I will pick up from where I left off which was pre show and pre dinner, the entertainment in the Eclipse Theatre was called Andante, four British guys who I have to say could sing really well but I can’t put my finger on it but just seem to lack something. Still it wasn’t a bad way to spend 40 minutes before dinner.
We also got our first glimpse of cruise director Daniel who is from Newcastle, I’m not quite sure what to make of him at the moment. Not that I take too much notice of cruise directors as most of them end up irritating me any way.
During his introductory chat he revealed we have 3114 passengers onboard this cruise which considering we are now in school holiday time was more or less the amount I was expecting the figure to be.
We are on second sitting in the dining room and it was great to meet up with our old fellow diners from January. We have a corner table in between two tables of 10, ours is a table of 6 and not 8 as I was expecting. Nice and cosy but perhaps a little too far from the middle of the room. Our two adjacent tables seemed very quiet last night and didn’t appear to be that happy.
We are being served by Oscar, his assistant Susana and Sommelier Vemba.
Good start and hopefully more of the same to follow, when we return for round 2 in the Moonlight Sonata dining room.
So to today, well this is a bit of a strange one for us as we decided not to go ashore, there are a couple of contributing factors, the main one being the time we are here in Zeebrugge. 7:00am to 3:00pm which for Celebrity is a real surprise. And it was 8:00 before we had clearance to go ashore combined with all aboard at 2:30pm it doesn’t really give you time to do a great deal unless you take a ship tour which is not really our style. We also factored in the time change too which meant getting up an hour earlier than our bodies were used to.
There does seem to be a bit of a push to get you to take the ship tours as I have noticed a couple of items in the daily programme where they have made a point of the fact if you take a ship tour it won’t sail without you if you are delayed. They also keen to stress you are first off the ship and have a hassle free cancellation policy. The last point they make is “Discover the heart of the destinations with our knowledgeable and experienced guides”. It would appear they are at war with the locals when it comes to excursions.
I had toyed with taking the tram to Blankenberge but I couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm from any of the others. We have been there before and I think it’s a lovely little seaside town and given the right weather would have been a nice little trip. I think we will do Bruges when we have more time than we have been allocated today and also when it’s just the two of us.
Docked behind us today was Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth.
So what did we do with our day instead? Well after a leisurely breakfast in a virtually deserted Oceanview Café we started to show Judy round the ship. But in doing so we noticed the weather had improved giving some very warm sunny intervals so we found a couple of sunbeds up on the Solstice Deck and just spent the rest of the morning relaxing.
At 1:00 we made our way to the Oceanview Café for lunch, timing it perfectly so as to get there before all the excursions returned.
From then until sailaway it was back up there to carry on where we left off.
Our departure was delayed by 25 minutes due to some tours not getting back to the ship on time, we could see the traffic all queued up in front of the port gates but not sure what was causing it.
I am doing this early again tonight as we now have our drinks vouchers which need to be used between 5:00 & 7:00. So it will be off to the Sky Lounge for a spot of imbibing before dinner.
