Thursday - 24 April 2014 - Mid-Atlanic Ocean
We are in 35 mph winds and a 15 to 25 foot swell, but the wind and seas are both quartering from the stern. That means the stabilizers prevent any pitching and the light rolling is only noticable if you sight along the railings across the the somewhat angry sea to the horizon. At GMT -2 hours, we are in the Mid-Atlantic timezone on the first full day of the crossing of two half and four continuous days at sea. The sky is clear, temperature in the 70s, and most of the 350+ passengers in this only 2/3rd full ship are lounging around the pool.
Here is a chronicle of the first week of our month long journey:
1. Thursday to Saturday - Fort Lauderdale, Florida
Our flight from Denver on United Airlines was routine including the UAL tradition of only one channel of each of our seatrest earphone jacks working. We were looking forward to dinner with my old buddy, Neil, who long ago moved from Boulder and now resides in Miami. Neil called right on time as we were lounging on our upgraded balcony room in the rocket ship shaped Hyatt overlooking the cruise port. He was stuck in a multi-hour long traffic jam due to a flash flood from a Miami thunderstorm. So Barbara and I dined alone, celebrating our five year anniversary to the day that we met on a train trip in Switzerland.
We spend most of the day Friday taking the "water taxi", actually a hop on/hop off vaporetti system on a number of routes to Hollywood, Florida and downtown Fort Lauderdale, where we had lunch. After a very relaxing day of small boating Neil joined us in the evening for a "New England Seafood" dinner at the restaurant he had chosen. Since Neil grow up in Westchester, that made sense. Anything north of Brooklyn where I grew up is "New England".
2. Saturday - Embarkation Silver Spirit, Easy Then a Turn For the Worst
We joined the ship swiftly at noon delayed only by the better part of a dozen passport and ticket checks by cruise terminal security security guards staffed for embarking a ship 10 to 20 times larger than the 550 passenger Silver Spirit. As usual for Silversea, the check in on board took a little less than one minute and we proceeded to our midship veranda-less "Vista" (meaning windows, not a balcony) suite. A large step down from last cruise's three room apartment on Deck 11 forward but much more appropriate (read stable) for an ocean crossing.
A few hours later I was threatening and clearly planning to disembark Silver Spirit and fly home as an hour before sailing and long after our other bags were delivered to our suite my suitcase with all my good clothes and electronic cables and chargers was no where to be found. The Hotel Director and Food and Beverage Manager (!) even went into the now empty terminal and came back to report oddly optimistically that there were no suitcases in the terminal. I was less sanguine as to me that only proved that the bag was somewhere else in the world, perhaps on the 6500 passenger Oasis of the Seas, the 2nd largest cruise ship ever made (behind the two inch longer Allure of the Seas) which was now a few miles out to sea having left the port 30 minutes earlier.
Of course, all turned out well. The bag was found stashed below deck by the ship's teamsters (aka waiters) who had found a bag delivered without a new flimsy paper Silversea luggage tag which had been torn off by the real teamsters who had taken our bags when we arrived at the cruise terminal. The misplaced bag was waiting, apparently, for an officer or perhaps the Hotel Director himself to advise the waiters that merely looking at the name tags on the bag would solve the problem. Actually the Hotel Director, himself, did that very thing and the bag was delivered to our suite shortly before sailing. I went to the Panorama Lounge for a gin and tonic as Barbara went to the life boat drill. We were both set at ease as we sailed out across the ocean for the cruise to Europe.
3. Tuesday and Wednesday - St. George's, Bermuda
This was my first visit to this country (my #138, but who's counting), first settled in 1615 which was six years after a famous shipwreck which was the inspiration for Shakespeare's "The Tempest." Barbara and I were off the Silver Spirit as soon as the ship was cleared. We purchased all-day transit passes for $15 each and immediately took a harrowing bus ride the length of this island nation to the capital, Hamilton. We immediately boarded the ferry to Navy Dockyards, a new big cruise port full of tacky retail shops and tee-shirt stores but no Senor Frogs or Diamonds International. At least this place has some level of self dignity.
After an half hour of making fun of the passengers on the big mass market cruise ship there we took the ferry back to Hamilton, had lunch, visited quaint Fort Hamilton, and returned by another bus route to St. Georges. This is a World Heritage Site and clearly the most beautiful part of Bermuda. We were thrilled our much smaller Silver Spirit could pass through the narrow passage into St. George's' small harbor at dock here.
Spirit remained in the lovely port overnight, and Wednesday morning we observed the annual "Peppercorn Ceremony" which commemorates the capitol building in St. George's being rented to the Masons for one peppercorn each year after the capital city of Bermuda was changed to Hamilton some hundreds of years ago. Lots of speeches by guys in weird uniforms including the British Governor General who mumbled quite a bit (mumbling being his only duty nowadays) and the local major who discussed at great length the repairs of "two vehicles" and "a dock" due to the largess of the EU. We left before the ceremony was over and spent the remainder of the morning hiking to the highest point on the eastern side of the island and reading all the plaques on buildings and forts used by Britain to bolster and otherwise support the US Confederacy and destabilize the Lincoln Administration in the 1860s. Now we know that Bermuda is the country that historically has tried to destabilize other countries. The current bad actors are just newcomers.
We sailed at 2 pm on Wednesday and after four full days at sea arrive noonish Monday at Horta, Portugal which is the first of two ports we will visit in the Azores.
