Currently on Muse Venice to Monte Carlo

We are currently on our first Silversea and luxury cruise after spending many night on the mass market (primarily HAL and Princess) lines.

We now see why people pay the extra $$ for this line.

We have been extremely impressed with the ship, the food and, for the most part, the service. The one notable exception to the service is breakfast in the Atlantic. It was slow and erratic the past 2 mornings. This morning we had breakfast in La Terrazza and the service was excellent. One notable example of excellent service was the waiter in the grill that insisted on bringing our burgers to us in the Panorama on deck 9 lounge from the grill on deck 10.

We have are currently on our 4th day in Hvar Croatia. We have thus far eaten in La Terazza, La Dame and Kaisecki. All have Ben excellent and better than anything we have had on other lines. The Tonight is Indochine.

I will be glad to answer any question questions I can that may come up.

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Glad you are enjoying Ernieb.

I too found breakfast was a bit slow in Atlantide. So only recommended if you've bags of time and want a relaxing breakfast.

9/10 I use la terrazza which is superb IMHO.

The clip I posted on YouTube verifies how good the food looks. Always great to get a terrace table when possible too.

Indochine was my favourite so hope you enjoy this evening.

Arts cafe is great too.

The breakfast looks good .... how does it compare with other ships ?

We are currently on our first Silversea and luxury cruise after spending many night on the mass market (primarily HAL and Princess) lines.

 

We now see why people pay the extra $$ for this line.

 

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Yes. This is a huge problem. Once one has tasted the joys of a luxury line, it's difficult (for some, impossible) to go back to premium or lower. Perhaps luxury lines should be required to post warnings (like those on cigarette packs) on all publicity: "WARNING: TRAVEL ON LUXURY CRUISE SHIPS MAY BE ADDICTIVE."

We are currently on our 4th day in Hvar Croatia.

A few further thoughts on the ship.

To begin with she is beautiful! I've heard the decor described as "understated elegance" which is appropriate. The whole atmosphere is pleasant and enjoyable. The one exception is most of the art work. The bulk of the paintings look like they could be done by my German Shepherd and my Golden Retriever dragging their tails through the paint and then wagging them against the canvas. There are a number of very nice vases but they are offset by a couple of sculptures consisting of a bunch of hair blow dryers glued together and painted bronze.

The music that is played in the public areas is very pleasant and enjoyable. The band playing during cocktail hour in the Panorama Lounge is very good and the singer in the Silver Note is fantastic.

All-in-all, a very enjoyable experience!

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The one exception is most of the art work. The bulk of the paintings look like they could be done by my German Shepherd and my Golden Retriever dragging their tails through the paint and then wagging them against the canvas.

That's unfair.

The dogs might do a better job! Lol

I remarked similar in my summary. I don't mind "modern arr, but some was truly awful bits of tat in lovely frames.

Worst were the ones which contained photographs. What were they thinking about!!

I know I took some photos of the hideous ones.... but none on my phone.

Here's some examples of good art and meh...

All opinions and subjective of course!

In stair well ...

One ok one not so! (In arts cafe)

Ernie

Glad you are enjoying!

As long as it's in a lovely frame you can call it art. Take it out of the frame and you call it a bird cage liner.

Or a pee pad for the dog and a kitty liner for the litter pan.:eek:

We are now back home after our first Silversea cruise on the Muse. We are probably hooked on luxury cruise lines as we really enjoyed our time on the Muse.:D

As I've mentioned before, the ship is beautiful with what has been appropriately described as "understated elegance", except for a good portion of the "art". We enjoyed the size of the ship, which was close to capacity, but never felt crowded. Our deluxe veranda suite was not quite as large as our previous penthouse suites on HAL and Princess, but was very comfortable and the size was adequate. The veranda was not as large as HAL but was much larger and more usable than the one we had on the Royal Princess. Whi8le I was initially concerned with the lack of complementary laundry service, it turned out to not be as bad as I expected. We did use the complementary self-service laundry room which was a little hectic since there is only one set of machines on each floor and they were heavily used. We also sent out laundry to the pay service a couple of times which war pretty expensive.

