause. Then a chosen few get to break bread with the skipper on a table in the middle of the room. As one couple said to us on another ship, ‘We don’t eat with our staff at home so why would we do it here?’

Most of our day has been about Antarctica. The Quest is heading that way and we wondered if we might book a trip for next year, the one sailing on 20 December going down from Valparaiso, round Cape Horn, across to the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia and up to Buenos Aires. We consulted the very pleasant man at the Seabourn desk and also a tour manager with experience of these trips but we felt that it wasn’t quite right for us. A ship this size has serious advantages over a small expedition-style vessel; it would be more comfortable in heavy seas and less claustrophobic in poor weather. But 450 passengers going ashore in relays and only one day in South Georgia doesn’t seem right somehow and we really don’t care that much about the first or the third weeks of the itinerary. A case of right ship, wrong trip. I think probably the Hanseatic is the best ship for this sort of cruise. We saw it once at Tristan da Cunha and it looked mightily impressive.

Today we continued on our SSE course. The weather has been calm and balmy but now there is a threat of rain. We like the Quest more and more - the housekeeping, the restaurant service has been brilliant. Breakfasts and lunches are outstanding, dinners slightly less so in our view. We are eating chez Thomas Keller on our last night. We haven’t been bothered by any smokers but a few women waft by wearing enough perfume to make me devour a packet of histamines.

There is quite a major clean-up job going on at the pool deck this evening. The pool and hot tubs were emptied and all the accumulated sweat and suntan lotion has been hosed off the sun loungers. They keep the Quest ship shipshape.

Tomorrow we are to be allowed off at Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands.

DAY 4 - JOST VAN DYKE, BVI

The British Virgin Islands is a lovely archipelago of gentle green hummocks strewn randomly in a limpid sea. In centuries gone by they offered safety and shelter for sailors, cutthroats and pirates and, now, they offer the same for tax exiles, notably Sir Richard Branson.

We were here only last February, aboard a terrible little cruise ship called Serenissima, on which we sailed from the Cayman Islands, three ports in Cuba and onwards. After Cuba the weather turned and it was unremittingly wet and windy. And it was fairly disappointing today, overcast with a tupperware sky. Our previous ship, Serenissima, failed to land us on Jost Van Dyke but the Quest anchored in the bay and people tendered ashore without a problem.

The ironically named Grand Harbour is a backwater with a Methodist church, a few bars kept viable by yachties and little else. There was a bit of a muddle with the shuttle buses - only one was running instead of three - so we walked it in the oppressive heat. The beaches were overflowing with muddy water from the hillsides and because we have a nice beach to look forward to in Barbados we just went back to the ship. The rain held off until sail away, putting a slight dampener on the planned rum-soaked party.

The amenities in Seabourn Square continue to impress me - the coffee is perhaps the best ever; the central hub run by effortlessly keen staff; the range of books keeps me happy; and most of all the iPads on which you can read the newspapers from one’s home country is a simply stunning facility. I’m sure some other luxury cruise lines have much the same but it’s an exciting new development for us.

The food also continues to impress - perfectly cooked eggs royale for breakfast today and for dessert at lunch the most delectable selection of ice creams. However, there does seem to be some duff wines aboard - a flat and tasteless French white, a sickly sweet Italian rose amongst them. I think you have to ask for specific wines, such as Oyster Bay, to avoid them. Even so I notice a drop in wine standards from our last Seabourn trip on the Legend.

We are pleased that the ship’s TV reception gives us the full range of news channels, including Sky and the BBC. It’s just wall-to-wall Presidential Election of course. In the UK the news media is banned from discussing politics on election day itself. I wonder if the same applies in the USA. Somehow I doubt it.

Tomorrow it’s the Louis Vuitton of Caribbean islands, St Barts. Heavy rain is forecast for the whole day.

As one couple said to us on another ship, ‘We don’t eat with our staff at home so why would we do it here?’

.

That's a rather Downton Abbey quote don't you think? The Dowager Countess would be impressed. I don't consider them to be 'the staff' they are the people who make my holiday enjoyable and whilst I don't choose to eat with the officers etc I certainly don't look down on them in the way your quote insinuates!

As one couple said to us on another ship, ‘We don’t eat with our staff at home so why would we do it here?’

.

