• Day 11: Work or play? It’s one or the other


    Photo of Mimi Weisband, Vice President Public Relations, Crystal Cruises

    Cathy We’re en route to Shanghai. It’s another relaxing day on board the Crystal Symphony, but for us there wasn’t much time for relaxing. There was work to do. We had scheduled a meeting at The Bistro with Mimi, the vice president of PR for Crystal Cruises, to pick her brain about the ship’s refurbishment. And then for our own workshop planning purposes we had to collect information and photograph potential venues.

    That day there was also a lecture about China: Two Revolutions—From Mao to Modernity. Darrell had been telling me about these and after all, one of the reasons we came on the ship was to take in all of the culture from our first experience in Asia. He asked me to go with him, but unfortunately the time conflicted with our meeting and instead I had to ask him to take Nicki to Fantasia again, and pick her up and be responsible for feeding her lunch. He wasn’t too happy about that. But he understood—sort of. How did Daniel feel?

    Lissa He wasn’t happy either. ‘Oh, you gotta work? I thought we would hang out and have a drink on the Lido deck, spend some time together, just catch up.’


    Video of Silk Road – Nobu’s new restaurant onboard

    Cathy So the boys weren’t all that pleased. This wasn’t our typical vacation like in the past. It was also a working vacation. Some days we’re with our families and other days we’re cramming to get meetings, researching logistics, trying to blog, organize photos. And work has kept us so busy this last year we’ve hardly had time to spend with our families when we’re home.

    I was a bit torn, but you know what, Lise? At this point I’m realizing, when are we going to be in Asia together with our families again?

    Lissa Yeah, let’s get real. They’ve sacrificed a lot in the last year so we could work. I totally agree.

    Cathy I told Darrell, this is the last day we’re going to work, I promise! After this it’s all about family. (I’ll tell him about our meeting with Scott Peterson later!) But it had come to the point where we had to make a choice. A bit more work, then it’s all about family!


    Video of refurbished areas aboard the Crystal Symphony

    So we met Mimi at The Bistro and she was a sweetheart, she was very generous with her time. She said what do you need from me? We said we’d love you to share about the renovation.

    Lissa She agreed to do a video with us and we agreed to meet again after lunch so you guys could change and look more appropriate!

    Cathy We found out that Crystal Symphony was born in Turku, Finland, and sailed out of her birthplace in 1995 costing over $250 million. They did a $23 million refurbishment in November of 2006.

    It was fun to walk around with Mimi giving us a guided tour of the areas that were redone. I loved getting the inside scoop. The place we were most excited to see was Nobu’s!

    Lissa I was looking forward to that! I was impressed with Mimi’s tour—the whole ship looked even better than it did on our last cruise. And Mimi did a great job at tying in Nobu’s with the Crystal experience. Anyway, enough talking—see for yourself!