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Riviera January 3 - It's the (Old) Girls Gone "Wild" cruise!

Leejnd4

By Leejnd4,
in Oceania Cruises

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Leejnd4

Leejnd4

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Hello O Cruisers! We are getting ready to catch our shuttle to the cruise terminal in Miami to board the Riviera for our 10-day Caribbean cruise. We are three gals who've all cruised together as couples, but this time we decided to leave the hubbies home and do this as a girl's cruise. We're all experienced cruisers, but this is a first time on Oceania for all three of us. We are:

 

LeeAnne (that's me) - Scuba diver, underwater photographer, world traveler, and long-time Cruise Critic blabbermouth from Southern California

 

Sandy - Retiree and American ex-pat living in sunny Costa Rica, with whom I've traveled literally all over the world (Macchu Picchu, Galapagos, Bali, French Polynesia, Copper Canyon...)

 

Char - Recently retired, recent transplant to Florida from Indiana, experienced cruiser and Capn Morgan lover

 

We're calling this the (Old) Girls Gone "Wild" cruise because, well, we ain't no spring chickens :p, and while we have all three sewed our wild oats in the past, "wild" to us these days is more about how late we can actually keep our eyes open after sunset. LOL!

 

I'll be posting my experiences, thoughts, impressions, and other random blabbermouthing over the course of this cruise.

 

I've been researching this cruise for a VERY long time, and got a wee bit nervous when I read about all the issues that arose due to the Noro outbreak a few cruises ago. I've been following the boards and reviews religiously since then, and it does seem that things have settled down and returned back to the high level of service O lovers have come to expect. But I'll be watching with a critical eye, and I promise to be completely honest as I relate what I experience.

 

I will also force y'all to view some of my underwater shots, as I plan on scuba diving at 5 of our port stops and hope to get some good critter pics.

 

I also encourage any of our shipmates on this cruise to drop in and say hello and post their own experiences and impressions.

 

It's a drizzly 68 degrees here in Miami, so I'm glad we're heading south and look forward to more SUN! Catch y'all onboard! :D

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RJB

RJB

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Hello O Cruisers! We are getting ready to catch our shuttle to the cruise terminal in Miami to board the Riviera for our 10-day Caribbean cruise. We are three gals who've all cruised together as couples, but this time we decided to leave the hubbies home and do this as a girl's cruise. We're all experienced cruisers, but this is a first time on Oceania for all three of us. We are:

 

LeeAnne (that's me) - Scuba diver, underwater photographer, world traveler, and long-time Cruise Critic blabbermouth from Southern California

 

Sandy - Retiree and American ex-pat living in sunny Costa Rica, with whom I've traveled literally all over the world (Macchu Picchu, Galapagos, Bali, French Polynesia, Copper Canthe

Char - Recently retired, recent transplant to Florida from Indiana, experienced cruiser and Capn Morgan lover

 

We're calling this the (Old) Girls Gone "Wild" cruise because, well, we ain't no spring chickens :p, and while we have all three sewed our wild oats in the past, "wild" to us these days is more about how late we can actually keep our eyes open after sunset. LOL!

 

I'll be posting my experiences, thoughts, impressions, and other random blabbermouthing over the course of this cruise.

 

I've been researching this cruise for a VERY long time, and got a wee bit nervous when I read about all the issues that arose due to the Noro outbreak a few cruises ago. I've been following the boards and reviews religiously since then, and it does seem that things have settled down and returned back to the high level of service O lovers have come to expect. But I'll be watching with a critical eye, and I promise to be completely honest as I relate what I experience.

 

I will also force y'all to view some of my underwater shots, as I plan on scuba diving at 5 of our port stops and hope to get some good critter pics.

 

I also encourage any of our shipmates on this cruise to drop in and say hello and post their own experiences and impressions.

