Silhouette Review - 18 Nov out of Rome - Med and Adriatic Seas (13 Nights)

[Iluvcruising2]

Dinner on the first night. Again, a historic dinner for us. Our first dinner on a Celebrity cruise ship in the Main Dining Room. My pictures didn't turn out great as the place was rather dark. We opted for early seating so the doors opened to the Grand Cuvee Dining room at 5:45pm. We were told that the latest we could get seated was 30 minutes after 5:45pm, i.e. 6:15pm.

 

The menu page 1.

 

The menu page 2.

 

Can't really remember what this starter was.

 

Lemon pepper roasted chicken.

[Iluvcruising2]

Those of you who have seen my other cruise reviews on the Royal Caribbean thread would have noticed that I put up many, many pictures of food. I will endeavour to do the same for this review.

 

The roasted trout

 

Mediterranean Seafood Orzo (fancy name!) This was quite good.

 

The dessert menu.

 

Chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. This was a favorite with my kids. It is not on the menu but you can ask for it every evening.

 

Chocolate Lava Cake. This is one of the better desserts in the MDR. Overall, we were not impressed with Celebrity desserts in the MDR and Oceanview. The other food, however, was generally very good.

[H2OH!]

good review so far. Thanks for sharing.

[Iluvcruising2]

Day 2. This was a port day, Livorno for Florence and Pisa. I have put most of my pictures and commentary on my blog.

 

Please go to http://guitar123foodandtravel.blogspot.sg/2013/12/florence-and-pisa-port-of-livorno-italy.html to see more pictures.

 

Meanwhile, here is just a snapshot of what we saw.

 

We hired a taxi and driver from a company called Tuscany by Taxi. He picked us up at the port. The drive into Florence took an hour. Traffic was smooth as this was off-season.

 

This is at the centre of Florence. The taxi driver dropped us off here and gave us about 3 hours to roam freely.

 

You can easily walk around Florence historic centre by foot. There is quite a lot to see in a short time so we didn't get to see all. The Duomo Cathedral is a definite must-see. Quite awesome, with all the marble.

 

This was inside the Cathedral, looking up at the Dome. Basilica di Santa Maria del FioreAwesome. Actually, I like this more than the Sistine Chapel!

 

This was a very famous bridge.

 

Of course, we had to go to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower!

 

Here is a short video clip taken in front of the Leaning Tower.

[Iluvcruising2]

Before we continue, please be aware of the epic battle ongoing, right on the Celebrity Silhouette.

 

[Iluvcruising2]

Apologies. The earlier dinner I posted was not embarkation day, but Day 2. Unfortunately cruise critic board doesn't allow me to edit the older posts. So these are some pictures from Day 1 - embarkation day. This is the historic first dinner, not the earlier one!

 

Our waiter was called Terance, from India. Our Assistant Waiter was Nemad.

 

This was the dinner menu.

 

This was the Kid's menu. Our kids only ate fro this menu once throughout the entire cruise. For all subsequent dinners, they ate (a lot!) from the adult menu. Very proud of them!

 

The seasonal fruit medley, available every evening. For some reason, my kids loved this as their first course. (very healthy!)

[Iluvcruising2]

Day 1 (Embarkation Day) Main Dining Room Dinner continued...

 

Chilled Shrimp Louis

 

French onion soup

 

Cream of wild forest mushroom soup

 

The chicken - Oven roasted jerk spiced chicken

 

This should be the home-style pork chop.

 

No desserts this evening. For most evenings (other than Formal Nights) we did not stay for dessert. Reason was that we wanted to catch the early show at 7:15pm. The late show at 9:15pm was too late for the kids. As a general rule, we made the kids sleep by about 9pm every night. At their age, they need their 10 hours of sleep otherwise they won't grow properly and they get all cranky the next day.

 

The solitary tree. I wonder if the tree feels lonely.

[hazelmaye]

I want to thank you for your wonderful pictures and interesting comments. i know your children will always remember this trip.

