mahdnc

We’re having dinner at Tuscan Grille again tonight (630pm). There are 53 seated guests including ourselves. Seeing that the Chef’s Table is still being advertised in the Celebrity Today, I asked the maitre d’ how many Chefs Tables were they doing on this fourteen night cruise. He said only two times—embarkation day and Cartagena day. He said they tried to organize a third one for tomorrow, but there are only four passengers that are interested and the chef wants a minimum of six.

Perhaps it’s because the telescope was used for evil……

Beyond the Podium speaker, Kelly Beatty, has been taking his small telescope and setting it up at the pool deck area (Deck 10) for any passengers that wanted to take a peek at the afternoon sun to see its sunspots. His 3 inch refractor telescope is outfitted with a solar filter to make it safe for direct viewing and the telescope is mounted on a tripod with an automatic tracker which kept the telescope always pointed at the sun. The sun was being viewed with 30x magnification. It was not a scheduled activity or one that was declared in the Celebrity Today schedule. I would say that about 20-30 people that were walking by took a quick peek at the sun during the one hour that Kelly had the telescope set up. Kelly has been presenting on Celebrity ships for a few years now. He will be on board for an upcoming Equinox trans-Atlantic sailing. He will also be on a Celebrity sailing that visits Iceland and ends in Boston. He is a fan of the Celebrity product and loves the Edge class ships although he said that the biggest drawback with Edge class is the lack of a dark space to view the night sky. During one of Kelly's presentations he mentioned that he graduated from Caltech which was a pleasant surprise for me since I got my graduate degree from there. He was there 10 years before I arrived.

@90scruzer, after his presentation today, I cornered Bill to ask him to clarify why Summit would not have gone through the new locks. When I first asked him about that a few days ago, he kinda gave me a funny look like it was a question with an obvious answer--he told me then that "Summit is too small to go through the new locks" without any explanation. So today I asked him to be more specific and to clarify that remark. Bill said that the toll is more expensive to go through the new locks and Celebrity did not pay for that. He then went on to say that even if Celebrity wanted to pay extra for Summit to go through the new locks, the Panama Canal Authority would not allow it. I asked him if it was because of water usage. He said if the full water recycle capability of the new locks was used, the new locks actually consume 7% less water than the old locks.

I attended two Beyond the Podium presentations today. Pluto's Amazing Story With Kelly Beatty was this morning. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in Feb 1930 and its size turned out to be much smaller than expected which ignited a modern day debate on whether Pluto should have "planet" status. Kelly does a good job in taking a boring and technical subject and making it entertaining. And I was at the heavily attended Puerto Vallarta Paradise by the Sea with Bill Fall in the early afternoon. Bill also included some presentation slides devoted to the subject of how Panama Canal pilots are trained and re-trained. In addition to having a simulation lab, there is a small scale mock up of portions of the Panama Canal and its locks for people to actually practice on. It looked like an amusement park ride. I continually am amazed at the amount of knowledge that Bill has on the Panama Canal. Bill disembarks Summit tomorrow at Puerto Vallarta. Too bad for us.

Pickleball under sunny skies today up on Deck 12. Not much wind. Seemed like excellent weather for this sport.

My wife participated in some kind of raffle promotion for the Celebrity Shops. Captain Saitis drew the three winning raffle tickets. I was mildly surprised at how well attended it was.

We received this in our stateroom last night:

A few photos around the ship today:

I had to look it up to be sure: Marella Explorer is the old Century! We took our first Celebrity cruise on Century during her inaugural year in 1996. The three Century class ships were Century, Galaxy, and Mercury. We had one of the middle row of cabins in your photo. Back then, there were no balconies for that row of cabins. Thank you for posting!

I always liked the seaside view of the glass elevators on Millennium class ships!

Good morning from Summit. It’s another beautiful day in neighborhood!

Celebrity Today Day 11 At Sea 6 of 8 Celebrity Today Day 10 At Sea 5 of 8 Celebrity Today Day 9 At Sea 4 of 8 Celebrity Today Day 8 Puntarenas Celebrity Today Day 7 At Sea 3 of 8 Celebrity Today Day 6 Panama Canal Transit Celebrity Today Day 5 Colon Celebrity Today Day 4 Cartagena Celebrity Today Day 3 At Sea 2 of 8 Celebrity Today Day 2 At Sea 1 of 8 Celebrity Today Day 1 Miami

Yes, Summit was Revolutionized in 2019. We are all aware of the changes to the look of the ship from that dry dock. Most of the problems I’ve seen are “beneath the hood” which would not necessarily have been addressed.

The photo of the island from the air that you posted is North Seymour Island. Don’t forget that you’ll be taking a trip back to Quito from sea level so you are not out of the woods altitude sickness-wise. There is prescription medication for high altitude sickness called Diamox. Depending on how long you’ll be in Quito on the back end of your Galapagos trip, you should look into getting some. The moon is not currently in the evening sky. Take advantage of that and be sure to look at the stars. A pair of binoculars will come in handy. Be sure to look for objects not visible or not easily visible from the more northerly latitudes such as the famous Southern Cross, the Large/Small Magellanic Clouds (companion galaxies to our Milky Way which are naked eye objects), and the very bright star, Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star to our solar system. Very bright areas of the Milky Way will be visible from the Galapagos, too. Since you have good onboard WiFi, be sure to download any number of sky gazing apps to help you locate stars and constellations. I’m glad you got your DSLR back. Enjoy your wonderful cruise.

We stopped by Cafe Al Bacio tonight to pick up a few snacks for this evening. Here were tonight's offerings:

We had dinner at the MDR tonight. Panzanella Salad: Cream of Chicken Soup: Pasta Chimayo Linguine Chocolate Lava Cake with Vanilla Ice Cream:

Ha. I forgot!

I attended the 8 pm star gazing session led by Kelly Beatty up at the Rooftop Terrace. My wife stayed in our cabin while I went up there to attend. I got there about 15 minutes late and I was surprised at the decent number of people who attended. The session involved identifying naked eye objects (no telescope, no binoculars). For the most part, Kelly, used his green laser pointer to point at and identify the bright stars in the sky such as Sirius and Arcturus. But the cloudless sky was not very transparent because of the heavy humidity in the air and the smoke from Summit's stack. So Kelly was unsuccessful in showing the audience the famous Southern Cross which was hanging very low in the southern sky (Southern Cross cannot reasonably be seen from most of the mid and northern USA). Also there were no bright planets out in the sky at that time either. Anyway he did an excellent job when you consider what he had to work with.

We are currently in an FV cabin on Summit (now categorized as UV). It has sofa bed for a 3rd person. It has a lot of space in the cabin and an extremely large balcony. There are 12 UV cabins on Summit--all facing out the back of the ship. Here are photos of our cabin (8166) taken last week: Reflection has 4 FV/UV cabins--all located at the front corner of the ship. These cabins are even more massive than the ones on Summit although the balcony is more conventionally sized. Here is a scaled floor plan I drew up: Silhouette's four FV/UV cabins have been converted to Horizon Suites. Since you are planning on getting two cabins, you have a lot more options with combinations of conventional cabins (e.g. getting a triple cabin + a regular cabin, getting connecting cabins, etc) which is what I am guessing you will end up with. My experience is limited to FV/UV because my wife, two kids, and I cruised 14 times with Celebrity all in one cabin--virtually all the time in a family cabin. Good luck. David

Have a nice cruise!

I understand. Did you have a specific ship picked out? Makes a big difference with your options.

Celebrity does not sponsor the Connections gatherings anymore. You and your roll call will need to organize you own informal get togethers (sail away, etc).

Nice report and photos, Cannot wait to see more.