On Friday we were invited to board Silversea’s Silver Spirit, to sail for the following nine nights, around the Iberian Peninsula calling at: Barcelona, Palamos, Palma de Mallorca, Valencia, Cartagena, Malaga, Cadiz (two days), and Lisbon.

Map

The boarding procedure was the fastest we’ve ever experienced, including a Covid19 test. Onboard, everybody was vaccinated and wore a mask.

The itinerary (Barcelona to Lisbon) is “home” to me, but my wife had not visited some of those ports of call before, and it was our first sailing on Silversea.

The ship is a little bit old (not a lot), but quite stylish, in a classical way. It was completely refurbished in 2018. The passengers were quite diverse not only in their country of origin, but also ages and even race (for a change)! Which makes the dress code all that more interesting: 2 formal nights (tuxedo - black tie), 5 in-formal (suit jacket), and 2 (boarding and disembarking days) casual.

With 411 crew for 608 passengers (in this cruise only around 400) service on board this all-inclusive cruise is excellent. And having your own personal butler makes it even more amazing. Everything, from the Pommery champagne to the Bvlgari toiletries is nice. One small complaint, because there always has to be room for improvement, is that the entertainment system did not allow you to save favorites or even see previews of movies. Also, the movie selection was large, but a little bit limited in its range and quite disorganized.

For such a “small” ship the culinary options are quite broad: 7 restaurants, of which 4 are specialty restaurants (Silver Note and Hot Rocks are included in the all-inclusive, Seishin and La Dame have an extra charge), plus Atlantide, Indochine, and La Terrazza. I bet you can guess the cuisine type by the name of the restaurant ;-)

After boarding in Barcelona, before retiring to our veranda stateroom, we had caviar and lobster dinner at the Atlantide restaurant, sailing away at 23h.

Some photos here.