SILVER SPIRIT
Silver Spirit - Luxury Travel Magazine
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Serenity at Sea | |||||
| By: Timothy Morrell, Issue 43 – Winter 2010 | |||||
| (Silver Spirit – Silversea) | |||||
| THE ESTEEMED SILVERSEA FLEET HAS A NEW FLAGSHIP, SILVER SPIRIT, PROVIDING A BENCHMARK FOR OCEAN TRAVEL IN THE GRAND MANNER. TIMOTHY MORRELL JOINED PART OF THE SHIP’S INAUGURAL WORLD TOUR TO CRUISE FROM ACAPULCO TO LOS ANGELES. | |||||
| On the streets of Acapulco, you always know that somewhere not too far away, some people are experiencing a life of ease and glamour utterly removed from the lively but scruffy charm of your immediate vicinity. Most of them are high above you in cliff-top mansions surrounded by bougainvillea and servants. An even more select few, however, are on luxurious vessels around the harbour. Standing out among the various super yachts when I arrived by air was the sleek form of the Silver Spirit. Leaving behind the husle and bustle of Acapulco city at the crumbling waterfront and boarding the ship in Acapulco Bay, I felt myself being enveloped in a discreet sense of privilege, rather like entering a very plush private club. The Silver Spirit is not a floating palace. Other cruise lines have attempted to recreate the cavernous splendour of the great early 20th century ocean liners, but Silversea offers something entirely different. Every aspect of the company’s ships and service is designed for people who want to travel in extravagant comfort, not turbo-charged glitz. Formally suited cabin staff greeted me with warm smiles in the hushed, wood-panelled corridors and drew aside to let me pass as I proceeded to my cabin. Waiting for me there I found a bottle of French champagne on ice and a butler ready to unpack my bags. From that moment on, for the next ten days, benevolent powers seemed unobtrusively to be managing every detail of my life. Fares with Silversea are all-inclusive, even tips are included. Having a butler permanently on-call is one of the various refinements of living well that passengers can automatically expect as part of the service. Beside your bed is a menu offering nine different pillow options. The range of toiletries in the bathroom can be changed if Bulgari isn’t what you want. A word to the butler ensured that the tactfully concealed bar fridge remained stocked with what I wanted to drink. All beverages, excluding premium brands and all food, excluding caviar, are free, all over the ship. Service on board is superb and carefully adapted to suit each passenger’s requirements. Rugged individualists can carry their bowl of fresh blueberries and raspberries from the buffet to the breakfast table if they insist, otherwise a smiling waiter will materialise and do it for you. I found the most delightful way to start the day was breakfasting on my veranda accompanied by the effervescent sparkle of the passing ocean. Room service too, is free. Silver Spirit is a big ship, but only half the size of the modern mega-liners. While those ships take several thousand passengers, Silver Spirit carries just 540. In terms of the tonnage-to-passenger ratio, she occupies a central place in the niche market for six-star service on intimately scaled ships. Despite the friendly personalised attention I didn’t feel, as smaller ships encourage you to feel, that I was travelling on a private yacht. (I particularly appreciated this when the ocean swells started to rise.) The ship is big enough to include a spa and casino, a handsome library and some excitingly lavish spaces like its theatre. Echoes of art deco embellish the interiors here and there, most subtly and most successfully in the cabins, which are reminiscent of a solidly comfortable New York residential hotel circa 1930. All the cabins are suites, consisting of a sitting room, dressing room and a travertine and marble bathroom with a large bath tub and separate shower stall. Virtually all suites include private verandas. There are fresh flowers in the public rooms and orchid plants in the cabins. You can maintain all your accustomed forms of electronic communication from your cabin, but the connection is via satellite, which is expensive and can be unreliable. If remaining constantly connected is imperative, there’s a full-time technician on the spot in the internet cafe who can help save your business or your sanity. Silversea arranges excursions in every port, with shipside pick-up and delivery. Most of these are in some way special and memorable, sometimes allowing passengers to penetrate a little beyond the touristic coastal fringes. Shore activities tend to be quite sedate, befitting the older age group. A few excursions are sufficiently physical for passengers to compensate for their languid indulgence at sea. One of the highlights of the cruise for me was being a hoon for a day and joining a long mismatched line of sensibly dressed Germans, fluorescently bright Americans and young, radical fashion clad Japanese on a dune buggy scramble through the jungle and along the beach. Dress codes on board were more predictable. The ship’s chronicles, deposited nightly with the killer chocolates on my bed, specified whether the following evening would be casual, informal or formal. During the 10 days I was on board there were two black-tie evenings. They generated a genuine sense of glamour that can seldom be experienced in modern life. Passengers dressed well, in some cases beautifully. This isn’t compulsory, however, and the scale of the ship allows those not wanting to be part of the show to dine in simpler clothes away from the main event. Anyone committed to the idea that cruising should involve a certain amount of undignified festivity is welcome to join the cancan line heroically formed by the ever-obliging hospitality staff on disco night, or sing along to the truly awful selection of songs on the karaoke machine. I opted to pretend that none of this was happening, and usually withdrew with friends to the cosy supper club where a really good vocalist continued performing until it was so late that she was singing quite literally just for us. Guests are allowed to feel like discerning independent travellers, as opposed to battery hens in gilded cages. You dine when, where and with whom you choose. Five of the six restaurants require bookings, but the main one doesn’t. Silversea is the only line to offer dishes devised by the Grands Chefs of Relais & Châteaux, and selections are included on the menus of the main restaurant and in the ship’s culinary nirvana, Le Champagne restaurant. A six-course degustation with selected wines is offered there for US$200, or you can order the identical menu with less exalted wine for $30. Each restaurant (you have a choice of French, Italian, Japanese, outdoor grill or the supper club’s diverse, elaborate little treats) has an individual chef. Most of the meals I had were outstanding and wonderfully presented, although I could have done without the cornstarch and food colouring abstract expressionist brushwork that occasionally decorated the plates. After the first few days of rich haute cuisine I was starting to empathise with the geese that had been force-fed to produce all that foie gras, and was happy to explore the “Wellness” options available on all menus. The ship is particularly generous with the greatest luxuries at sea - space and freedom. Nothing is obligatory, not even decadent self-indulgence. Under the stars at the poolside grill, a slab of super-heated basalt is delivered to your table with your selection of beautifully prepared, simple ingredients, and you cook for yourself. When it was time to disembark and face reality in Los Angeles I had serious concerns about ever being capable of doing anything for myself again. But of course facing reality isn’t what LA is about. At the Peninsula Beverly Hills, which must be one of the loveliest hotels in America, I was able to relax in a tiny sub-tropical oasis and adjust to the fact that a very different world was waiting outside. | |||||
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