Celebrity Silhouette - September 15, 2011 Sailing - Holyland

A quick summary before the details: My wife said this was the best vacation she ever had and I'd probably agree. It was our sixth cruise and our first from the Mediterranean. From the standpoint of the ship and Celebrity it could not have been more perfect. Before leaving for the cruise, I was on Cruise Critic daily and while most comments were generally positive about this ship, there were a few negatives, so we were overly sensitive to the earlier comments and were prepared for a less than perfect experience. It was evident when the Captain first introduced himself to the passengers over the intercom; he was aware of "cruise critic" and jokingly commented that we needed to participate in the muster exercise along with everyone else. So he's reading our comments folks! We had absolutely no complaints and felt like we were royalty. There were few kids on this sailing; they were a rare site, so no complaints there. The Europeans that we encountered couldn't have been nicer. No breaking in lines or hogging deck chairs like we'd heard. We immensely enjoyed meeting families and couples from all over the world.

One of the smartest things we did beforehand was to join the "roll call" for our cruise and were able to meet a lot of the fellow "critics" at a sail away party. We met several who have become good friends and were able to join in with them on non-ship sponsored excursions. Read more