DAY 119 - WELCOME TO VICTORIA, BC, CANADA

Wonderful Dinner At Prego With Pianist John Mentis ✔ Enjoyed Our Time In Victoria ✔ 


We wanted to give a shout-out to the members of the Crystal Entertainment Team.


The Entertainment Team falls under the direction of Vice President for Entertainment and Programs Bret Bullock who works out of Crystal Cruises Corporate Office in Los Angeles.


On the ship, Cruise Director Rick Spath oversees the Entertainment Program working with this highly talented group of professionals to schedule a wide range of entertainment and enrichment programs for all of the guests to enjoy.  


Rick sets the tone on board the ship for all of those who are involved with entertainment and enrichment by being very focused on each guest.  He puts his heart into all of this.  On our final post we will post more about Rick and the wonderful team of Senior Officers on this World Cruise along with a few other key people such as World Cruise Hostess Elise Ivy.


Crystal Cruises staffs each ship with many of their own entertainers.  


This includes the Galaxy Orchestra who performs for all of the Production Shows, performs with many of the outside entertainers, and then performs at a variety of special events.  They are under the direction of Bandmaster Raphael Derkson.  Raphael is superb and if we close our eyes we can tell whether or not Raphael is playing with the Orchestra as he is one of those talents who has a magical presence when he is playing his instrument and leading the band.


In addition to his day to day responsibilities, on the World Cruise he writes music that is part of the special  events and he works tirelessly to do this.  Each member of the Orchestra are true professionals.  When an act comes onto the ship, the Orchestra will practice with them usually the afternoon of the performance and go through one dry run.  Yet to us it seems that they have been performing with the Celebrity Entertainer for years.  We can certainly see that each of them has a love and passion for music and they are superb musicians.


Likewise, the Crystal Ensemble of Singers and Dancers includes two lead vocalists and along with a team of singers and dancers, including a line captain.  They perform in all of the Production Shows on each voyage and then from time to time they perform in many of the special events on the ship and in some of the other variety shows.  They are an extraordinary team and amaze us all the time.


Their performances are demanding to begin with and even more challenging when you consider that often they are performing dance routines not only in calm seas but at other times where there is a fair amount of motion from the seas.  They are a truly amazing team.


There is also the Crystal Sextet which is composed of six musicians/singers who perform each sea day in the afternoon at the pool, in the evening for those who like to dance or listen to live music and at other times during the day/evening as well at the various captain receptions.  They play a nice range of music and we enjoy listening to them.


On-Board also the talented pianists John Mentis and Colin Salter.  John plays in the Crystal Cove a few times each evening including before each dinner, and later at night and also at Team Trivial.   Colin Salter plays the and sings in the Avenue Saloon and has participated in a wide range of special shows throughout the World Cruise.    They are both very talents.  Colin has performed a number of specials from an Elton John night to a Billy Joel night.  John seems to know every song ever written and also has other talents such as tuning all of the pianos on the ship to taking video for the World Cruise video.


There is the Creative Quartet who plays mainly classical music at different times during the day and early evening.  They too have performed from time to time in some shows such as the recent variety show.


There are many other individuals who comprise the Entertainment Staff.


This includes the Activities Hostess, the Librarian who just recently was named the Crystal Serenity Employee Of The Year for 2011, the Lounge Technician and the Production and the Assistant Production Managers, the Projectionist, the Television and the assistant Television Managers, Special Events Coordinator Fred Divel who pulled together the most beautiful and imaginative displays at all the various events, as well as singers David Speicker and Karen Jeffreys who are very versatile and perform in a wide range of shows and other events and also lead the evening Karaoke.  During the Holiday Voyage and during other times of the year when children will be on the ship, there are also Junior Activity Directors who come onto the ship for organized Children's Programs and they fall under the Cruise Director as well.


We also wanted to highlight Assistant Cruise Director Scott Mitchel.  One of his major responsibilities is to coordinate all of the daytime and evening scheduling of entertainment and enrichment.  This is no easy task given that on sea days there are 50+ activities offered in the daytime and afternoon hours and in the evening on both sea and port days there is a very extensive entertainment program.  Scott is also a very talented Pianist and plays the piano at different times for the guests.


In addition to the in-house entertainment,  on each and every voyage entertainers are brought onto the ship to perform for the guests and that includes vocalists, musicians, comedians, ventriloquists, and other entertainers.  Some have been performing on Crystal ships for a number of years while on this voyage some have entertained for Crystal for the very first time.


Then there is all of the people who comprise the very extensive enrichment program that is part of the Cruise Directors responsibility.  This includes the lecturers, computer university instructors, bridge instructors, art instructors, golf pro, special yoga and pilates instructors who are brought onto the World Cruise, language instructors, music instructors, memoir writing instructor along with the Clergy and several others who we have not mentioned that comprise the extraordinary enrichment program.


All of this comes under the direction of Cruise Director Rick Spath who works tirelessly from early morning to very late at night to make each and everyday the best it can be for each guest on the ship.  Rick fine tunes each days programming to maximize guest enjoyment and participation and works his magic each and every day.  He must also coordinate all of this with other areas of the ship, including Food and Beverage.  Rick has our admiration and respect for all that he does day-in-and-day-out to provide the guests with the best on-board experience on each and every voyage.