That's a rather Downton Abbey quote don't you think? The Dowager Countess would be impressed. I don't consider them to be 'the staff' they are the people who make my holiday enjoyable and whilst I don't choose to eat with the officers etc I certainly don't look down on them in the way your quote insinuates!

If I said that my wife would kill me :eek::D

Having dual UK/US citizenship, I had to endure constant questions about Brexit and the US elections on our last cruise, usually from assorted Belgians, Germans, Swiss and Dutch.

My father once advised me that, when in polite company, never talk about politics, religion and football. I can only conclude that these individuals were badly brought up.

I am on this cruise and their are so many people (all nationalities) talking about the election I want to vomit. I came on this cruise to get away from it. Please shut up!!! There are much better subjects

DAY 5 - ST BARTS

Anguilla; Antigua; Aruba; Bahamas; Barbados; Bonaire; British Virgin Islands; Cayman Islands; Cuba; Curacao; Dominica; Dominican Republic; Grenada; Guadeloupe; Haiti; Jamaica; Martinique; Montserrat; Puerto Rico; St Andres & Providenciales; St Barts; St Kitts & Nevis; Sint Eustatius & Saba; St Lucia; Sint Maarten; St Martin; St Vincent & The Grenadines; Trinidad & Tobago; Turks & Caicos; US Virgin Islands.

These are the official 30 nation states and territories in the Caribbean. Today we stepped ashore at St Barts and clocked up our 29th, leaving only sad, sad Haiti to visit. On St Barts we bought a his and hers Cartier watch and a Louis Vuitton handbag. And two coffees. You wouldn’t believe the price of those coffees! An absolute rip-off.

Actually that’s a lie. We didn’t buy anything in St Barts, not even coffees. I know a lot of people who regard themselves as sophisticated love St Barts and it attracts movie stars, media folk, fashionistas and Russian oligarchs. (It is not a place for UK footballers.) There are a handful of smart hotels, like Eden Rock, and plush villas close to decent beaches but this wasn’t a place we need to return to.

The main town, Gustavia, seemed devoid of charm, atmosphere or historical interest. What it did have was choking traffic, fashion label boutiques and bored shopkeepers smoking in their doorways. Gustavia didn’t disappoint; it was exactly what I expected. It could have been like gorgeous Simi in the Greek islands or Curacao. It wasn’t like that at all. It was just a shopping mall.

As with so many Caribbean ports of call, the highlight was the dawn approach when we were treated to a glorious Technicolor sunrise and views of Saba, St Eustatius, St Kitts, St Martin and St Barts itself. Sorry but that’s another list. The odd thing is that, as always, there were hardily any fellow passengers up that early on Decks 10 and 11 to enjoy the spectacle of sunrise, landscape, darting masked boobies and cruising frigate birds. My spirits soar at this hour.

Skipper Dag had forecast a lot of rain the other day in Jost Van Dyke and it didn’t rain at all. Skipper Dag said that was the first time in 20 years that the weather forecast had been wrong. Today he forecast heavy rain all day and, guess, what we had blue skies and puffy white clouds. Skipper Dag’s weather forecasts seem as dependable as the BBC’s. And, phew, it was seriously hot.

We have been eating all our meals in The Colonnade but tonight we went to the Main Dining Room. We were seated and we started to shiver in the empty cavernous room. So we went back to The Colonnade and had some lovely lamb and a raspberry pavlova. Tomorrow night, our last on the ship, we are at The Grill with Thomas Keller doing the laundry.

Tonight of course is the night of nights, when America decides between two unpopular Presidential candidates. Seabourn seem not to have made any special arrangements for this - no big screen event on an open deck or in a large lounge. We wondered why not so we asked. ‘We want to protect our champagne glasses,’ said a management person at Seabourn Square. ‘Put Clinton and Trump in the same room and there will be a war,’ she said.

I am on this cruise and their are so many people (all nationalities) talking about the election I want to vomit. I came on this cruise to get away from it. Please shut up!!! There are much better subjects

Best comment ever [emoji4]

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Fletcher,

I'm enjoying your posts thoroughly. Sorry I don't have the writing ability you have.

Best wishes!

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DAY 6 - GUADELOUPE

We were on deck as usual at 630am when the Quest ploughed its way through a pod of dolphins, past Base-Terre and into the tiny group of islands known as Iles de Saintes, part of the French department of Guadeloupe.

