Review of Celebrity Silhouette 5/18 Italy and Croatia Cruise

Our trip originally started as a plan to rent a car and drive around Europe for a couple of weeks, but those pesky emails from Celebrity and their last minute deals got the best of us. My wife and I just did a Eastern Caribbean on the Solstice in March, but this was just too good of a deal. We decided to go on this cruise instead, and booked a Veranda Guarantee cabin. This worked out well for us as we were assigned cabin 6315, a Sunset Veranda on deck 6.

We arrived in Venice early and spent 2 nights in a B&B in the San Giacomo neighborhood of Venice. It's quiet and has no sign of the tourist-choked areas like San Marco, and is across the Grand Canal from the train station area, On the 18th, we went to the ship around 1200. We walked to P. Roma, then took the People Mover to the cruise port. It's a very short ride, and leaves you with a 10 minute easy walk. We packed light, only a 22" rolling bag and daypack each, and had no trouble. The embarkation process was good overall. A few of the staff outside the terminal were a bit misinformed, telling us we could not carry our bags aboard and we must give them to a porter. We just kept walking and had no trouble. Upstairs there were 2 check in lines, one for Aqua, Concierge, Suites, and Elites and one line for everyone else. This worked well, as both lines seemed to be balanced and move well. We were onboard by 1330, enjoying a tea at Cafe al Bacio. Read more