Silver Spectre

The ship is in great shape. Exactly why are you concerned?

Yesterday’s big sister is here. And this is BIG, 5209 passengers.

Today’s companion

So far I have identified Maple Joe from Canada, in individual portions, but there is a rumour of a jar somewhere.

Have a safe flight. We will try and keep the ship looking good for your arrival.

Apparently they have NZ Ned on the Cloud right now.

Good question, any particular brand?

Can’t wait for that first sea day!

Not sure why but the Wifi on here is pretty bad, standard is really sluggish and the premium service is running at about of that on the Whisper in March. Even at 1am with most of the ship asleep it’s bad. And of course my general bugbear, PressReader newspapers, on here the English ones are being loaded around 6pm! Luckilythe weather is still good. We have 210 Venetians onboard with 5 guests over 1000 days. So that’s an awful lot of newbies.

Hi there, Captain is Zanello, who was on here last year, HD is Daniele Franco, who was on the Shadow last September. We get off when the ship gets back to Lisbon on Oct 30th.

In port about 25/26c, inland today about 28c. Malaga tomorrow 26c. We now have our first guest identified with COVID, no crew at present.

Cartagena on another lovely sunny day

29 guests on our tour bus of whom 7, including us wore masks. One lady coughing a bit. The bus was half full, with most guests at the front. The wine tour itself was good. A Spanish sub and some fancy yachts

Cheers, I would say better than OK, it’s living up to expectations. Going on a wine tour this morning so will be able to assess the tour bus masking compliance.

Will do Lois.

Valencia sunset

As we left this evening yesterday's ferry turned up like a bad penny

Ate there this evening, but went around the left corner at 8:40, it was still pretty busy as too windy to sit outside. Unfortunately the ship is almost full do all restaurants are very busy. If you eat early it's much worse.

Feeling lazy today, so a joint decision to have a sea day. The weather is nice, sunny and about 25c. It was Informal/Formal optional last night and was good to see lots of black tie conformity. I didn’t see anyone in a bar or restaurant who was improperly dressed. We ate in Atlantide and apart from a slow start to service all was good. The show was the same old Mind that Gap, and the current set of Voices were rather unimpressive.

He will be back for the WC23 on the Shadow.

After a fairly sunny afternoon we are about to depart for our next stop, Valencia. The Captain announced that we currently have zero COVID cases onboard. I would add, identified so far. Politely reminded another guest on the shuttle that he should have been wearing a mask, he replied “why?”. He then claimed not have read any instructions and I’m ashamed to say was British.

This morning we are docked in Palma de Mallorca where it was going to rain, but we missed it so far. Woke up to find this parked up next to us.

According to RCL Rico we have about 540 guests onboard with over 300 Americans and around 430 crew. So technically the ship is just about full. Gilbert is still MD and is due to go home next week in Lisbon. Staffing levels are sort of ok, however we only have one hairdresser in the Spa, and he’s been extended twice so far, and no professional nail technician! We do have a Botox and wrinkle fixing Dr though. La Dame is only seating about 40 covers per evening because of the galley capabilities instead of the max of 60 seats it could handle. There are still ongoing supply issues, mostly affecting top end items. We have about 20 whites and 20 reds available, with an entire lake of Tiki.

Taken as part of the boarding procedure on the Moon yesterday but not being carried out unless you turn out to be ill.