Tag: Oceania Cruises
A View With a Room
Masters of the Sea
Three captains will have commanded our ship as, in the Latin terminology of old Rome, “Magister Navis” or Master of the Sea, before our voyage ends. And we have had the privilege to dine at least once with each, and establish a casual acquaintance. With Oceania, their work contracts are a rotation of about two…
Continue reading →Seas the Day
I love sea days. I love the (mostly) gentle sway of the ship, the melting of blue from sky to sea, the feeling of being at home on the ocean, the mystery of its depth, the water slapping against the hull, the misting spray, birds roosting on the jackstaff, dolphins arching in the ship’s wake….
Continue reading →A Moveable Feast
Cruise ships are often heavily rated by the quality of their food. Great attention is paid to its excellence, availability, and visual appeal, as eating is a primary onboard pasttime. When describing this voyage to friends, they would gasp in horror at the mental calculation of just how much weight one could actually gain if…
Continue reading →Blue Ribbon Win
To me, one of the great experiences of cruising is living on the ship. It is a luxuriously contained world and everyone is pretty much there for the same reasons, mostly to ensure a good time. An advantage to a very long cruise is that you establish very good friends with which to have a…
Continue reading →Ships of Fools
Cruise ships suffer no lack of activities to keep their passengers busy whether it is with enrichment lectures, cooking demonstrations, wine and spirit tastings, art and dance classes, games, tea time, spa treatments, fitness exercises, bridge lessons, and on and on. The staff will do almost anything to keep us entertained. So to occupy us…
Continue reading →Pack Rat Results
At about halfway through the trip, after all the long pre-departure angst of guessing, shopping, packing, and planning for everything it takes to live on a ship and sightsee in a variety of distant foreign lands for 109 days, I find that all the preparation has actually paid off pretty well. I’ve worn almost all…
Continue reading →Guardians of the Reef
The notoriously difficult waters of the Torres Strait are located between Australia and New Guinea and contain more than 274 small islands in the Queensland territory. The strait connects to the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef system that stretches for 1,500 miles along the northeast coast of the continent. These waters require…
Continue reading →Second Chance
We stood before King Neptune once again to seek permission to cross the equator as we sailed northward this time. At 1100 hours on June 10, 2015, having missed the first Crossing Ceremony, Dean, still a Polliwog, performed his dutiful initiation, kissed the fish, and was anointed with the green slime….thus elevating his status from…
Continue reading →Polliwog No More
If you’ve been checking our itinerary you know that I am woefully behind on my blog, since in real time we are now in French Polynesia and my recent posts show us still in Southeast Asia. I am about to recount a momentous event, however, that occurred over a month ago, and will actually happen…
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