Easy helpful courteous boarding. Good size comfortable suite. First night in main restaurant Silversea tried to con me. We asked if we could order wine by the glass and the waiter brought us a box of spectacles. We asked someone else - the wine waiter I think - if we could order wine by the glass and he too said no but handed me 2 wine lists - one with stratospheric prices and the other with so-called special good deal prices. I asked if there were any wines we could order by the half bottle and he said no but they would keep what's left for our next visit. I managed to find an ok bottle of wine for $60. The next day I found out that there are loads of complementary wines and that this is part of the inclusivity of Silversea. Clearly the wine waiter was expected by his bosses to persuade passengers to trade up to paid-for wines. I don't mind that as an option but I think it's grubby to try and get me to trade up by deceit. I handed a letter of complaint to the reception and they apologised and knocked off the $60. I'm sure there was some small print info where I could hjave learned this in advance but Silversea have shovelled more bits of paper in front of me at the outset of this voyage than the total papers I got when buying a house. Information not only has be churned out, it also has to be received.

All the restaurants were too noisy. Not just the musak. The main noise was the clattering of plates and cutlery by the staff into one of the numerous serving islands that seemed to be within ear splitting distance of every table. The waiters had no sensitivity in this regard - they would be more at home in a cheap cafeteria.

It used ot drive me nuts the way the waiters would try to carry my plate if I was waalking to my table from a buffet. I'm not a cripple. They need to develop enough sensitivity to back off when a guest seems comfortable continuing his journey unassisted. On one occasion when at my table I picked up a pepper pot top add some more pepper to my dish a waiter rushed over to try to take it out of my hand so he could do it for me. I know cruise operators have a lot of elderly guests who might enjoy this degree of rescue from the unbearable hardship of adding more pepper to their meal but waiters need to be trained to differentiate between types of guests in terms of self-reliance. Read more