Epiblog - Some Observations about Celebrity Summit and Our Cruise

Just some thoughts about the ship and on our cruise experience now that the cruise has ended - 

Good

• Very smooth check-in and embarkation
• Lovely bathroom - the best we've had at sea
• Lots of storage in the cabin
• A good range of standard items on the menu in the main dining room
• Good WiFi around the ship and ours was included in the cruise fare
• The Celebrity app was very good with its daily run down
• Shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, body lotion, soap, shower cap were all provided
• Low night light in bathroom
• Cafe Al Bacio
• There was a good choice of food in the main buffet
• Clean flannels were provided every day
• There was a drinks station in the main buffet
• We got some good perks with our Celebrity 'Elite' loyalty status e.g. special social events, some free laundry, happy hours from 5 until 7 for those without a free drinks package, quicker tender access to shore, dry cleaning of one item per passenger and ironing of two

The Not So Good

• The dressing gowns provided were not towelling ones
• There were no themed dressing up nights
• Formal nights are quite casual
• Loyalty event: the crew members present tend to chat amongst themselves. Getting a drink or canapes can be hit and miss although we did well at the second one, perhaps because we were sitting near to where things appeared from the kitchens!
• Bar staff are quite slow. Not enough waiting staff in Rendezvous Lounge
• "Free drinks" only meant drinks for $10 or less and many drinks were over $10, e.g. 330ml bottle of Stella!
• No music channel on cabin TV
• No Sky News on cabin TV
• Bath towels are on the small side
• The food in the main dining room gets a bit repetitive and the variable items each day are quite few in number
• Immigration when returning to the US - it's disruptive to a port day; we couldn't get off the ship as soon as tenders might have been available until we had undergone immigration
• This cruise was marred by late arrival times and early departures from port stops

And, separately, we had a first cruise experience -  a nil balance on our on board account. We'd had free Wi-Fi and free drinks and had paid for all our excursions in advance.

Sunday 10 September - Disembarkation Day

We got up extra early as we had to leave our cabin by 7.30 so we were at breakfast at 6.30 and then headed to the rendezvous location for our Panoramic Boston with Airport Drop Off excursion.

It was a humid but overcast morning and the tour only included a 30-minute stop but we were whizzed around the city and also through the Harvard and MIT campuses. It seemed we were often on the wrong side of the bus for photos (always the way?), but G still took plenty.

We then arrived at Boston Logan Airport - not the greatest - for our 8 hour wait until the flight.

Main runway at Boston Logan Airport

A reminder for another day - Celebrity cabins have 2 x US sockets, 1 x Euro socket, 2 x USB sockets. The light switches are for the light around the mirror above the work surface and for the balcony light

The Cunard Building

Cemetery containing graves of some of the movers and shakers around the time of the American Revolution

The double line of bricks marks out the Freedom Trail in Boston

Oldest public park in the US

Underground station entrance. Boston was the third city in the world and the first in the US to have an underground railway

Cheers! - Bar

The set of 'Cheers' when it was filmed in the studio was three times bigger than the real one and this one - the real one - is now a museum dedicated to the comedy series

Boston's Champs-Elysees!

Hotel for a convenience stop on our tour

900 foot high mirror!

Nuff said!

The hotel where we had our convenience stop

We're in Harvard land now and here's the Charles River. Not quite the setting that such as Oxford or Cambridge enjoy

Facebook was born on the second floor in 2004

Fees at Harvard are $85,000 a year and only 3.5% of applicants are accepted. Notable drop outs are Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.  Both George W Bush and Barack Obama were students here 

Only a small amount of colonial architecture now survives in Boston

Freshers' accommodation at Harvard. Students must live in places like this for their first year. After that they are free to stay there or they can live elsewhere.

Harvard Law School is in the columned building to the left. It has supplied more Supreme Court justices than any other single institution

The whole of the Harvard complex is nuclear-powered and the reactor is beneath the dome between the chimney and the trees

Theorems in human form (in white)

We're now close to the finishing line of the Boston Marathon where the lethal bomb was set off in 2013

Our magic carpet machine has just landed

What a surprise.  We're going to be late

I see that these rebellious Americans are now revelling in it all!

What a beauty of a best the aeroplane is

Finally coming in to land

Pit stop at Greggs at Toddington Services on the M1