This picture was taken during our Panama Canal transit and represents the sense of carefree days we experienced on our grand adventure. For me especially! No housework, no meal planning or cooking, no laundry or ironing - not even bed-making! We were pampered and cared for by an excellent staff. Shoes shined before the formal nights. Candied ginger in a bowl in the suite because the butler noticed that Myster had brought a piece from the Terrace Cafe one day. The next day's dinner menu put on the bed at turn down each night. Our favourite pre-dinner Manhattan prepared as we walked into The Bar in the evening without us having to order them. Staff called us by name by the end of the first week on board. We were living in a wonderful unreal bubble! It was difficult to leave this taste of paradise!
This experience was also an eye-opener! Very quickly we discovered that we were traveling with fellow passengers who were very used to this lifestyle. We had traveled on Silversea before but this crowd was different! Many of the passengers lived in the rarefied air of the rich and famous. We were definitely out of our depth with respect to financial resources. And yet, we were welcomed into the fold with open arms by most of our fellow travelers. We formed some wonderful friendships with many people. Hopefully we can keep in touch with some of them!
The trip was an eye-opener in another way. We were among the youngest of the World Cruise crowd. As I mentioned in an earlier post, it seemed that someone boarded the ship in Ft Lauderdale with a nasty virus that eventually affected almost everyone on board. Some of the more elderly passengers had to spend time in the ship infirmary because of complications due to the virus. The ship's doctor and nurses were run off their feet. At several ports there was an ambulance waiting to take someone off the ship to a local hospital. Many of them did not return to finish the cruise. This left us with the feeling that we had made the right decision to take this trip while we were both still relatively healthy!
The Silver Whisper has a passenger capacity of about 380 guests. At the beginning of our cruise approximately 300 of the 380 were World Cruise passengers or guests who were doing the first half of the World Cruise (disembarking in Hong Kong). Many of the 300 knew each other well from past World Cruises. After Hong Kong the atmosphere among the passengers on the ship changed. The guests who embarked in Hong Kong were mostly doing only a segment or two and the bonding that had happened at the beginning of the cruise among the 300 who embarked in Ft Lauderdale did not happen with them. There was a different "feel" for the second half of the cruise.
Our grand adventure has been amazing! I would do it again in a heart beat. Myster would too! Once I have adjusted to my "real" life I will post more thoughts on and pictures from the trip.
Thanks for following along!
