Of course the correct title for this Celebrity Eclipse Blog entry should be 'after ever'. As 'Ever' is the name of our excellent Icelandic guide who accompanied us on the Geothermal and Blue Lagoon Celebrity Excursion and I am writing this entry the day after the accompaniment. Hence the 'ever after' title.
The grammatically correct entry would of course have been lost in translation. A bit like Evers' "we will be wisiting the sheeps". Well all of the words weren't strung together, but that I suppose is the artistic licence of Blog writing. We explained to Ever that 'sheep' was both singular and plural, and giggled like school children when Ever we were "wisiting' anything. In fact we seemed to bond with Ever. The best line (as the coach moved over a precarious track road with significant drops) was, "the driver has not driven before' with an extremely long and worrying pause before the essential word 'here' was tagged on. Apparently the tractor track was a new arterial road. I felt better knowing that the loose ground was fresh, and the driver was indeed qualified to be sat in his independently sprung seat.
Ever is a wonderful tour guide who is a credit to Celebrity and was justly rewarded by a few of us at the front.
But what was not so wonderful is the continual tour problems. I'm not sure if Celebrity target Mrs B and I deliberately or more realistically we are just unlucky. But between The Med and Iceland we have managed to get bitten by ants, an air conditioning failure in warmer climates (air con is not needed in Iceland), several ear piece and transmitter failures AND now we have had the coach microphone failure. It is extremely frustrating that we have changed coaches twice and all in all the quality of the excursion arrangements do not equal the quality of the Celebrity Eclipse and it's almost hand picked crew that are a credit to the HR team.
The frustrating thing about this imbalance is that those providing the tour facilities know that the Eclipse is arriving and could check their stuff in advance and also prepare a Plan B. You don't check essential equipment when the last guest ambles on board - yet we experience the same ineptitude in country after country. I mean folks, it's all arranged and everyone knows when the Eclipse is due in port.
Especially in Iceland where the Eclipse is the largest Cruise ship to dock in our first port of call. But it's not an Icelandic thing, as (unfortunately) it seems to be a Celebrity thing. There is of course a simple answer; set a standard that matches the fleet and refuse to pay those that don't meet the standard.
Although I suspect that the excursion problems are in fact something that will last 'Ever after', and for that reason those in Stateroom 7233 have only booked 2 excursions on this Cruise. Instead today we look forward to the company of Irit and Roger from Israel as we wonder around the sights of Reykjavik.