 

It's a drizzly 68 degrees here in Miami, so I'm glad we're heading south and look forward to more SUN! Catch y'all onboard! :D

Sounds like a lot of fun. Sitting here looking at Riviera at her dock in Miami. Looks good. Keep us posted on your trip as we will be doing the same trip on Riviera in Feb. Can't wait. Have a good, safe cruise. :):)

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Leejnd4

Leejnd4

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Hi Kim!! How funny...you found my thread immediately. ;) Wish you were here!

 

We're on the ship...check in was a breeze...food in Terrace cafe is fabulous. Suites ready soon...will post more later!

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Leejnd4

Leejnd4

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We're soon to cast off! Tomorrow is a sea day...next day is Grand Turk. I've unpacked, explored the ship, and did a 2 1/2 mile run on the sports deck and a short work-out in the gym. Next is the Mustard Drill ;), then our first dinner on the Grand Dining Room.

 

We LOVE the look of this ship! Everything is so elegant and luxurious. We've met our butler Rosario, and our room stewardess (can't remember her name). We love love love the Penthouse...plenty of room for three overpacking ladies.

 

That's all for now! More details when I have a bit more time.

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GeezerCouple Holiday Sharing Rare

GeezerCouple

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And we're off! Champagne popped, chocolates consumed....party is on! :D

 

We just ended the Riviera's holiday cruise, and we were watching your departure from our room at the Intercontinental.

 

We had such a wonderful cruise (our first on Oceania), and we are looking over future intineraries.

We can't wait to return.

 

Also, we had been increasingly worried about the illness reports from the cruises just before ours.

If our experience is representative, there wasn't a single thing that suggested there was - or had been - any difficulties.

 

We also thought the Penthouse Suite layout was terrific.

It was an impressive use of space, and it felt like it was a lot bigger.

And although I just can't seem to avoid overpacking (no matter how much I promise myself to "do it better next time"), we didn't come close to using all of the storage space.

 

BTW, I'm still recovering a flare-up of a torn rotator cuff.

(That made it especially nice that the main pool and the Spa pool both have stairs to help get in/out of the water. Pulling myself up a ladder wouldn't have worked well at all.)

I hope you are comfortable for all of your activities.

 

Hope you all have a wonderful time!

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globevest

globevest

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We're soon to cast off! Tomorrow is a sea day...next day is Grand Turk. I've unpacked, explored the ship, and did a 2 1/2 mile run on the sports deck and a short work-out in the gym..

 

(Old) Girls........I don't think so! 2.5 mile run and use of the gym before even leaving the port :rolleyes: Have a great cruise.;)

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Leejnd4

Leejnd4

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Hi everyone! So fun to see so much interest in this thread. I have not even BEGUN to write, believe me I will give you many details. But for now I JUST managed to figure out how to get online (earlier posts were done using my cell service from Miami), so I just wanted to post a quick hello and let y'all know that so far everything is just freaking fantastic. ;)

 

I'm going to type up a far more detailed report a bit later, (offline), then pop online just to post it. But right now I've got 2.5 miles to go run - on a 1/10th mile loop so I feel like a hamster! LOL! And then I've got an aromatherapy massage to enjoy, and lunch to eat, and THEN this afternoon I should have some time to post my review, before our 3pm Meet n Mingle. So...stay tuned...lots more to come!

 

Oh...this BED...holy moly this thing is a dream...:o

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Leejnd4

Leejnd4

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Well, first things first…I’ll tell you what you all want to know: there is not a single sign of Noro that I can detect in terms of how the ship is being operated, or the service levels, or really anything.

How do I like it so far? In a word: FANTABULOUS! (Is that a word?)

 

Check in was a total breeze, which of course is due to our Penthouse suite. We arrived at 11:15, and the line for the regular staterooms was very long, but there was only one person in the Penthouse line. BAM…we’re onboard. There were crew there to welcome us, and they directed us right to the Terrace café. We ate a light lunch there, and our cabin was ready right at 1:00. All luggage was outside the room. We quickly unpacked, and sorted out who was sleeping where, and within a few minutes both our butler and our room attendant came to meet us, and everything went like clockwork.

