We booked a 16 day Med voyage on Spirit , but due to extended refurbishment time, the voyage was cancelled and Silversea offered a number of alternatives. The only cruise to fit our timings was Silver Wind from Barcelona to Athens in April/May. The ship being older and somewhat smaller than the Spirit, was supposed to have been refurbished before our booked voyage, we were somewhat disappointed when embarking as the ship is clearly tired, and has acquired some of the undesirable patina of age. We hear it is being refurbished later in 2018, so that may fix many of the problems, but we have never experienced the unpleasant aspects on our previous 4 cruises on other ships - including smelly corridors, toilet plumbing problems on the 2nd day of the cruise, and grimy windows spoiling the atmospherics of the otherwise superb La Dame restaurant. Some other reviewers have suggested La Dame is overpriced, but from our experience it was a saving grace , where excellent service, and truly delicious food was provided on each of the 4 instances we dined there. The same cannot be said for the main restaurant where we found service disinterested, the food usually cool before served, as the plates used to serve hot meals were invariably cold. And the food itself uninspiring and bland. Wine service was sporadic, and most times an empty glass was unnoticed by restaurant staff for significant periods of time, if at all. La Terrazza was delightful for Dinner, but for breakfast was hit or miss, with excellent service one day, followed the next by seemingly disinterested staff walking right past tables in need of plate removal, or coffee fillups. Overall there were a small number of highly motivated and competent restaurant staff, overshadowed by a much larger number that were not putting in the same effort every day, which meant the cruise on a ship with what promised to have an excellent guest to staff ration was unnecessarily patchy from a service perspective.

The other aspects of seriously lacking service was excursions. We are accustomed to having excellent briefings on excursions provided well in advance of the cut-off for bookings, along with port briefings in person for those interested to hear them, and clear and concise communications ahead of time for the excursions. This was not the case on Wind, I'm not sure why, but we felt that excursions were not treated as an opportunity for guests to gain exceptional experiences during the voyage. One aspect that can't be ignored is the timing of the voyage which meant that the 4 most significant days in Italy were during a 4 day long weekend due to May Day on Tuesday. This meant that every excursion involving coach travel was a debacle pure and simple especially those around the Amalfi Coast and Pompeii. Sitting in a most un-luxurious coach for 6 hours and rushing expensive meals, or missing out on the highlights of the Cinque-Terre, was inexcusable, after all the cruise Director and team are the experts and should have been aware of local conditions when putting together and promoting the excursions.

I'm not sure we will book with Silversea again, the expertise that seemed promising when we booked was largely not polished enough. Perhaps we just had a bad cruise. I'm just not sure.