Day 8/8, Sunday, January 12, 2020: At Sea

Yesterday, we found a questionnaire in our room asking how things were going so far. I took the opportunity to put down the three things that had "impressed" me the most after our first week on-board. First, the food was mediocre, at best. Second, the buffet protocol, where a crew member had to dish your food for you, was very irritating. Third, the internet service was extremely poor. I turned this into the Reception Desk yesterday afternoon.

I went to the La Terrazza for breakfast and suffered through the buffet line. Upon leaving, the Ship Chef approached me about the comments I turned in yesterday. I was honest with him regarding the unexciting nature and quality of the food. When I told him I was unhappy with the buffet protocol, he first tried to tell me that was required due to public health regulations. I told him I knew better since I've been on several cruise lines where that was not done. And besides, the salad buffet on this ship is indeed a self serve. When confronted with his obvious lie, he said that he would inform the crew to allow me to serve myself in the future. He did not have anything to suggest about the quality of the food. This evening, the Food Director and the Butler Director stopped by the cabin to chat about my input from yesterday. I was very frank with them. I told them I was not unhappy with the food quality, but just disappointed it was not more creative. I had been led to believe Silversea was an equal to Seabourn, but unfortunately, they have not shown that to be true. I told them I did not like the buffet protocol, which again they started with "that's a public health regulation", but when challenged, did not argue the point. I also told them that, while I am not a fan of "butler" services, our butler have been very responsive and very polite while not being a pest or nuisance.

I could not get an internet connection at all. After breakfast, I went up to the "Internet Lounge" to see if they had connection up there. They did, so I took my laptop up to the lounge to try to upload the pictures I had taken on Friday and Saturday. While I could get a connection, the upload speed was essentially zero. A staff member asked if everything was OK. I unloaded on him that the internet was BAD. His first response was to just shrug. When he understood I was not going to accept that, he contacted the "technician" who first suggested I just upload one picture at a time, then suggested I reload/reboot. All of these things I had already done without improvement. I was expecting them to just blow it off and walk away, but to my surprise, the technician actually showed up and started to trouble shoot the issue. He said that they had just the evening before upgraded the system and were still working out the bugs. He assured me things would improve.

We went to the Grill for lunch. They brought out two huge Mahi-Mahi which they filleted and grilled on the deck. They tried their best to over grill the fish and I had to get very insistent in serving my portion before it was dried to shoe leather.

This evening we went back to the Grill (which is renamed Hot Rock after 3:00pm) for dinner. The Hot Rock refers to the block of salt they will bring to your table for you to cook your own meat to your desired taste. I had the filet mignon again.

 

Tomorrow we anchor at Ile Royale, French Guiana...also known as Devil's Island. We will tender to the island. There are no formal shore excursions. They say it takes 45 minutes to walk the perimeter of the entire island.