"Small Cruise Ship Experience: Excellent!" - Time Out #107

Nowadays, the ship cruising consumer has lots of choices about just which type of adventure to take?

Ocean vs. fresh water; local country vs. distant lands; short duration vs. several weeks or more; relatively inexpensive vs. very expensive; small vessel vs. mega-ship, and so on.......

Most of my bride, Debbie, and my cruising experiences over the past 35+ years have been aboard large cruise ships. By large, I mean 2,000+ passengers and about 800 crew members. Most of the major cruise lines feature huge ships with every whistle and bell to please and entertain their guests when sailing the oceans of the world. These vessels are truly small floating cities.

Occasionally Ms. Debbie and I stray from the pack, and go well outside our cruising comfort zone by choosing something different. This was exactly the case in mid-August on our latest outing.

This most recent trip, we chose the small, beautiful Silversea Spirit cruise ship, sailing 9 days from Barcelona, Spain, to Rome, Italy. By small, I mean smaller, as we had a few over 500 passengers and a crew of 375 to attend to our well-being. This is the first time we had ever been on a Silversea vessel, a smaller cruise company with just 9 vessels sailing over the globe.

With the wonderful time we experienced on-board, I can tell you for certain, we will sail with them again in the near future. Not sure when, but, YES, we will!

In my opinion, the major difference in today's cruising costs to the world consumer, boils down to two items: 1) the ratio of passengers to crew, the lower the ratio, the better the service, and the more the cost, and, 2) the quality of the food and beverages on-board, and whether or not the costs are all-inclusive. The better the quality and the more the all-inclusiveness, the higher the cost to the consumer.

Silversea is geared toward the mature adult cruising crowd. We saw very few school-age (including college) passengers aboard. There were also very few deck games, such as the belly flop competition around the swimming pool, or the traditional hairy chest contest for macho males as are usually seen on most mega, party ocean liners of today.

We departed Spain about 10 days before the terrible incident on their famous La Rambla section of the vibrant European city, and stopped at 5 separate islands in the Western Mediterranean. After those 5 port stops, we docked near Florence, and lastly disembarked (got off) the vessel near the "eternal" city of Rome, Italy.

The first 3 islands we visited were the Spanish-governed islands of Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza and Porto Mahon, Menorca. All have a special charm of their own, and all possess gorgeous beaches and friendly native people. Palma is an island city of over 1 million people,, and is a mere 135 nautical miles from Barcelona, almost straight south. It has a large cathedral, a huge yacht collection and plenty of shopping. Ibiza is one of the nighttime party capitals on planet earth, and to help explain that point, there we photographed a $280 million private yacht, Saudi Arabian-owned, tied up right along with the other less expensive pleasure craft on their main street. Porto Mahon has an absolutely beautiful natural harbor which we took a tourist cruise through while we were there.

The other 2 islands we visited were the Italian-governed Alghero, Sardinia, and Portoferraio, Elba, The former has a great old-town area, filled with many small shops and eateries. We also took a small street train through their ancient streets and back-alleys. In the latter port of Portoferraio, we walked up the small hill to gain a magnificent view of the small island, and then toured the spacious, furnished villa where Napoleon was held in exile for several months long ago. The structure has been preserved to represent the way it was when he was living there, and is a very interesting/historical site.

We next spent 2 days in the Florence area, and traveled with the same professional guide each day. He took us all over beautiful Tuscany, the geographic region of Italy well-known for its history, landscape, grapes (i.e, wine) and olives. Since we had been to Florence several times in the past, we spent just a short time in the famous city center, touring mostly the surrounding areas.

When we departed the ship. the four of us were transported to a wonderful hotel in Rome for 2 post-cruise nights. When I mention the four of us, we traveled this adventure with Barb & Bob, our dear friends from the Gulf of Mexico coastal community of Indian Rocks Beach, FL. We met them on a Crystal Symphony cruise thru Norway about 20 years ago, and have traveled with them many times since our initial meeting. Barbara did much of the planning for this trip, and for that huge amount of work on her part, I was very grateful. and told her so.

Probably the absolute highlight of the entire trip was when Barbara arranged for the four of us to take a 4-hour, narrated, GOLF CART, tour through the narrow streets and alleys of ancient Rome. Our driver guide was a 38-year-old native Roman fellow who really knew his city well, and expertly related his knowledge to us. Because of our unique mode of tourist transportation there, it certainly was a 10+ event on our trip-satisfaction scale.

In fact, the entire 12-day trip experience falls in the "Excellent" category.

Great friends, great small ship, great port stops, great golf cart tour; what can be better???