We had turned in last night at 10pm and even then it seemed that Mr Trump might have a surprise for the world. We looked in at 2am and it seemed even more serious and then at 4am it was confirmed. Yes, it’s the Brexit phenomenon and maybe that explains everything. But Europeans wonder how a woman with Hillary’s experience cannot defeat a man who is a groper, inarticulate, a bankrupt, a showbiz celeb, a businessman with a dubious business ethic who buys Chinese steel and yet claims he will create US jobs. We don’t really understand this but the hatred for Hillary is palpable. I feel a bit sorry for her. The whole US political establishment, Democrat and Republican, lies in ruins.

We think a lot of passengers went to bed early knowing what would happen and woke up to a major shock. Judging from our conversations and blatant eavesdropping we think it’s a shock many passengers are pleased with. We just hope that Mr Trump’s campaign style was all an act, calculated to appeal to the LCD, and that in office he’ll be another Ronald Reagan. The current thinking is that Mr Trump might be a good thing, especially for the UK’s trade interests, and while experts yesterday predicted a stock market crash the markets have experienced quite a bounce. Nobody knows anything.

Anyway, here we are in Terre-de-Haut, an impossibly lovely little island off the coast of Guadeloupe. This is the French Caribbean of your dreams, so much more appealing and attractive than plasticky, stuck-up St Barts. There are little shops, bars, bistros, fishermen sorting out their nets, a lovely church, sandy beaches. It’s a sort of paradise.

There is also a castle, Fort Napoleon, which has fabulous views down over the small town. Seabourn had an excursion up here for $79 per person. You could walk it but it’s a long way and a steep climb to the defibrilator. So we took a local tourist bus for 10 Euros round trip plus 5 Euros admission to the castle. This shouldn’t be missed - it’s as good a view as the one in Antigua from Shirley Heights - and you would be well advised to have Euros rather than US dollars. The French don’t like dollars at all.

The weather this morning was gorgeous, perhaps a little too hot, but blue skies and sunshine. Things started to turn around lunchtime and by 4pm it was some of the heaviest rain we have ever experienced. Captain Dag apologised for not forecasting this and kept his options open for tomorrow. Weather forecasts are like opinion polls. You can’t trust them an inch.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about our dinner at The Grill and a few closing thoughts about our little hop aboard the Seabourn Quest.

DAY 6 - GUADELOUPE

We were on deck as usual at 630am when the Quest ploughed its way through a pod of dolphins, past Base-Terre and into the tiny group of islands known as Iles de Saintes, part of the French department of Guadeloupe.

 

We had turned in last night at 10pm and even then it seemed that Mr Trump might have a surprise for the world. We looked in at 2am and it seemed even more serious and then at 4am it was confirmed. Yes, it’s the Brexit phenomenon and maybe that explains everything. But Europeans wonder how a woman with Hillary’s experience cannot defeat a man who is a groper, inarticulate, a bankrupt, a showbiz celeb, a businessman with a dubious business ethic who buys Chinese steel and yet claims he will create US jobs. We don’t really understand this but the hatred for Hillary is palpable. I feel a bit sorry for her. The whole US political establishment, Democrat and Republican, lies in ruins.

 

We think a lot of passengers went to bed early knowing what would happen and woke up to a major shock. Judging from our conversations and blatant eavesdropping we think it’s a shock many passengers are pleased with. We just hope that Mr Trump’s campaign style was all an act, calculated to appeal to the LCD, and that in office he’ll be another Ronald Reagan. The current thinking is that Mr Trump might be a good thing, especially for the UK’s trade interests, and while experts yesterday predicted a stock market crash the markets have experienced quite a bounce. Nobody knows anything.

 

Anyway, here we are in Terre-de-Haut, an impossibly lovely little island off the coast of Guadeloupe. This is the French Caribbean of your dreams, so much more appealing and attractive than plasticky, stuck-up St Barts. There are little shops, bars, bistros, fishermen sorting out their nets, a lovely church, sandy beaches. It’s a sort of paradise.