We are sorry if we have missed some of the people who comprise wonderful entertainment and enrichment program.


Often we are asked at home what we do on the ship for all of this time when not visiting ports of call and so much of our sea days are spent enjoying the entertainment and enrichment  each and every day.  We often say that cruising means discovery and we have learned so very much during our travels both on the ship because of all of the entertainment/enrichment and of course off the ship while in port.


We now want to move to last evening and to today.


These are the dinner menus from the Crystal Dining Room last evening.

Last evening, we dined at Prego and our guest was pianist John Mentis.  As we mentioned earlier, John plays the piano at the Crystal Cove several times each evening, before main and late seating and later in the evening.  He also plays the piano at Team Trivia.  We have known John for several years and it is always a pleasure to speak with him and to hear him play the piano.  On most days, we stop by the Crystal Cove before dinner to hear John perform.


Our waiter for the evening was Costa and as usual he took wonderful care of us.


Keith and Anne Marie with John Mentis.

We began our course by ordering one of the additional entrees which was the pasta entree as an appetizer.  It was a seafood pasta and it was delicious.

For our entree, we each had the additional seafood entree which was Halibut.  It was cooked very nicely and it was very tasty.

When we dine at Prego Keith always gets a nice side order of vegetables so we thought we would post a photo of them.

For dessert, Anne Marie had one scoop of Gelato while Keith enjoyed a fruit plate.


It was so very nice to catch up with John Mentis and we look forward to sailing with John again.


Later in the evening we sat in the Crystal Cove with one of the officers.  With the ship in port until Midnight the Cove was a nice quiet spot to enjoy good conversation while listening to John Mentis play songs on the piano.


We slept very well last evening.  The ship departed Vancouver after midnight and we were to sleep before then.    While it was probably a nice sail away we could not stay up that late.  So, we cannot say that the ship gently rocked us to sleep as we normally do.  


We arrived to Victoria at around 7:00 AM.  It is located not too far from Vancouver.


Once again, Keith managed to get up early to begin yet another wonderful day on board the Crystal Serenity.  He began with a nice long workout in the Fitness Center.  Afterwards, he stopped by the Lido Cafe for his daily coffee.  He chatted with some of the Lido Cafe Stewards and one of the members of the Night Crew. We had seen some of these crew members in port yesterday afternoon so Keith chatted with them about what they had done in port.


After Anne Marie's workout, we enjoyed breakfast in our room thanks to Rao and then got ready to visit Victoria.


This is our fifth time to Victoria and our fourth time by Cruise Ship. One time we took a ferry over to Victoria prior to a start of a cruise that didn't include Victoria on its itinerary.  A major attraction especially for first time visitors is Butchart Gardens which is located about 45 minutes from the port and is a 50 acre property with an amazing garden of displays of gardening styles throughout the world.  We have been there twice already so we spent our time today in the downtown area of Victoria.


The downtown area is very charming.  In addition to stores, restaurants and cafes, it also included the Royal British Columbia Museum, Parliament Buildings, Chinatown, the Maritime Museum and the Fairmont Empress Hotel with its beautiful exterior.


We were last to Victoria in August of last year and like last time rather than taking the shuttle from the pier to the downtown area we decided to walk instead.  


The walk does take about 30 minutes as the sign indicates.


It was quite chilly but it was refreshing to be able to walk to and from town.  Since we are the very first Cruise Ship to visit Victoria for the upcoming 2012 cruising season one of the local news stations sent their crew to the ship to interview some of the Crystal Crew Members.  We understand from someone who lives in Vancouver that the same thing happened yesterday in Vancouver and that our ship was on last nights news.

There are two ways to walk into town and we took the longer route that weaves by the inner harbour.

These are some of the house boats that we saw as we walked along the harbour path.

As we got closer to the downtown area we saw the Fairmont Empress Hotel which opened in 1908.

The next two photos are the Parliament Buildings constructed in 1893 in honor of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

This status is in honor of Emily Carr who is British Columbia's most famous artist.

Once in the downtown area we walked several streets.  This gives you an idea of the views along the street.

It was quite chilly when we were out and about as the temperature was in the low 40's.  Yet, it looked like spring with the beautiful flowers.

Upon our return to the ship we ran into Shore Excursion Manager James and Assistant Shore Excursion Managers Daniel with hat.

Once back to the ship we had lunch with Cruise Director Rick Spath in the Crystal Dining Room.  We were still cold from being outside so we began our meal with soup, followed by salad entree and then Anne Marie had a low-fat yogurt while Keith had berries for dessert.


While in the dining room we checked with Headwaiter Augusto about the fish for the evening as we were not familiar with what type of fish it is as it is called.  It is a Broiled, Fresh, British Columbia Ling Fillet.  Augusto said it is part of the Cod Family.


We ran a few errands on the ship and then Anne Marie did more packing and Keith read and wrote and later in the afternoon got together with friend Bob.


This evening we will dine in the Crystal Dining Room.


TODAY'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY......

 “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” -  Milton Berle 

Keith and Anne Marie