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| Silver Shadow in Nagasaki Harbour |
I sailed on the Silver Shadow in April, on its Hong Kong to
Tokyo itinerary, with my very good friend and travel agent, Ellen, owner of
Sea4Sail. This was my first time on a ship this upscale and I was excited by
both the potential experience and the ports of call: Hong Kong, Shanghai,
Nagasaki, Kagoshima, Osaka and Tokyo.
My cruising experience has been main stream lines, such as
Holland America and Princess, river cruises, such as Viking and Uniworld, and
small ship adventure cruising, such as a week on a riverboat on the Amazon.
Ellen’s experience has been on just about every main stream cruise line from
Carnival on up (to lines such as Regent) and also river cruises. So we do have
some experience overlap. Mostly, though, we looked at things differently and I
want to state, up front, that this review is based on MY opinion alone.
The positives of my trip was the mostly excellent service we
enjoyed, particularly from our butler, Roland, and the opportunity to see a
part of the world long on my bucket list.
On the other hand, the trip turned out to be nothing like I
had expected in a negative way, in both the ship and the ports of call. I will
deal with the ports of call in another post. For this post, I’ll confine myself
to the ship.
Let’s start with the fact that the ship definitely needed a
dry dock. This was not only my opinion but the opinion of many people who
commented on things like the condition of the carpet in the corridors and the
cabins.
The food experience in the main dining room was a
disappointment. With British and Australians making up over half of the
passenger contingent, and Americans the very smallest group, the dining room
hours and food was not geared to my taste. The absolute earliest to eat dinner
is 7:00 p.m., with meals taking at least 1 ½ hours. I missed having some earlier dining options,
other than using room service. There were a lot of spicy dishes, made with what
I thought was an overly generous helping of crushed red pepper, obvious in the
pasta and not so obvious in Thai spring rolls. Some of the combinations were –
at least to me -- strange, such as
escargot with hot chili cause, plus many “game” entrees, such as wild boar,
venison and goose.
On the other hand, the ship has two specialty restaurants
which were excellent and had no surcharge. One is the pool grill where you can
grill your choice of steak or prawns on the hot rock placed at your table.
There was also an Italian specialty restaurant that we ate at twice and was
excellent. In retrospect, I would have planned on eating there every night.
(Although with the limited seating available and the necessity of reservations,
a tip to the maitre’d might be necessary but, IMHO, well worth it.) Only one
restaurant had a surcharge and while other passengers said the food and wine
were excellent, the restaurant was situated right next to the smoking lounge
and the odor of smoke made its way through the vents. It made for some very
unhappy diners, who cancelled future reservations.
The other strange thing was nowhere to get a quick bite in
the middle of the afternoon. After returning from shore, tired and hungry, I
didn’t want to wait for room service. One of the lounges was supposed to have
sandwiches available so one afternoon we went there. Expecting to see the bar
counter with trays of already prepared sandwiches, to grab and go, instead we
discovered a very limited menu to order from the kitchen. We heard one
passenger complain she had been waiting over half an hour for her order so we
just left.
We ate breakfast in the main dining room only once. We had
been ordering room service for breakfast and we wanted to see what more the
dining room had to offer, as past experience on other ships suggested there
would be a special or two of-the-day. To our surprise, the menu was exactly the
same as the room service menu.
The price of the trip included tips and all alcohol,
including a personally requested bottle of spirits, per person, to be had in
the cabin. We made the acquaintance of some passengers who were wine
connoisseurs, requesting specific bottles of wine. However, for someone such as
myself, not a big alcohol drinker, Silversea definitely didn’t lose money on my
liquor consumption.
Socially the trip was great. With a passenger contingent of
just over 300 passengers, it was expected to see the same faces frequently. It
was easy to develop a routine of joining the same passengers in the lounge, or
at trivia, for dinner, or for the show. We met many people with fascinating
tales of travel and life experiences.
Would I sail on Silversea again? It depends. I liked the
size of the ship and the fact that it spent overnight in many of the ports of
call. (Actually, we had two nights in Osaka.) But first I would check out the
age of the ship and when it was last refurbished. And if I would be allowed to,
I would dine in the specialty restaurant every night.
