It’s good to start at a low point, because, ipso facto, everything after that has to be up. And we started from a really low point. The flight wasn’t too bad. Delta hit on one out of three. The service was slightly north of tolerable, the food was atrocious, and the environment (seats et al) were abysmal.
Worse, I was thinking of my son’s forecast when I saw the three rows in front of us occupied by three octagenarian couples obviously bound for a cruise. I thought, “Ohmagod, what if they and their fellow travelers are our shipmates for the next eight days. Now, understand, I’m not an age discriminator. Hells bells, I’m pretty far round the bend myself. But at least I’m not wearing a oxford button down covered by a cable knit yellow sweater, finished by a herring bone tweed jacket that had clearly seen better days. Note……I did not focus on the other, female half of this human ensemble. Ok since you asked, she clearly had engaged at least one too many plastic surgeries in her recent past. Her hair had the style and panache of a Johnny Weismueller swimming cap. “Nuf said ’bout that.
We were the third couple off the plane, and would have been the first, except S. just doesn’t have the bad manners that I was evidently born with. As a result, we spent forty-five minutes in the immigration line rather than fifteen, and thirty minutes in customs rather than ten. When will she learn.
Thinking ahead of my prostrate/bladder issue, I asked Marcelo, our handler, “how many minutes to the ship”? Without even a deep breath he said, “ fifteen to twenty minutes, depending on the traffic”. I knew then to make a stop by the men’s room and hope for the best. Ninety minutes later, we pulled up to an uncertain stop in front of a building adjacent to the pier to which several big boats were tethered. We had requested early embarkation but that seemed to mean little to the dithering workers sporting yellow t-shirts shouting….SILVERSEA. They were all very nice, but none of them seemed to know anything at all about what we should do and where we should do it.
We made it to our room/stateroom and after a scouting trip and some very impolite language, we even got all of our luggage to the 541 sq. ft. room with balcony that we had contracted for. 541 sq. feet sounded like a lot when I was reading the brochure, and the room looked large when I viewed it on Silversea’s web site…..but let me assure you, it’s not, and it gets smaller as each day passes. The ship was billed as a top of the market, all inclusive, luxury cruise. One would not think to expect a WC that you could touch all four walls while standing, or sitting for that matter. It had a combo shower/tub that many of my fellow shipmates would need a block and tackle to get into. It was one of those with no sliding door, only a fixed splash shield that didn’t prevent a moderate flooding of the bathroom floor with each shower. Ours had been recaulked by someone who had evidently never used a caulking gun before.
The overall decor of the ship was, shall we say, yellow chintz. I don’t mean that every thing was yellow chintz, but it looked like it would be right at home with your grandmothers yellow chintz couch. We were told by a ships officer that Silver Wind was going out of service for a major redo next summer. I would say, ’bout time. I’m writing this at a small desk in the sitting room which has everything one would need to write a letter or sign a few post cards. Unfortunately, no one writes letters or signs postcards anymore. More likely we’d be using……a computer, which needs…….electricity…….which requires……..an electrical outlet. Of which there were none. Well there was one, but it was in the bedroom at m’ladies makeup space. It only took three calls to the house keeper and two to engineering to get an extension cords of the right dimensions to do the job.
More on the ship later.
Our half day city tour was conducted by guide, driver, and man-about-Rio, Marcio. He knew everyone and every thing, which did not ingratiate him to S. or I. His crumpled blue Chevy, powered by natural gas made odd sounds when accelerating or slowing. It took approximately twenty minutes for Marcio to navigate the three blocks to a roundabout where a massive scrum of busses obscured the skyline and lowered my expectations for Rio even further. As one might expect, it did get better. We ended the day by blowing off our reservations at Rio’s best restaurant, and did quite well at a somewhat touristy churrascaria wherein we discovered two important lessons of Brazilian dining. Do not, under any circumstance, have more than two caipirinhas (a powerful mojita like drink made from cachaca, a lightly distilled sugar cane alcohol). And second, you do not have to try every spit of meat the waiter brings to your table.
We slept well, our first night at sea.
PS. I’m sure you knew but trafego is traffic in Portugese.
