This was the sixth eastbound transatlantic cruise for me and my wife, and our 19th holiday in Europe, so we are not neophyte European travelers or cruisers.
One aspect of this cruise which has not been commented on was the weather. It was appalling. Only one or two days without rain, and gale force winds. One morning our TV screen was telling us that the apparent wind was 108 Kilometers per hour on deck. Wow. This certainly curtailed our usual laps around the top deck, but the ship’s stabilizers worked amazingly well, and no one seemed to be feeling uncomfortable from the ship’s motion. It was interesting to watch the captain, or was it the pilot, fighting to get the ship into the Portland harbour against the wind, and apparently there was some question about cancelling the stop in Amsterdam.
The demographic of the ship’s passengers was different from any other cruise we have been on. At 75, my wife and I felt that we probably hit the median age spot on. We wondered at times if we had somehow wandered into a posh retirement residence. Last year, on another transatlantic RCI cruise 70 % of the passengers seemed to be British, unlike this year when the vast majority seemed to be American. This was our first cruise with RCI as Diamond members, an elite status which we shared, according to the captain, with 700 other passengers. Four of the bars had to be opened up for the free happy hour drinks to handle the overflow.