Oceania Riviera Cruise Notes April 4-15 2022

[BellaOnline]

Greetings, everyone! Usually I post my notes live each night, but I was just way too busy on this cruise to have the time to do that. So instead I am writing them from home one a day and will post them that way. Ask with any questions!

 

Oceania Riviera Cruise Day 1 – Barcelona

 

My wonderful mother offered to take me and my sister on an Oceania Riviera cruise, to all spend some relaxing time together.

 

Day 1 was the flight from Logan in Boston, through Newark, and out to Barcelona. This was an adventure.

 

With the pandemic, first we had to get pre-flight COVID tests which, thankfully, all came back quickly and negative. As an added twist, Oceania announced just the day before the flight that they now required boosters. Luckily we all had boosters, but anyone who had not gotten them would be unable to sail, as they required the boosters to have been given at least 14 days prior.

 

On Sunday evening Bob drove me to Boston to get on the plane. The flight was delayed due to bad weather. I got to Newark late, but fortunately still in plenty of time for the connecting flight. I met my sister Jenn there! That was delightful. Soon enough we were boarding the plane.

 

But maybe not. After we were all boarded, they told us that there was a problem with the engine. They kicked us all back off again. By now we were hungry so we got some snacks. Then the airlines decided maybe they should feed us and gave us a $40 each voucher to buy food. By then, though, most of the restaurants were closed. So we had to scrounge to find things to eat. Now we were worried they’d cancel the flight, and our boat left the harbor the next afternoon. If we cancelled, we’d have to chase after the boat …

 

At last they got us onto the plane. We headed out! I had cycled my schedule and slept most of the way.

 

We landed in Barcelona, Spain and were met by Oceania crew at the exit. They wanted to gather ALL the people together onto one bus, so that meant now sitting and waiting … and waiting … for other flights to come in. We did meet a delightful British couple Nick and Mary who we talked with. Finally, all the people had come in and we were all led along to a bus. The bus took us through Barcelona and over to the dockyards.

It turns out that the ship was only at 40% capacity, maybe due to the last-minute booster requirement and also due to the ship going to high-risk locations like Spain and Italy.

 

We got into the terminal and were given another COVID test. We sat until that was approved. Then we were let onto the ship. We went right up to the top deck to get some food. FOOOOD!!!! Then down to our room. It turns out my sister’s power outlet was confiscated for being too large. On the up side, we didn’t have to do the standard ‘stand on deck with life preserver’ exercise. We just had to watch a video and go to our gathering location to check in. That was it.

 

We went down to the main dining room for dinner, but they were so empty that they offered us a free chance at a specialty restaurant. So we went to Toscana, their Italian restaurant. It was lovely. I had a caprese salad and porcini mushroom risotto.

 

The boat headed out into the seas!

 

You’d think I would sleep by now, but I have an Outschool teen writing workshop I run Monday evenings. In Barcelona time, that was 11pm to 2am. So I brought my laptop up to the quiet coffee area and I had fun talking with the teens. Finally at 2am I was able to go to sleep!!

 

Ask with any questions :).

 

 

[susiesan]

I was supposed to be on this cruise but had to cancel for business reasons. I will be reading your notes as I plan to do N this itinerary in 2023.

[JoePDX]

Looking forward to your next installments BellaOnline. 
 

We will be on Riviera in September/October.   Our first cruise since May 2019.   
 

Joe

[deus]

Thanks for taking the time to post your adventure!!  Have fun with your mom and sister - great memories you will have.

[TravelLoverbySea]

Thank you for posting this.  It is always good to know what to expect in these strange times.  Will be on Riviera for the May 7 Ravenna to Barcelona cruise. Will expect now to do some waiting at the Venice airport for the bus to Ravenna.  Looking forward to your next post.  Any recommendations for great restaurants, tours, etc. along the way will be appreciated.

[Jancruz]

1 hour ago, JoePDX said:

Looking forward to your next installments BellaOnline. 
 

We will be on Riviera in September/October.   Our first cruise since May 2019.   
 

Joe

 

Bella, Thanks so much for your posts I will be following your cruise on line..

 

Joe,

Stu and I (yes he is still fine) board Regatta Sunday first time since December of 19..and am champing at the bit..

Jancruz1

PS We will never forget your kindness through the years..

