Inside the luxurious Crystal Serenity of world-renowned Crystal Cruises is a plethora of surprises that await the traveler with the most discriminating taste.
This is not a cruise ship that packs up 6,000 people in one gigantic ship. Careful attention is given to only bringing in 1,000 guests at the maximum giving its staff and crew more time to interact with their guests.
And that is perhaps the best part of cruising with Crystal Cruises. The people who serve you breakfast knows you by your name. They know how you like your tea or what spread comes with your toast. They know how you want your eggs or steak done. That is because they pay very careful attention to their guests and their needs.
I traveled with my husband Jeff and it was a long journey from Cebu City to Manila on AirAsia. We stayed overnight in a hotel near the airport and then flew from Manila to Guangzhou on Jeff’s company, China Southern Airlines. Jeff has been working with the airline for close to two decades and we are blessed to have annual tickets courtesy of its generous management. From Guangzhou, we flew to New York. It was a 14-hour flight on business class accommodation. We stayed in New York for two days and met my good friend, Third Baqueriza who took me around the busy streets of NYC and the public library. Read my CDN travel story here.
We checked in at the cruise terminal and our giddy selves were excited to be with each other (and other adults) for 14 days (in Crystal Serenity cruise) after more than a year of facing diapers and dishes as parents to three mutants.
We were ushered to our penthouse with verandah and were greeted by our butler Neil from England and Anna and Sophia from Bosnia and Angola. The room is cozy, homey, and there’s a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates plus strawberries that you wouldn’t want to get out of the room except that the activities they prepared for guests are more than enticing and will literally drag your lazy ass of the couch.
The nightly shows are spectacular featuring Broadway performances, hilarious comedians and world-class dancers and singers. The movie theatre is seldom packed during movie nights so I took advantage of sitting by myself with my popcorn and drinks.
At different times within the day (especially during sea days), the theatre is the venue for enrichment lectures and the nerdy attended almost all lectures from the crown jewels to the magic of Disney. Health and wellness sessions are abundant at the fitness center and you can just walk in to ask questions from wellness coaches. The spa is a sanctuary in the whole ship but be ready to shell out your $$$ to pay for top-of-the-line seaweed treatments, facials and massage.
The main dining room of the ship is a haven of everything gourmet. Food is perfect you would think you have died and gone straight to heaven. But perhaps my most favorite part of the ship is the Italian restaurant called Prego. Since I married my Italian American husband, my stomach has been quite loyal to anything Italian and in Prego, only the best Italian dishes are served by the most endearing servers.
Take for example my most loved appetizer, carpaccio. Oh the melts in your mouth goodness of this thinly sliced beef drizzled with olive oil, mustard, balsamic vinegar and parmesan cheese along with capers on the side. Oh… lord.
Jarred Fonseca, our waiter, was heaven sent. The kind who anticipates your needs before you even voice it out. And then… there’s Adrian Hilario, the sommelier from the Philippines who gave me the best wine selections in the world.
We traveled to Baltimore (Maryland), Washington D.C., Charleston (South Carolina) and the Caribbean Islands of Grand Turk (Turks and Caicos), Dominican Republic, Curaçao and Aruba.
It opened my eyes as to the realities of sustainable tourism and it made me see what the Philippines can do and not do on this aspect. I’ll reserve my comments of the Caribbean to face-to-face discussions but one thing I want to share is that most of the tourism projects I’m seeing here in the Philippines have a social conscience and looked at the welfare of the community. We should be proud of that.
Sailing with Crystal Cruises does not come cheap. But the price paid for the luxury and comfort it provides is, to put it clearly although used very often, really worth every penny.
When the ship docked in Fort Lauderdale, I almost felt like throwing a tantrum the way my toddlers did when they don’t get the bar of chocolate they want.
I didn’t want to leave.
But the land is calling us back.
Jeff and I were not ready. Not quite.
But it was time to gather our bag and move to our next adventure: Walt Disney World in Orlando.
(Next stop: Inside the Magic Kingdom with Pooh and Friends)
