The electrical outlet situation is easier on the Silver Moon than the Silver Whisper. The Whisper is an older ship, so cabins had mostly European / Italian outlets (Silversea’s original owners were Italian). The Moon is only a year or two old, thus it has US, European, UK and USB outlets. Much more flexible – I have not needed to use any of my fancy adapters.
At 4:30pm ship time every day, at port or at sea, there is “Team Trivia” at the Dolce Vita – which is the bar / lounge area of the ship. The Cruise Director presents 20 or so questions and teams of no more than 10 passengers attempt to answer the most on their form. At the end the teams with the three most correct answers get “prize points” that can be turned in at the end of a cruise segments for Silversea merchandise like ball point pens, ball cap, t-shirts and such. I did not participate in other cruises but got suckered it about a week ago. My team has doctors, lawyers, accountants and my semi-tech industry butt.
The questions are chosen well: some US, some EU, across genres like history, music, art. The games can get brutal as teams push the Cruise Director on details for the answers. Last night we had about 150 competing, which about 25% of the passengers. So long as I learn something each day I keep coming back. Some examples:
- From the movie “Dr Zhivago”, what is the doctor’s first name? A: “Yuri”
- If you head east from the Falklands, what is the first country you run into? A: “Chile” (look it up)
- Who wrote the orchestral interlude “Flight of the Bumblebee”? A: “Rimsky-Korsakov”
- What year did Winston Churchill die? A: “1965”. Extra point for exact day.
I’m hoping to get enough points to get an apron to remind me of the teaching kitchen.
- During the lecture on Ernest Shackleton‘s exploring the Antarctic and his heroics saving his men when trapped in the ice, the presenter explained how 100 years later people discovered several intact cases of whiskey and brandy from one of his expeditions, and a distillery has chemically examined the vintage, which was lost in the 20th century, and recreated the brand. After hearing about his exploits, I may go buy a bottle.
- In the S.A.L.T. kitchen our chef explained that 25% of the human population have a mutation that tastes cilantro like it was soap.
- Silversea paid $250,000 to transit the Panama Canal