 

We explored the ship, I did my 2 ½ mile run on the sports deck (and got a lot of strange looks for it, not sure why!), did the muster drill (where we picked up a new phrase: “Please give us a small amount of hush” said in a proper British accent – we plan on using that one on each other when we get too chatty), showered and dressed, and watched sailaway from our balcony.

 

Oh, about the balcony…before Char joined us, we were booked in one of the extended balcony cabins on deck 7 (7111). I can see those balconies below us, and yes they are very nice and big! But I have no regrets – our balcony is perfect. They already had two loungers and one chair, which is fine for us. At sailaway we popped the cork of the champagne on our balcony, and toasted…shall we say…loudly. We are in 11001, furthest forward to the bow, and we can look right into the glass walls of the bridge, where a bunch of crewmembers started waving to us. We waved back, toasted to them, blew them kisses, which they blew back, and thus ensued a lengthy waving and kiss-blowing session that had us all falling down laughing.

 

We love waving at the guys in there, and they always wave back. Our only real concern is that if we get really trashed one night, one or more of us might be tempted to flash them! So we’ve made a pact: any one of us finds themselves irresistibly compelled to flash the bridge, the others promise to save her from herself and drag her inside.

 

Let’s just hope we’re not all three trashed at the same time!

 

We went to the GDR for dinner. We asked to share, so they put us at a table for 8 and shortly thereafter they seated two more couples with us. What a GORGEOUS room! I’ve read reviews saying the pictures of the dining room don’t do it justice, and that’s a fact. We were near the stern and I was facing forward, so I had a perfect view of that amazing sparkling chandelier…there are just no words for that effect.

 

Lovely couples, great conversation, although the acoustics made it a little challenging to hear the people furthest away from me. But it was WAY better than the acoustics in the dining room on the Windstar cruise – on that ship you literally could only talk to the people right next to you. So it wasn’t perfect, but it was okay.

 

Food was wonderful. I had the duck pate in puff pastry, Boston lettuce salad with Stilton cheese (my favorite cheese-it was perfect in this salad), Veal Oscar, and a dessert that was a pistachio mousse over an almond pastry shell. Service was impeccable, food delectable. No complaints.

 

After dinner we wandered around…I went to see the pianist Sergiy Nikityuk in the Riviera Lounge playing some classical selections. He was fantastic but the selections were not to my liking – too esoteric and angry for me! Liszt is great…except when he’s not. So from there we went to the Casino and had a little fun there (I’m the only one who lost money, dammit!), then turned in.

 

The seas are perfectly flat, but the slight ship movements were enough to lull us all to a deep delicious sleep. Sandy is on the sofa bed, and while the mattress is rather thin, the bed is wider than our twins so there are pros and cons to each, and Sandy is enjoying the extra space. There’s a double mattress on there. She says it’s a little hard but perfectly fine. Me -- I’m enjoying that MATTRESS! Wow! It’s definitely one of the most comfortable mattresses I’ve ever slept on. And we all love the bedding.

 

Today has been all about relaxing. Breakfast showed up at the room promptly at 8 – and I have to relate this hilarious scene: the three of us were eating our breakfast, and Char first says, Oh my God these sunny side up eggs are done perfectly! And Sandy says, Wow how’d they managed to cook my over easy eggs so perfectly? And I say, wow, this is the most perfectly cooked cheese omelet I’ve ever had. It was just so…so…PERFECT!

 

Anyway, I had an 11:00 massage scheduled, so I dashed out to the hamster-wheel-sized running track to get my 2.5 miles in beforehand. Here’s one thing I’ve encountered on ships before and I just don’t get it: groups of people walking 3 or 4 abreast, completely blocking the running track. There I am, trying to run, on a track that is specifically designed for…wait for it…RUNNERS…and groups of amblers amble along leaving no room for me to pass. If they could just walk two abreast and leave a wee little path for the runners (I was not the only runner)…but no they don’t and then they act all surprised when I come up behind them, huffing and puffing, and ask if they could let me by. Over and over again. It’s a 1/10th of a mile track, so you’d think by the 5th or 6th time I asked to pass they might get it! Baffling.

