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Published: September 11th 2018
What a lovely day - few plans, just cruising the North Sea! The Baltic was so calm, like a mill pond, the North Sea has waves and movement, and you know you’re at sea, not in a floating hotel! There had been many ships moored off Skagen, and when Tom had a chance to ask this morning he was told they were moored in the calm Baltic, waiting for jobs to come up in a nearby port (remember when we sat and watched the container port at Bergen 11 years ago? It was so busy and it was great just watching it in operation - thats not too far from here).
And how did Tom get a chance to ask that question? When he did the bridge tour of course! He spent an hour up on the bridge learning about its different features. He also learnt why we left Skagen an hour late last night, although we knew it must’ve been the wind. When we moored in the morning the captain had dropped the front starboard anchor in case it had got windy, and then they were able to try to use it to safely get us out from behind
the ship in front, but the wind was strong and the assisting tug was not. They considered waiting three hours for a stronger tug to come from Sweden, but there was a lull in the prevailing winds and we took advantage of that. They’ve had no trouble making up the lost time overnight. While Tom was up on the bridge I was able to get my packing done. Two people going in and out of the wardrobe would’ve been difficult!
We decided to have lunch in the main dining room restaurant - Atlantide. This was the first time having lunch there! And it was wonderful. We noticed that they had some tables for two by the windows (which we hadn’t noticed during the evening meals) and we asked for one of those. It was lovely. We had Pommery with our lunch. Karolina, the chief sommelier, had told us they’d had trouble securing supplies of this champagne of late, but they did have it on board and we were welcome to ask for that instead of the Heidsieck Monopole which they usually offer. So we were happily drinking that and our wine waiter insisted (very nicely) that we finish the
whole bottle!
When we returned to our suite we found birthday balloons on our bed! Early ones for tomorrow! When we thanked Addy, our butler, later he commented that they didn’t want to miss out on celebrating my birthday on board!
Tom did his packing then and eventually it was time to go down to trivia. We saw some Americans (two couples who met on a Silversea cruise 10 years ago) yesterday who’d been on some of our tours and they asked us to join them for the last day of trivia, so we did. I’ve been enjoying my martinis with trivia in the afternoon, and Tom has discovered a white chocolate martini that has Amarula in it (that delicious liqueur we found in South Africa), amongst other things. We’d seen the Americans in corridors and places over the last 24 hours, and they kept reminding us that we’d said we’d join their team, so we did, and we came third!! They helped us (with the length of the ship, the 6 Christian names of the characters from Friends, although we remembered quite a few, one of the ladies even knew alll their surnames!) and we helped them
(the name of the song we were given a line of lyric for, William Shakespeare’s wife’s name, the name of the sea between Aus and NZ). It was fun! 15 questions adding up to 25 points, and we scored 19! The prize was Silversea points which you accumulate (e.g. Also from bingo, and deck games - all stuff we don’t do, so the points mean nothing to us), but these people have been collecting them, and you trade them in for Silversea merchandise (caps, biros etc). Anyway it was fun!
Then it was time for dinner - a casual night as everyone has their good gear packed. Our last night of caviar and champagne for 8 days! The marinated salmon topped with large red caviar is a favourite. And for the main? We had been told that even though the menu doesn’t change from one night to the next, we can make adjustments e.g. when we have fillet steak we can have prawns and asparagus with it if they are anywhere else on the menu, which they are, and mashed potato instead of chips. But tonight they were doing a special potato - they had scooped the flesh out
of its jacket, mashed it up with cream, put it back in to the potato and then topped it with crumbled boiled egg and caviar!! (Sort of like what we do with our boiled eggs, but with a potato!). Wow. Oh and some triple chocolate dessert thing. I’m not a great lover of desserts, I like my savouries, and I forgot to take a photo of it. Sorry. And we have been varying our dessert wine. We usually have a Cadillac - a sweet French dessert wine we discovered on our last Silversea cruise, but lately we’ve been drinking a limoncell, which is beautifully lemony, cleansing and refreshing our palate.
On our return to our room we found a large piece of cake beautifully presented on an illuminated setting, further celebrating my birthday. It’s so lovely. I can’t help but feel another cruise line would say “yeah, your birthday’s tomorrow, what a pity to miss out” but Silversea celebrates it, even though we disembark tomorrow!
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Dee
non-member comment
I appreciate your updates cos I appreciate food, great service and sightseeing too. How cute is Bergen? I was there just before sept 11 2001. The day the US was hit.