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Silversea Muse Live #2 Sept. 12-28


onetravelbug
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No, he is a retired teacher from NY, and has a love for old and new ships. He knows his ocean liners and modern cruise ships. Makes it all come alive.

 

Appreciate all of these great posts, details, comments and follow-ups on the Silver Muse, your sailing, etc. Sounds like great fun!! Like it when there are interesting speakers on a cruise.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

Enjoyed a 14-day, Jan. 20-Feb. 3, 2014, Sydney to Auckland adventure, getting a big sampling for the wonders of "down under” before and after this cruise. Go to:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1974139

for more info and many pictures of these amazing sights in this great part of the world. Now at 187,614 views for this posting.

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Some final thoughts -

If you have two or more people looking at the same thing, you will usually get that many opinions on the subject. What I think may not be what another observer thinks is true. Saying that, here are my very subjective thoughts as we are finishing our 16 day cruise.

The ship- I believe that almost everyone will love the decor, cabins, and general layout of the Muse. Is there room for improvement? Of course and we already see SS making changes in the restaurant reservation system and space usage in the Atlantide and the Dolce Vita. How well this turns out is for future cruisers to evaluate, but it is encouraging to see SS taking their passengers comments seriously. The addition of a formal tea, and coffee service in the Observation lounge would increase the likelihood that I would book another cruise on the Muse.

The restaurants- Food and Service is very good to excellent. My only suggestion here would be to rotate the menus at all venues which is presently not being done. My very subjective list of the best to my least favorite restaurants are as follows:

Best to least favorite restaurant.

Atlantide- Also a great place for breakfast if you want a relaxing environment and great service. Easily the number one choice for us.

La Terrazza - At its best in the evening with great service and delicious food.

Hot Rocks - This might surprise some that I would rate this venue as high as I did. However, with the expanded menu and the great food it has to be one of my favorites. The only downside is the weather, which can take away the enjoyment.

Kaiseki- The food was excellent. The only negative here is the additional charge of $60/person. Due to the low ceiling, there is not much of a show presentation that you might experience at a land restaurant. If there was a “show” with the service it might deserve the $60, but since it doesn’t SS should consider lowering the per person charge in the future. I did not return for a second evening. Go for lunch, at no charge, if you want to experience Japanese food.

La Dame - I did not eat here, so this is not rated high or low. Read other posters to get a taste of what to expect.

The Grill - I separated this out from Hot Rocks as it is an entirely different experience. I felt that the sandwiches offered were not anything exceptional. Two out of three sandwiches we had here were below standards I would have expected. However, the fries were very good.

Silver Note - we ate here one night, and was somewhat surprised on the format. When I had made reservations several months in advance I had come to believe they served tapas. Not so now, it has an emphasis on spicy foods. Six appetizers, three hot and three cold were offered. A few were spiced in marinated sauces so they were not able to lower the spices on these. For those other items they were willing to reduce the spice level as requested. There were six entrees, three seafood and three meat/vegetable. All were seasoned to some extent. A nice small restaurant with live piano music and a solo singer.

Spaccanapoli - A great place for some pizza. Be careful here, as the wait staff’s description of a small pizza might surprise you to find there is no such thing as small. Again the downside is that it is an outside venue so the weather might not be kind. Others might not consider pizza as a luxury item, so each will have to make their own decision as to whether to this is a place for you or not.

Indochine - This was our least favorite restaurant as, in general, we are not fans of the Asian spices. Talking with several guest, they either thought it was their favorite restaurant or their least favorite restaurant. I would have downsized this space and increased the Atlantide space. Time will tell if Indochine survives in its present format and space.

Happy cruising to everyone.

.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Now to a few points about our first two days. We used the Silversea transfers from our London hotel to Southampton. This was over a two hour bus trip to get us to the Muse. Yes, I know many of you despise a bus transfer especially a two hour transfer, but it did go fairly smooth. The check in was one of the easiest I have ever experienced. The total process couldn't have taken more than ten minutes (including our walking time to get on the ship). Since our arrival was at 2 PM, we were able to go directly to our cabin. Most of our luggage (including the above mentioned shipped luggage) beat us to our room. Several messages were waiting for us in our suite, including the Meet & Mingle Cruise Critic for 6:30 that evening (more later on the M&G). Our dinning reservations (as requested) and our shore excursions tickets were also available. A quick visit to the La Terrazza for a bite to eat, and then off to unpack our luggage with the normal Life Boat drill a short time later.

First impressions of the Muse: I am not going to bore you with what other threads have said, but needless to say we were impressed with the ship. If anyone has a specific question I would be happy to reply. My DW told me she really likes the ship, so I guess that is another A+ for Silversea.

A quick trip to the Observation lounge at 6:30 for a conversation with our cruise director, hotel director, and guess relations director and several CC travelers. James our CD told us there were 17 CC on board, but we only had 5 present at our M&G. If anyone doubts the influence CC has on Silversea, you would be wrong. It was mentioned twice the first two days that everyone in corporate reads our posts.

 

 

I was on the same cruise and was looking forward to the Meet and Greet evening. Unfortunately, we missed this event, which occurred on the first night of the cruise.There was no invitation in the room when we initially boarded, and after we had gone for drinks at La Dolce Vita at 6pm, followed by dinner at Atlantide, we returned to our room to find the invitation in an envelope on our bed. Had we received the invitation on time, we would definitely have gone to this event. It makes me wonder whether other CC guests had the same experience, hence the low numbers at the M&G.

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As a non tea drinker (or any hot drinks for that matter), its not something that will not affect me in the slightest and haven't even seen anyone have high tea on any cruise I've been on. I'm sure it has happened though - just not noticed it.

 

Seems a bit odd to be removed though knowing people do enjoy it as can be seen in this thread (even though I don't think I'd need to read the comments to think it to be the case.). Was this decision made because less people were partaking? Given there is less to do generally on Silversea ships than bigger cruise line ships, it does seem a little odd this little piece of tradition and luxury is removed especially as commented on sea days. Cost cant be a factor surely? A cup of tea, cucumber sarnie and cake are hardly caviar territory!

 

Where's Mark gone? :p

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...haven't even seen anyone have high tea on any cruise I've been on...

Us neither. In fact, high tea seems to have almost completely disappeared as a concept and has been replaced with afternoon tea, which is very nice but not the same as high tea. Mind you the dining room opens so early that it would be hard to fit a high tea in!

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