We very much enjoyed this cruise, met some lovely people and saw some very interesting places. Ship and standard of service was, as usual, very good and, overall, all staff were excellent. While we were pleased overall, there were some disappointing aspects.

Over some 15 years, we've been on a number of Silversea cruises. Previous cruises were on their smaller ships. We wanted to try one of their larger ships, so chose the Spirit, and selected the Rouen-Lisbon cruise as they were new destinations for us.

The ship (and number of passengers) is larger, about a third larger, than Whisper/Shadow. Our cabin was large, larger than other Silversea ships we've been on, but not so you'd notice it, with all the usual, good facilities. On our previous cruise, we had an instance of soiled linen. Unfortunately, this happened again. On our first night we found the bed sheet had not been properly washed. It was replaced immediately and sincere apologies were made by senior officials, but it should not have happened. Read more