[Iluvcruising2]

Day 3 was a sea day. This was also the first formal night as well as the first production show. There would be three formal nights for this 13Night cruise.

 

Breakfast on Day 3. You could get eggs benedict at the Oceanview. This was not the case for the Windjammer on Royal Caribbean.

 

The Oceanview cafe in the morning. Very quiet. Overnight, the seas were rocky. I think many cruisers were still in bed.

 

Here are some of the offerings at breakfast in the Oceanview. They were the same every day.

 

Bacon, potatos, boiled eggs

 

Stuff to go with your cereal.

 

Milk and yogurt.

 

Ham, smoked salmon, condiments.

[Iluvcruising2]

Jams and spreads.

 

Waffles, fried bread and others.

 

Scrambled Eggs

 

Breads and muffins. They would toast for you.

 

They had two egg stations where you could order all types of eggs. This was very popular. After a few days, my favorite was egg-white omelette with asparagus, mushrooms and peppers.

[Iluvcruising2]

I want to thank you for your wonderful pictures and interesting comments. i know your children will always remember this trip.

 

Thank you for your comment.

 

Yes, I think this trip has left a very deep impression on them. They keep talking about it. I am busy arranging my pictures and videos for easy reference. I hope when they are grown, they will look back at cruises like these and remember the times.

[Iluvcruising2]

Ship's position at 7:50am on a sea day. (Day 3)

 

This morning, they had the Galley Tour which is open to all ship guests. We had to turn up in the dining room at 10am and they conducted the tour very efficiently in batches.

 

One question asked was how does the Galley know how much of each dish the passengers would consume at MDR. The Executive Chef said that they have a lot of data over the years and they could predict, with a 10% error margin, how much to prepare. Wastage was very little. Cool!

 

Here is my group waiting to enter the galley. Leading us was the chef in charge of desserts.

 

Food preparation in progress. Looks like some lamb.

 

A closer look at the meat.

 

There were many good questions asked. I learnt that no MSG was used for cooking. Also, for the soups, they cooked them from scratch.

 

The waiters had to order the food through an electronic system. You can see the electronic screen here. From this, the preparers knew exactly how much food (each dish) to prepare.

[Iluvcruising2]

Straight after the Galley Tour, they had set up the 'Taste of Silhouette' on Deck 5. They use this exhibition to showcase all the gourmet food from the speciality restaurants.

 

 

More food

 

There was a lot of food to look at, but very little to taste. LoL.

 

A closer look at the lollipops (Qsine)

 

More food

[LipBalmAddict]

Wow, so spectacular! DH and I have our eye on an Adriatic cruise on the Silhouette next year, so I'll be reading your thread with great interest! Glad that you had such a great time and thanks for sharing your experience with us!

Edited December 8, 2013 by LipBalmAddict

[drarill]

Amazing pictures and amazing review!! Love your perspective as someone that cruised with Royal before. It is really nice to get the Elite perks through the reciprocity with C&A. Looking forward to the rest of your review. We cruised on the Silhouette two years ago and loved it!!! Thanks for taking the time to share your cruise with us.:):)

[cibumcupio]

Loving you review so far. Sad that you didn't get to try more desserts from the MDR, and the ones you did try you didn't think were as good. I actually thought the Celebrity desserts are a notch above Royal Caribbean's. Especially the creme brulee. Mmm.

 

Also, what did your in-laws think of cruising since it was their first time?

[Iluvcruising2]

Wow, so spectacular! DH and I have our eye on an Adriatic cruise on the Silhouette next year, so I'll be reading your thread with great interest! Glad that you had such a great time and thanks for sharing your experience with us!

 

Go for it! I'm sure you'll enjoy it very much.

[Iluvcruising2]

Amazing pictures and amazing review!! Love your perspective as someone that cruised with Royal before. It is really nice to get the Elite perks through the reciprocity with C&A. Looking forward to the rest of your review. We cruised on the Silhouette two years ago and loved it!!! Thanks for taking the time to share your cruise with us.:):)

 

Yes, Elite perks were one important consideration why we decided to try this cruise!