[Eloise4Ever]

Thanks for taking the time to do this BellaOnline. I will be following with interest as we got off Riviera the day you embarked. I hope you enjoy your cruise as much as we did.

 

I have a question about the Covid test you say you were "given" at the cruise terminal. I would have thought your pre-flight test would have covered you for embarkation. Did Oceania insist on testing at the cruise terminal? If so, I presume they covered the cost? They were not insisting on embarkation testing when we boarded in Miami on 18th March but guests had to provide a negative test result taken within the previous couple of days. Testing was available at the port at the guests expense if they hadn't tested before arrival. Oceania refused to tell me how much was being charged for that testing as it was being "provided by a third party". If you did have to pay for it yourself, can you tell me the cost please?

[LUVNICK]

Thank you for providing this information. I am also curious about the testing at the terminal as well as each port and if you were also required to test for all ports. 

I look forward to your updates. 🙂

 

[BellaOnline]

Eloise4Ever - Yes all three of us got tested in our home areas on Friday, then flew out Sunday and arrived on Monday a few hours before the boat left Barcelona. So we had to get those home tests to start with. Mine was free, supplied by my normal health care provider.

 

In addition, when we arrived at the dock area Oceania tested us there. It wasn't charged as far as I can tell. So the sequence at the dock area was we went through security / xray machines, then we went to a testing area. Each person was swabbed and then sat in a waiting area with chairs. It took maybe 15 minutes. Once we were approved, we then went to the 'registration' area where we got our key cards. Then we got on the ship.

[Eloise4Ever]

2 hours ago, BellaOnline said:

...when we arrived at the dock area Oceania tested us there. It wasn't charged as far as I can tell. So the sequence at the dock area was we went through security / xray machines, then we went to a testing area. Each person was swabbed and then sat in a waiting area with chairs.

 

Interesting Oceania seem to have reverted to their previous policy so soon after introducing the charge to guests for Covid testing on 1st March. Perhaps the decision had something to do with the numerous COVID cases that arose on our cruise.

[BellaOnline]

Here’s the summary of Day 2 of our Oceania Riviera Cruise. This was April 5, 2022. We were supposed to dock at Alicante, Spain for the day. Unfortunately, rough weather made it impossible to safely navigate in to the port area. So instead we had a sea day. As you might imagine, the sea day was a bit rolly. I don’t mind a choppy ride – I’ve been on a cruise ship during a hurricane in Hawaii where we were snapping lines left and right, and we lost power so the ship was wildly tossing. So anything mild like this I am fine with.

 

This gives me a chance to talk about the Oceania Riviera in general.

 

As I mentioned we were only maybe 40% full due to COVID and last-minute regulation changes and so on. So when we went up to the dining area for lunch, it was really very quiet. It’s a very odd sensation for people who are used to cruising and used to a bustling venue.

 

Yes. This is the actual lunch crowd.

 

It’s fair to say of course that with the non-smooth weather maybe people were curled up in their beds having crackers. I don’t personally think it was THAT bad, but again, we all have different levels of comfort. I will note that the vast majority of people who came on the boat are repeat Oceania cruisers – i.e. there were hardly any first-timers. I imagine this is in part because of the pandemic, that newbies are holding off right now while regular cruisers are chomping at the bit to get back out there again. So most of these repeat people are undoubtedly more comfortable with ‘cruise weather issues’ – at least probably more than a newbie would be. Still, there were very empty venues.

 

I took photos of every single dish at every single meal but I won’t deluge you with those. Food is a very individual thing. Some people might find this food “super special” while others find it “fairly ordinary”. I belong to the Chaine des Rotisseurs which is a food/wine group, so I’m comfortable with high-end dining. I’m also fine eating at Olive Gardens and such. I found the food overall on the Riviera good but not “mind-blowingly good” which their brochures seem to make it seem like. Sometimes the presentation was trying too hard to be pretty which then made it really hard to eat. Sometimes things like lobster bisque had no lobster at all in them. I’m from Massachusetts so I sort of expect lobster bisque to have actual lobster in it. The sushi didn’t seem high quality. I imagine they freeze it and store it a while. Again, things which you sort of just have to accept on a cruise ship, but when I think of this as being a “high end Boston restaurant” it doesn’t really hold up to that. We’ll say “nice enough most of the time”.

