The port of Civitavecchia is about an hour’s drive outside of Rome, and that’s where all the cruise ships that visit Rome dock. The check-in process for the cruise was fairly quick, and as soon as we got on board, we were offered an alcoholic drink (the last time such a thing would be free on the cruise). There was no alternative, so we declined and just made our way to our stateroom. We sailed on the Celebrity Galaxy, and this particular ship had 12 decks. Our room was on deck 8, and was an inside stateroom, which meant that it had no windows. Assuming (correctly) that we wouldn’t spend much time in our room, I booked the cheapest room offered, and I’m glad I did. We weren’t there very often, and when we were, it was usually for sleeping or taking a shower. Not having any windows made it pretty easy to fall asleep at night or when taking a nap. Anyway, our luggage was brought up to our room for us, which was nice. After checking out the stateroom, we left and had dinner in one of the restaurants. It was a buffet, and wasn’t anything really special. That particular restaurant is where we would eat all of our breakfasts and half of our lunches.
Our first day on the cruise was a day at sea, which meant that there were no stops that day. All sorts of activities were offered to pass the time, from shopping tips at some of the upcoming ports of call to shuffleboard, line dancing lessons and trivia games. I went to the trivia offering, and had a good time, so I ended up going to every trivia game that I could the rest of the cruise (multiple games were offered each day). We also attended one of the shopping seminars, which came off sounding more like Celebrity Cruises pushing their “recommended” shops than anything else, which suggested to me that they were getting a cut of the profits.
The ship had all sorts of amenities, from bars and music clubs to indoor and outdoor pools, a health spa, exercise equipment, stores for general items, jewelry, clothing, alcohol, cameras and other things, as well as many other things. There was a movie theater where a different movie was shown each day. There was entertainment like singers/dancers and comedians available almost every night. We took advantage of some of these things, but certainly not all of them. We were almost always off the ship when we were in port, and of course, when you’re on the ship, you care more about some things than others.
The main dining room, the Orion Restaurant, is where we ate most of our dinners and half our lunches. This was a more formal restaurant, and jeans were never allowed in it (although, strangely enough, shorts were allowed at breakfast and lunch). The dress code varied from night to night; some nights were formal (tuxedo or suit required for men, formal dress or cocktail dress were required for women), others were informal (jacket required—I didn’t bring “informal” clothing, so we always got room service or ate elsewhere on those nights). We were assigned a waiter, assistant waiter and assistant maître d’, and they were the same every night, and we sat at the same table every night (I had requested a two-person table so that I could avoid small talk and chitchat with strangers, which I don’t particularly care for during meals—this turned out to be a very wise decision). Each meal consisted of 4-5 courses: appetizer, salad, soup, main course, dessert. The food in the Orion was excellent and varied. For each course, there was at least 2-3 choices, which meant that there was always an opportunity to get something normal or to try something new if you wanted to. Becca tried all sorts of new things, since they didn’t cost anything extra: escargot, sweetbreads, scallop ceviche, caviar, cold soups, etc. I sampled most of these things and they ranged from quite good (sweetbreads—they were like chicken-fried steak), to fairly blah (I wasn’t a big fan of caviar or escargot). The main courses were always good. We ate things like leg of lamb, lamb chops, lobster, and various chicken dishes. Our waiter, Gani, and assistant waiter, Odis, were really nice and would stop by to chat and tell us things about the ports we’d be visiting. An average visit to the Orion took an hour and a half, and I really don’t like spending that much time at any meal, but I always had a good experience when I did.
Our first formal night:
Our waiter, Gani, making his nightly presentation of chef-recommended desserts:
Gani, Odis and us on our final night of the cruise:
The crew were from all over the world (our waiter, for example, was from Macedonia, and our assistant waiter was from Honduras). Most of the passengers were English-speakers from the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. There were also fairly sizable contingents of speakers of Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese. The latter were, by far, the most annoying people on the cruise. They’re noisy and always try to be first for everything, and they have no qualms about trying to cut in front of you in line. If this is any indication of standard Japanese behavior, we won’t be visiting Japan any time soon. Anyway, the average age of the passengers was probably in the 60’s, so we were about the youngest people on the ship, and there weren’t many other people our age on the ship. We actually didn’t mind this at all, since we don’t do many things that are popular with our age group (party, drink, etc.). We met lots of nice people, and quickly found that certain couples always showed up at the same things (trivia) that we did, so we often saw familiar faces wherever we went. Funny, however, that in many of these cases, we never formally introduced ourselves to each other, and I don’t remember a single person’s name (other than the crew) that we met. Oh well. You can be as involved as you want to be on a cruise, and while we went to our fair share of activities, it’s not like we were trying to make new friends for life.
We didn’t do much research on the reputation of various cruise lines before booking our cruise, as we were more interested in the places we’d be visiting than amenities. Our choice, however, turned out to be a good one. Celebrity is apparently one of the top-rated lines, especially in the food department. We talked to many people that had been on other cruise lines, and everyone that we talked to said that Celebrity was way better than any other line. One couple that we talked to were on their 99th (!) cruise with Celebrity. In any case, our experience was a very good one and if I were going to cruise again (and we definitely will), then we will definitely look at Celebrity first. The service was great, the crew was very nice and accommodating, and they try to make you feel like you’re special no matter what kind of room you’re staying in…and since we were in the “cheap seats,” I can only imagine what the service was like for the people that stayed in rooms with balconies and the like.
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