Our experience with the restaurants was very positive. we did not have dinner at Spaccanapoli, Hot Rocks, or Silver Note. We did make reservations on the 120 day mark for 2 nights each at Atlantide, La Terrazza, La Dame, Silver Note, Kaiseki and Indochine. When we got onboard, all reservations were confirmed with some slight differences in times. After reading the menu at Silver Note and dining the first time at Indochine and Kaiseki, we decided to change the remaining reservations to omit these restaurants. There were no problems with making the changes. Of course La Dame and Kaiseki carry a hefty cover charge of $60 p/p. After dining at Kaiseki we decided that it would not be worth the $120 to return for a second visit. The food in Indochine is enjoyed by many, however we thought we would enjoy the other venues more so we changed the second reservation. The food and service in La Dame was excellent and after we made our initial reservation changes we were actually waitlisted for a 3rd night there. However, after we ate a number of times in Atlantide, we decided the food and service were just as good there as La Dame without the heavy cover charge, so we cancelled the waitlist. While we did not dine in Silver Note, we did spend almost every evening there for drinks and to listen to vocalist Esther and her pianist Chantal. They were easily one of the best acts we have ever enjoyed on a cruise.

The service in all the restaurants was excellent particularly for dinner. However we primarily had breakfast in Atlantide and often the breakfast service there was less than satisfactory. Perhaps they just needed more time to wake up. The best service on the ship however came from the lunch time waiters in Spaccanapoli on deck 11 and The Grill on deck 10. My DW and I did not want to eat outside in the heat and instead preferred to have our lunch along with Margaritas down on deck 9 in the Panorama Lounge. The waiters from each of the lunchtime restaurants happily delivered our food to us in the much more comfortable lounge.:cool:

We did not partake of any of the cruise line excursions. We find them to be excessively expensive compared to what can be arranged individually. We did arrange 2 tours through Rome-In-Limo for the Amalfi Coast and for Florence and a wine tasting out of Livorno. As usual, except for an initial problem in Livorno where they tried to pick us up in a van rather than the sedan we booked, the service was excellent. The van was fairly promptly replaced by a sedan with the driver we had requested resulting in an excellent day. Even though the cruise was very port intensive with no sea days, we only went into port a couple of other times. A lot of this was because most ports required the use of tenders which we do not enjoy, but also because we were extremely happy to have the ship as our luxury resort.

Our only real complaint about this trip was about the timing, which is of course our own fault. Venice, as well as all the ports was extremely crowded and hot. Also we were somewhat surprised to find a good number of children on board, some of which were poorly supervised.:mad: We will definitely pick either the spring or later in maybe September from now on.

As I mentioned above we are hooked on luxury cruises. I think we would like to consider a Trans Atlantic, but am somewhat concerned about the ability of the smaller ships to handle the po9ssible heavy seas. I am reading with interest the thread by Lois R containing comparisons between the luxury lines. While we may look at alternatives, it will be very hard to beat this cruise.

Cruise Director - Rico Du Breil. Quite enjoyable.

Maitre D - ???

I think we would like to consider a Trans Atlantic, but am somewhat concerned about the ability of the smaller ships to handle the po9ssible heavy seas.

If I interpret your posts correctly it is the ship as much as the ports-of-call that became the destination. We feel the same and consider port days an intrusion into the lazy rhythm of days at sea. A TA is a great way to spend time on the ship and take advantage of the resort-like nature of SS. The smaller ships can certainly get lively in big seas - if you are at all concerned about this then even a larger ship like the Muse or Spirit is going to be more excitiing than one of the leviathons such as the QM2. We have 3 TAs booked but have a history of only one TA on SS (Spirit) and one on the QM2 (which did not suit us because of the size although it handled a spirited North Atlantic in Dec with ease).

Go on - try a TA. You'll love it!

Cruise Director - Rico Du Breil. Quite enjoyable.

 

Maitre D - ???

That's interesting. Rico was our Cruise director on the Wind in March on our Caribbean voyage. In conversation I mentioned I'd be on the Muse in June and he said Jimmy would be the CD. At that stage he definitely didn't know he was Muse bound. We liked him a lot and thought he was a good asset for SS and very personable.

Maitre D for us was Sebastian - but that doesn't mean he'd be yours as the above shows! I wasn't keen on him if I'm honest.

Glad everything worked well for you and I'd say your summary was pretty much as we found the Muse and summarised myself. Super ship, great staff - though still learning when we cruised, reservation system worked and was flexible. Though Indochine was my favourite but food is always subjective. Plus we found the art work mostly as hideous as you did. I wished I'd taken photos of some of the really bad ones but didn't want to be seen doing so and mistakingly viewed as "enjoying" it! The ones that photos appeared in were the worst and looked like something done in a primary school art lesson... but then so did many of the "reasonable"ones. Lol

These were ok in the arts cafe but still very primary school artish!