 

I will note that I was annoyed at their meal scheduling. Every day from around 2pm to 4pm there was a gap of NO FOOD. This made it really nasty for people who arrived after a long flight, or came back after a long tour, and all the lunch places were closed – but the tea time hadn’t started yet. Sure you could order room service – and wait an hour for it to arrive. They should have had SOMETHING reliably open all day long, period. Especially given the people coming in from tours etc. who were starving. There were several times we got back at a tour at 1:50 and were racing top speed to get to the buffet before they shut down. That is just silly.

 

My sister and I were in cabin 7021. It was perfectly suitable for us. There was plenty of space for our clothing and gear. It had both a shower and also a separate bathtub with showerhead in it. The balcony was lovely. NEITHER of us used their supplied soap / shampoo / etc. because we are sensitive to fragrances. We both brought our own supplies.

 

They have both US and European plugs in the room, so you can bring either type of device. My sister tried to bring a massive multi-plug power supply unit and it was confiscated. Also, they need you to unplug EVERY item when the room is empty, to avoid fire hazards.

 

We did not watch any of the entertainment, except the tea-time classical music group, which we went to every day at 4. That was quite lovely. Again not mind-blowingly great, but nice and relaxing. Tea, small sandwiches, and small desserts were served. I’ll note the only 2 herbal teas they had were chamomile and mint. I ended up asking for some of the delicious teas at the Red Ginger Asian restaurant when we were there, so I could then have them during the tea time.

 

The art on the ship is quite expensive art, in general. It’s like a floating museum. That being said, the person who selected the art (I think it’s the Oceania owner) has very eclectic tastes. A number of the pieces I find questionable to be out right next to a venue main entrance. 

 

Plus there were paintings of men chasing down women, lots of bare-breasted women, and one seeming to show a man having carnal knowledge of a horse. Very very odd. And I love art in general. There were just a lot of pieces that made you look at them and go “Ummmm ….”

 

One of the highlights of the cruise for me was that it featured Noel Suarez as the art instructor. He’s a quite talented cubist painter originally from Cuba. His sessions were not Bob-Ross-Style “Come and paint a flower”. Instead, people signed up for the entire series of 11 sessions which went through various learning workshops building knowledge on shading, composition, the human form, and so on. They built on each other. It wasn’t clear from the material that the series was arranged like that, so there were a few people who tried to show up for session #9 for example to “draw a face” and were playing catch-up. So I do think they need to explain that better. Still, it was an amazing amount of information, about 22 hours or more in total, from a world-class artist who was supportive and encouraging. If you have any interest in art I highly recommend this.

 

Today was the first class. It was 2 hours. It was on “drawing the calla lily” but really it was all about composition, how to use graphite, how to shade, techniques, and much more. I did end up with a calla lily, and I learned quite a lot about technique along the way.

 

The Wifi was ATROCIOUS. Let me explain how it worked (or didn’t work). By default, every cabin comes with one single-device non-streaming account. The account actively blocks any streaming like YouTube, Zoom, etc. My sister and I both have busy jobs so I needed to get a second account. I also needed to upgrade it to streaming so I could run my teen writing classes on Outschool (Zoom). This did NOT make it any faster. It just meant Zoom wasn’t blocked. My sister went all over the ship trying to find where the best wifi signal was. It seemed to be in Baristas, the coffee shop near the internet cafe. So that’s where I set up for my teen classes. Even so, one class ended early because the wifi suddenly shut down without warning. There were other times that the wifi just completely vanished. It was REALLY REALLY slow. They absolutely should be doing better on their wifi access.

 

For our sailing, masks were required unless you were in your cabins or were actively eating / drinking. That meant many people hung out at the hallway tables by the casino with a drink in front of them just chatting away with random strangers for hours. No mask. If you think this was unwise, you might be prescient to what I’ll report in a few days.

 

All in all, I was quite happy that Day 2 was a ‘quiet day’. Given how wildly busy Day 1 was for me, I was glad to sleep in and take it easy. We had lunch, we explored a bit, we had tea with the classical musicians, I went up to my art lesson, we had dinner, and by then I was exhausted and ready to sleep.

[basor]

Was Waves closed on your cruise?  This is always our go to mid afternoon lunch spot since it is usually open until 4PM just so there is a place to get lunch for the late returners....

