Disembarked Silver Cloud last Friday, boarded Dream same day, disembarked Dream yesterday, and drove to Miami where we are awaiting our transfer to Mariner. So, with a few days perspective I can finish my review of Silver Cloud.

Service excellent, well trained staff. Food, hit and miss, especially "pressed" chicken showing up on last night. Bath towels and toilet paper both felt like sand paper. Alfredo great (he played Ferry across Mersey the last night and all that was missing was Jerry singing) but other piano player poor. Moss did two shows and two name that tunes but that was it for entertainment. We had five sea days with just some uninspiring lectures that mostly had nothing to do with where we were sailing. 19 on Expedition staff with a few good ones and many that did nothing. Our favorite Aly was able to get a lot of school work done.

Excursions nice and all of ours were free; however, in Newport none of the excursions toured the homes and in Norfolk none of the tours went to Williamsburg; both the cultural and historical highlights of those ports.

I talked to Cruise Consultant as Silversea has a couple of itineraries that Regent doesn't sail. First one is two day stop in Monte Carlo for Grand Prix. Second one is Black Sea cruise that goes to same ports as Regent plus Sochi, Georgia, and Northern Turkey. Even with those itineraries, we have still decided to part ways with Silversea as they (corporate) still have not accepted any responsibility for Wrangel debacle nor provided adequate compensation. Would have much preferred to use the credit we did receive on PUFFIN or ADELIE instead of a pretty boring East Coast cruise on a quasi-expedition ship.

Marc