Between the Metropolitan Restaurant and Celebrity Theater on Deck 5–starting aft and walking forward–one first encounters the Platinum Club Lounge with the Martini Bar on one side and Champagne and Caviar Bar on the other. The lounge is decorated in deep purples and blues, and has some marvelous art deco lamps and other fixtures. An interesting aspect to the Platinum Club is that it is located directly above the Rendez-Vous Lounge and has a large circular opening over the dance floor below. Thus, music from the Rendez-Vous entertainers drifts up to this lounge as well, and provides added ambiance to the room. This area is also very crowded and smoky just before dinner times. Continuing forward we reach the upper level of the Grand Foyer and find, opposite the glass elevators, another oval room called the Tea Room which also doubles as the card room. This area around the Grand Foyer includes the Cova Café di Milano where you can enjoy specialty coffee and/or tea, as well as afternoon pastries and many other caloric delights. Between this Cova Café and the Celebrity Lounge is a huge area called The Emporium where there had to be at least ten specialty stores and boutiques. In addition to the typical jewelry, watch, fragrance, clothing, and notions/liquor stores, there were a few 'designer' stores.
Decks 6 (Penthouse), 7 (Vista), 8 (Panorama), and 9(Sky) contain essentially only suites and staterooms, but the library–called Words–is a two story room with an interior circular staircase that spans decks 8 and 9, and a similar two story music library and listening room–called Notes–spans deck 6 and 7 right below Words. Both are adjacent to the glass elevators on their respective decks, and are rich in wood paneling and decor and have ample comfortable seating. We had heard that Notes had been closed after one of the earliest cruises because people had pilfered many of the CD's. It was open again when we were on board, but now consists of 12 individually numbered listening stations with correspondingly numbered sections of the library. The numbered sections of the library contain only numbered CD cases on the shelves (not the actual CD's), roughly categorized into jazz, modern, rock-n-roll, classics, and the like. When you find something you like you can remove the CD case from the rack, take it to the correspondingly numbered listening station, enter the number of the actual CD, and then listen to all or as much of it as you wish. Although this system should prevent future thefts, it was problematic because you could only listen to a particular CD at its corresponding station. If that station was occupied by someone else–even if other stations were available–you were out of luck. Since our suite was just a few doors down from Notes and we therefore passed it frequently, we noticed that one gentleman in particular literally occupied station #4 for hours almost everyday reading a book (and of course listening to music). This precluded a great number of people from enjoying the music in that section. Both Words and Notes were typically open from 9:00AM-Midnight.
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