Oh, don’t you just hate it when you wake up and realise it is the last day of your cruise? This is how I felt when I opened my eyes this morning, and saw the sea gliding past through the glass balcony doors. 🙁
Nonetheless we determined to enjoy our day so, after breakfasting as usual in the Oceanview Café, we went outside on deck to have a walk around the ship and breathe in that incomparable fresh sea air. We noticed that the Silhouette was going along at a fair rate; a quick look at MarineTraffic told us she was doing 22 knots, which was more or less flat out. Captain George was probably trying to make up for the 90 minute delay in our departure yesterday.
We didn’t do an awful lot today, hardly looking at the daily programme. We just spent the time pottering around; reading, doing the quizzes and watching people participating in different events. Oh, and eating and drinking, of course. 🙂
Talking of which, we had a Captain’s Club invitation for wine tasting in the Grand Cuvée restaurant at 11.00am, so after doing the morning trivia we went down to Deck 3 and took our place at a socially-distanced table, at which there were already four wine glasses; two for red and two for white. A basket held a number of accompanying herby bread-sticks.
We started off with a Sauvignon Blanc from Chile, and we were shown how to swirl the wine around the glass and sniff appreciatively at the bouquet. Then we took a few sings and rolled it around on our tongue before swallowing. Each sample of wine was literally only a couple of mouthfuls. Next we tried a California Chardonnay which was also very palatable. Then we tried a Merlot, which is called Carmenere in Chile, where it was from. I’m not really a red wine drinker but I really liked the Merlot which was fruity and mellow. Finally, we finished off with a Cabernet Sauvignon from South Africa. The wine tasting was a nice little interlude which took us nicely up to lunchtime.
After lunch we returned to 7227 and reluctantly dragged our cases out from under the bed and made a start with our packing. Then, at three o’clock, we went up to the Sky Lounge where the afternoon quiz was based around movies. As we are not film buffs at all we passed on the quiz, but it was great fun to watch because the entertainment host, Dom, acted out scenes from each film as a clue, often roping in passengers to help him. In this way, we guessed some of the films to be Jaws, Ghost, E.T. and Brokeback Mountain. While we were sitting on our bar stools we each indulged in a delicious cocktail (or two). 🙂
And so the afternoon passed in its pleasant way; the great thing about cruising is you can do as much or as little as you like. If you want to spend all day lying on a sunlounger reading your Kindle and drinking cocktails, that’s perfectly fine. If you want to join in with shipboard games such as quoits, giant Jenga or a scavenger hunt, that’s fine as well.
As our luggage needed to be labelled up and outside our stateroom by 10.00pm, it meant we had to wear tonight what we were going to be travelling home in tomorrow, because once we went to dinner there wouldn’t be any time for us to return to our cabin and get changed and finish the packing. Therefore we finished it all off before going to dinner, and I just wore my white jeans, pink top, denim jacket and Irregular Choice trainers.
It was quite sad being in the Grand Cuvée Restaurant for the last time. During the impeccable service by our waiter and sommelier we were reminded that Celebrity would be sending out a post-cruise survey to us and it was important we filled it in as the company wanted to know what they got right but, more importantly, whether they got anything wrong. Our waiter said he hoped we would give them 10/10 for service, and we assured him we certainly would. 🙂
The entertainment in the theatre tonight featured Nik Page, who was a very talented all-rounder; he sang, he played intruments and performed a fantastic drumming duet with the Silhouette Orchestra’s drummer. The music and lighting were great and we enjoyed the show a lot from our ‘usual’ seats in the second row (no-one was allowed to sit in the front row to maintain a distance from the stage).
Once the show finished, we went up to the Sky Lounge and took our usual seats at the bar. We didn’t want to stay too late as we knew we’d have to be up early in the morning to start the long drive home.
We made the most of a couple of last cocktails and returned to cabin 7227 around 11.30pm; we noticed our cases had already been removed from outside our cabin door. We settled down and soon fell asleep in our large, comfortable bed.
In the morning we were up at six o’clock, and the Silhouette was already docked in Southampton, right back where she had started. So ended another cruise, and we were pleased that we had managed to get our three cruises in in 2021; things are looking up! Hopefully our next one would take us further afield, so we can continue to explore and enjoy the amazing planet on which we live. Anchors aweigh! 🙂
