Here we are on the second leg of our back to back Celebrity Solstice Cruse, returning to the ship for the second leg at the Port of Fremantle. We found embarkation excellent with no hassles whatsoever. Here again, we give the five star rating mainly because of the excellent service by the staff, including our room attendant for the second leg, again this was Raymundo who looked after our every need and his service was quite outstanding. As we were in Aqua Class, we dined in the restaurant for Aqua Class guests, which is called Blu. This time in our serving section of Blu, we received outstanding service from "Uncle Jimmy", ably assisted by Sabar, with our wine sommalier, Ben, plus all other staff members in Blu who also attended us from time, ten out of ten to these assistants too. We must also mention Dimitri in the World Class Bar, who gave us superb service during our second leg. After leaving Perth, our first port of call was Adelaide again. Here we found the disembarkation a lot smoother than the previous forward visit to this port, as Celebrity used two gangways which made ease of offloading of guests much smoother. Our next stop was Melbourne. Here the ship docks at Port Melbourne which is in close proximity to the shopping district of Port Melbourne and trams into the Melbourne city precinct. Our next stop was supposed to be the Sounds, including Milford Sound, Doubtful Sound and Dusky Sound, but due to a medical emergency by one of the guests, the ship returned to the dock of Melbourne after an announcement over the PA system at about midnight. Here we lost approximately twelve hours of sailing time and it was the decision of the Captain and the Company to miss visiting the Sounds. A large number of guests were very unhappy about this decision as the Sounds are the major highlight of this particular voyage. A more practical solution would have been to miss either Dunedin, Akaroa or Wellington. As we ourselves had seen the Sounds before, we were not quite as upset as many other guests on board. The next port of call was Dunedin followed by Akaroa, Wellington, Picton and then the final leg to Sydney Australia. As we had seen many of the shows on the previous back to back cruise, we omitted to view these on the second leg, but they did have a few new single artists who were entertaining. We noticed during both cruises that some of the entertainers we had seen previously on Celebrity Solstice cruises and these entertainers need to have "fresh" material for guests, as you are hearing the same jokes and material. The public areas throughout the ship were always kept spotlessly clean by a highly efficient maintenance team. Hand sanitisers are provided at the openings to all restaurants, but we noticed on this second leg of the cruise there were a lot more people sneezing and coughing, which even after our own stringent hand washing with our own personal hand sanitiser, we still managed to still pick up head colds and flu. As is the case, it is not the ship that causes the colds and flu, it is the guests with no consideration whatsoever for the health of fellow passengers with their sanitising procedures. Arriving home sick with colds and flu is no fun.
Cabin 1649 was the same cabin as we had previously on the first leg of our trip and as previously commented we were most happy with all aspects and design of the cabin. It is located at the rear of the ship on the port side on Level 11 in the Aqua Class section, which is a quiet area of the ship.