[Iluvcruising2]

Loving you review so far. Sad that you didn't get to try more desserts from the MDR, and the ones you did try you didn't think were as good. I actually thought the Celebrity desserts are a notch above Royal Caribbean's. Especially the creme brulee. Mmm.

 

Also, what did your in-laws think of cruising since it was their first time?

 

Yes, we didn't get to try too many of the desserts at MDR. We tried almost all their desserts at OceanView and found them quite disappointing.

 

However, to be fair, I think everything else about Oceanview is better than Windjammer. Food is better, wider selection and definitely not as crowded.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Iluvcruising2

[Iluvcruising2]

Tasting from the Molecular Bar at the same Taste of Silhouette event. I got to taste this drink, though I cannot remember what it was called. Help me out here?

 

A closer look at the drink.

[Iluvcruising2]

There was a bit more sun today (Day 3 Sea Day). So more people at the outdoor pool.

 

Time, 4:06pm. It almost looked like we are going to sail into land. Don't worry, that is not going to happen. The reality is that the Silhouette has such an advanced propulsion system, that she can hop over the piece of land, to get to the other side. Yeah.

 

Meanwhile, a couple of Volcanoes that sprout up along the way ain't going to stop us either. Go Silhouette Go!

 

Volcano: I will huff and I will puff. Yeah, don't mess with me.

[Iluvcruising2]

As we leave the ship to the Captain's good hands, we head on to our first ever formal night on the Celebrity Silhouette.

 

Picture of the Main Dining Room.

 

Menu for the evening. Looks very good. I want everything! (Greedy....)

 

These were the crispy frog legs. Not bad! Tasted a bit like chicken.

 

Some salad for me. I must have been feeling a bit healthy.

[Iluvcruising2]

This looked like some chicken. I can't find it on the menu. I suspect it must be the grilled chicken breast. One of my kids loved to order this at every dinner.

 

This was Celebrity's Signature Beef Tournedo. It was really good. My boy loved it!

 

This was the seared duck.

 

This was the Black Salmon.

 

I didn't take a picture of the lamb, but it was very good too.

 

The dessert menu.

 

I took the apple crumble. Just mediocre.

[Iluvcruising2]

As mentioned earlier, during Formal Nights, the show starts later, at 8:30pm instead of 7:15pm. So we didn't have to rush dinner and had plenty of time to prepare for the first production show. We were certainly looking forward to it.

 

We got to the Silhouette theatre at about 8:15pm and it was almost full! We were surprised because in the previous evenings, the theatre was at most 3/4 full even at the start of the performance. It looks like the production shows are very popular.

 

We sat at Deck 5, balcony area. Take note that the crew will cordon off the centre portion of Deck 5 for Suite guests and only release those seats about 5 minutes before the show starts. I didn't see them reserving any seats in Deck 4 for Suite Guests.

 

 

The Production show on the first night was excellent. A few notches above what we have seen on Royal (we have only been on Voyager Class, haven't seen the shows on Oasis/Allure).

[Iluvcruising2]

I have put up many photos of the port of call on my blog

http://guitar123foodandtravel.blogspot.sg/2013/12/corfu-greece-port-of-call.html

 

The following two posts give a snapshot.

 

We arranged for our own private excursion, using a company called Corfu Sunrise. They are actually a car rental company located just opposite the port. Originally, the plan was to rent a car and self-drive. However, it turned out that getting a driver together with the rental car was also inexpensive, therefore we decided to save the hassle of self-driving. This turned out to be a very good decision because there was a lot of ground to cover and some of the roads were very, very narrow!

 

We took a rather long and winding drive up, pass this small town, to get to these views.

 

We would be visiting this monastery later.

 

Took a hike up to this ancient castle - Angelocastro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelokastro_(Corfu)

 

The hike up looked formidable, but my kids could do it easily. After that, they ran down so quickly.

 

Unfortunately for us, the gates were locked so we couldn't get into the castle proper. Still, the views from the gate were great!