 

There is also a castle, Fort Napoleon, which has fabulous views down over the small town. Seabourn had an excursion up here for $79 per person. You could walk it but it’s a long way and a steep climb to the defibrilator. So we took a local tourist bus for 10 Euros round trip plus 5 Euros admission to the castle. This shouldn’t be missed - it’s as good a view as the one in Antigua from Shirley Heights - and you would be well advised to have Euros rather than US dollars. The French don’t like dollars at all.

 

The weather this morning was gorgeous, perhaps a little too hot, but blue skies and sunshine. Things started to turn around lunchtime and by 4pm it was some of the heaviest rain we have ever experienced. Captain Dag apologised for not forecasting this and kept his options open for tomorrow. Weather forecasts are like opinion polls. You can’t trust them an inch.

 

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about our dinner at The Grill and a few closing thoughts about our little hop aboard the Seabourn Quest.

Glad you enjoyed Les Saintes. I have been there several times and it is my favourite Caribbean island.

DAY 7 - BARBADOS

Until last night we had eaten every single meal at The Colonnade. Then last night, which was our last night, we went to The Grill for dinner. Oh dear, what a mistake that turned out to be. The only good thing about it was that Seabourn didn’t charge a supplement to eat there, though they clearly want you to buy some fancy wines to go with their awful food.

My starter was consommé and it tasted like a Knorr beef stock cube. My wife’s starter was clam chowder but it seemed like a bowl of cream with two or three lumps of something indiscernible. For our mains we both chose lobster thermidor and we both had about three mouthfuls and left the rest. Of course, this wasn’t lobster thermidor at all. Lobster thermidor is served in the shell, with mashed potato, béchamel sauce, mustard, brandy and a cheese topping chucked under the salamander. It’s not a classic for nothing. But this lobster thermidor was deconstructed and re-imagined by Thomas Keller who is far too clever to simply offer a dish that has taken maybe a century to perfect. His lobster thermidor was basically nicely poached lobster meat drowning in a half pound of melted butter. Writing this a day later at our hotel in Barbados, my stomach still heaves with the curdled memory of it. That really was a most heavy, old-fashioned, disgusting dish. We passed on desserts and left the room which, by the way, was as cold as a morgue. A lousy house wine, too, like a £4.99 job from Sainsbury’s.

Apart from our dismal experience at The Grill I have to say that the Seabourn Quest is the best ship we have ever been on. We hardly made use of any of its facilities - the pools, hot tubs, gym, spa, casino, musical shows, quizzes, boutiques, even the main dining room, these went tried and untested by us. We missed not having a proper promenade deck but that’s our only criticism.

We loved The Colonnade and apart from one poor dish, a dry osso bucco, we thought the food amazingly varied and consistently brilliant all the way through breakfast, lunch and dinner. We thought the house wines were slightly less impressive than our last trip but not enough to cut off humanitarian aid to Argentina. We loved Seabourn Square in all its aspects. We thought the staff were absolutely top-notch. The tender operation worked a treat - we never had to wait more than five minutes. Our cabin was fully functional, even if our tub gurgled up from next door’s foamy effluent. We thought the clock should have been illuminous and the water tumblers more squat but that’s about it.

I think there was someone on board called Cruise Director. We never encountered him or her. Coming mainly from expedition cruise ships where we have a team of naturalists, we can’t quite get used to the idea of a Cruise Director. What do they do??? On our first Seabourn trip we did get to meet the Cruise Director who hadn’t a clue where we were from one day to the next. People on Seabourn also tend to dress up and rattle their jewellery, as John Lennon would say, more than people on expedition ships on which people tend to dress down. We bumped into one of the biggest landowners and aristocrats in the UK on an expedition ship and he habitually wore jeans and a Pink Floyd T-shirt. On the Quest there were quite a few turkey buzzards dressed as spring chickens, all at sixes and sevens and dressed up to the nines. But we liked the mix of nationalities - in the staff as well as the passengers - so I was able to brush up on my Croatian and Portuguese. We also valued our experience of being aboard for the Presidential election which we watched assiduously until we knew who was the President Erect.

All in all, though, this second Seabourn experience was a cut above the Silversea trip to West Africa we did last November. Our next cruise is on Regent’s Navigator, sailing next August from Montreal to Iceland via Greenland, and that will have to go some to top the performance of The Quest.

We’ll be back. In the meantime, thanks for my reading my posts and thanks for your comments.

Dear Fletcher,

Thank you for your eloguent writing. I have enjoyed it fully.