 

Anyway, I learned something: my running ap on my iPhone doesn’t work very well when we’re at sea. I didn’t think about the fact that, because it uses a GPS to determine my distance, it was going to factor in the movement of the ship. So when I was done with my run my ap told me I’d run 12 miles at a 3 minute mile pace. WOW! At that pace I will WIN that marathon! I’ll beat the Kenyans, for pete’s sake! ;) (Don’t ask me what my usual per-mile pace is…just know that it’s not 3 minutes.)

 

Next up was a massage at the Canyon Ranch Spa. I was leery of this – with my shoulder issues I was afraid that someone not fully trained in shoulder rehab could hurt me if he rubbed it the wrong way. But I’ve had such a stressful last few weeks that I really wanted an opportunity to get a fully body relaxation thing going. I figured I’d tell the massage therapist to just avoid the area entirely. I mentioned my shoulder surgery on the health form, and then was taken to the room by a young man from India named Siddhu. We spoke for a few minutes, and he suddenly began asking me all kinds of very detailed clinical questions about my shoulder surgeries, as if he knew exactly what was done to me, and why…and he told me he can completely fix me. Turns out he spent 7 years working as a physical therapist in a hospital in New Delhi, with his specialty being – get this – rehabbing people after rotator cuff surgery!

 

And OH BOY did he know what he was doing. Not only did he NOT avoid the area – he focused on it, and gave me the most incredible massage of my life. He did my whole body too, but my shoulder…holy moly it felt AMAZING! He used hot oil, cold biofreeze, hot moist towels on it while he did the rest of my body…and then at the end he showed me some exercises to do that he promises will get me my full range back in 2 weeks. He also encouraged me to come back and see him, and he will teach me more exercises and work my shoulder even more. He swears by the end of the cruise I’ll be able to hook my bra behind me, something I haven’t been able to do since I injured my shoulder in May.

 

So I signed up for 3 more massages with him. Maybe I got sold…but he definitely knew what he was talking about, there’s no doubt that he understands shoulder surgery and shoulder anatomy at least as well as my physical therapist. I’ll let y’all know how it works. If I can quit PT early, that’ll save me some money, so it may end up being worth it.

 

I spent some time in the Thallasotherapy pool, then on to lunch at Waves Grill. I had the famous surf-&-turf-without-the-turf. The lobsters look more like shrimp, but they taste like lobsters so who am I to complain? :)

 

Next up was our Meet n Mingle at the Horizon lounge at 3pm. I was a bit concerned that nobody would show up – we’ve had a relatively quiet roll call thread (compared to some others I’ve been involved in), but we ended up with a nice crowd of about 14 people, and we had a GREAT time! Everyone introduced themselves several times as new people showed up, so I might even remember some people’s names.

 

And best of all – there were a number of people interested in joining us on the Catamaran in St. Barts! So we now have 9 going. That will bring the price down nicely, and we’ll have a great time with some very fun people.

 

During our Meet n Mingle it was POURING! It was a bit cloudy off and on this morning, then it got progressively darker until about 2:30 when the rain started in earnest. It was actually kinda romantic, sitting right up under the glass at the point of the bow in Horizons. The seas, meanwhile, remain flat and very comfortable. It’s not raining anymore now, although a cloud cover remains.

 

We’re now chillin in the cabin, and tonight we dine at Jacques. One of the people at our M&M told me I MUST try the lobster thermidour. I’m always looking for an excuse to eat lobster, so…I’ll happily do what she says. I’m compliant like that.

 

Tomorrow is Grand Turk – I’m scuba diving in the morning, and Sandy & Char are going to Margaritaville. I hope to meet them there after my dive.

 

More soon!

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