[LHT28]

I agree with Basor

 Waves  is usually open & Barristas  have some snacks

Room service  is 24/7 if you really cannot find any open food venues 

no need to go hungry

[ToxM]

Everyone else beat me to it … 5-6.30 is the famine time if there is such a thing on Oceania 🙂 Don’t ever forget about Waves …. Overlooked at times but pretty good 🙂

[welshfamily]

I must admit I agree with Bellaonline re eating after Tours.
Although we have never found waves closed we often struggle to find something to eat when returning from Oceania’s own tours.  These tend to be 5/6 hrs. By the time we have visited our cabin to drop things off, freshen up and gone up to the terrace it is usually closed.

Although waves does panini’s, burgers and some fish and the quality is good, on a busy Mediterranean cruise having little choice for lunch can be an issue if you haven’t cruised with Oceania before.
In part this is our fault as we like to eat in the evening relatively early and sometimes perfer a lighter lunch. 
When planning our Private tours we always include lunch and in some ports it’s easy enough to find a local restaurant. 

We now try to ‘break away ‘ from any tour which ends on foot near the ship and sample something local if we don’t fancy waves or we return to the ship early.

Room service is slow at this time of day but we realise this is ,hopefully, because some crew get time on shore

We haven’t experienced this issue on some of the other cruise companies we travel with which keep their buffet open until 3pm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kjbacon]

Thanks so much for this thread, really enjoying it and how our experiences compare. I’m looking forward to more!

[LHT28]

As I mentioned  Barristas have  snacks  little sandwiches/cookies  or check the bars for chips/pretzels/nuts

 

If all else fails  pack some snack bars in your luggage 😉

[BellaOnline]

On the food, when I return from a tour starving I'm really not interested in tiny crustless jam sandwich bits :). I generally want a big fresh salad. The times we tried ordering room service it took over an hour to get to us and the steak was cold, so if I'm starving that doesn't seem to be a good result :).

 

We had granola bars and such in the room. But with the money paid to Oceania there should always be actual yummy food available quickly during daylight hours :). I've never had that issue on other cruise lines.

[BellaOnline]

The third day of our 2022 Oceania Riviera cruise had us docking at Malaga. We loved this not because of Malaga itself but because that was only an hour and a half from Alhambra – a gorgeous historic Moorish palace. So we reserved an Oceania bus ride to and from Alhambra, and then separately bought a timed tour entry into Alhambra itself. Oceania didn’t offer the Alhambra entry.

The bus tour left at 8:15am with a return time of 3:45pm. Even with the hour-and-a-half travel time, that would seem to give us plenty of time at Alhambra. My mom set us up with an entry time of 10am to give us the most time in the palace itself.

 

There were only 8 of us on the bus – three groups. Off we went. The tour guide gave us all sorts of information about Malaga, Andalucia, and more as we drove along. Mom asked several times to get information on Alhambra, so we’d be ready when we arrived, but he waved her off, saying we’d talk about that later. Part-way up we stopped at a rest stop which seemed to sell quite a lot of knives. Again, Mom asked the guide about Alhambra and he waved her off.

 

We finally arrived in the town near Alhambra and he got us off the bus. He started walking us at a slow pace toward the town center. Finally we stopped him and asked, why are you taking us on this slow walk? We need to get a taxi to get up to Alhambra so we can get our tour there! And he said: Wait, you’re going to SEE Alhambra? All of us in the group said YES that is the whole reason we just rode an hour-and-a-half. He was completely befuddled. He thought we just wanted to roam around the town at the base of Alhambra. Despite all the times we tried to talk with him about it. So he hurried to find us taxis and get us in them.

 

Our taxi driver asked if we had tickets, and we said yes. So he drove us right to the main entry area. When we showed our tickets there, we were told these weren’t actual tickets, they were vouchers. We had to go to our tour agency to have them ‘converted’ into tickets.

 

This is where we could have given up. It was about 11am now, so long past our 10am tour. But let me digress a moment.

 

Every week I draw inspirational tarot cards for my friends. This week, for myself, I’d drawn the Hanged Man. A card of patience and perseverance when things get challenging. I’d then asked my sister if she wanted a card. She did, and I drew her … the Hanged Man. She said this was ridiculous so I handed her the full deck. She shuffled, shuffled, shuffled, and drew … the Hanged Man. Clearly the Universe was trying to tell us something. So when we hit this hurdle, we knew we just had to persevere.

 

We tracked down the phone number of the tour group and gave them a call. They gave us their address and said to take a taxi over. So over we went. At first they said we had missed our 10am tour, but then they found spot on the upcoming 12 noon tour and stuffed us into it. Hurrah!

The tour guide was great, and the grounds were absolutely beautiful. In the palace, the tradition at the time was not to have any figurative images, but just beautiful calligraphy of words. There was latticework, stonework, fountains, gardens, and more.

 

We carefully watched the clock and as it got close to our bus departure time we had to leave the tour. We grabbed a taxi back to the town center, got on the bus, and soon we were heading on back to the ship. There were cool sculptures along the dock area.

 

We had the 4pm tea time with the classical music group, then at 5pm was my second calla lily art class. We worked more on shading and techniques. Then soon it was dinner time. We had reservations for Red Ginger, the ship’s Asian restaurant.

 

I adore all Asian food. I love, love, love it and eat it quite a lot. So I admit I had sort of high expectations for Red Ginger, with Oceania touting itself as having the best food on the high seas and with Red Ginger being a specialty restaurant.

 

Yes, it was nifty that they had a ‘choose your chopsticks’ selection and a hand towel that ‘expanded’ like a snake when they poured warm water on it.

 

But the food itself just wasn’t “special”. It was OK. The sushi tasted bland. The tuna tataki (a favorite of mine) was dry. My sister specifically chose a dish for its ingredients – and then the actual dish had other ingredients that she didn’t like in it. When she asked the waiter about it, he said in essence “they’re all vegetables”.

 

On the up side, they have DELICIOUS herbal teas here so I asked for a few to take with me so I could have them at the afternoon tea times.

 

Tonight the ship passed the Rock of Gibraltar. We very nearly missed seeing it. The captain had said we’d pass it at 9:30 so at 9:15 we got our gear and went out to set up – and we were already passing the rock. So we grabbed some quick photos.

 

All in all, I’m glad we persevered and were able to see some of Alhambra. I do wish the tour guide had listened to us beforehand so we didn’t waste the extra precious time we had. I’m glad we went to Red Ginger but I definitely didn’t want any more sushi from them after that meal. And it was fun seeing the Rock of Gibraltar.

[Eloise4Ever]

8 hours ago, BellaOnline said:

On the food, when I return from a tour starving I'm really not interested in tiny crustless jam sandwich bits :). I generally want a big fresh salad.

 

There are usually salads at the counter in Waves, not a huge selection but they may be what you're looking for. Worth checking out at any rate.

[basor]

3 hours ago, Eloise4Ever said:

 

There are usually salads at the counter in Waves, not a huge selection but they may be what you're looking for. Worth checking out at any rate.

Waves does have a salad bar and I often would make a nice large salad and have them grill a piece of chicken or fish and add it to my salad!  Also have fresh fruit and crisp vegetables.

[mauibabes]

Bella,

Red Ginger is one of my favorite restaurants, always wonderful but then I do not eat Sushi. You missed the Watermelon and duck salad and the Miso Glazed Sea Bass, OMG. While not really Asian fare, years ago the Restaurant Manager told me to try the Rack of Lamb. It is by far the best lamb preparation on the ship. We always order it for the table and Lamb Lilly pops with others at the table, WONDERFUL. GO BACK TO RED GINGER and try some of the other entrees because you had to hit an off night. Talk to the Maitre d and let her know of your experience, they won’t let that happen again. When we were last on Riviera in December, Warunee was the Maitre d and she is OUTSTANDING as she has been the Md in RG since it’s inception on Marina in 2010. No one better. 
Mauibabes

 

[BellaOnline]

Here's the restaurant times from one of the dailies. My sister and I must have misread this on day 2 when we were looking for food, and misread Waves as closing at 2pm. We then just had that in our heads for the rest of the cruise. I apologize for not thinking Waves was open after 2.

 

We were forced to eat at Waves on the very first day, as it was the only place open when we finally got on board after a long, long flight - and I just wasn't impressed with its options. So maybe that also had something to do with it. Maybe it was an emotional sight-block :).

 

So in any case, for me, I did my very best to make sure I made it to food before 2pm came around.

 

I still do think they should have a fuller buffet option available through to dinner time, because for all sorts of reasons some people might come back from a tour or have other reasons to need fairly quick - but different-than-burger-and-fries - food at some point in there. 

[BellaOnline]

Just to offer a spoiler, since it's going to take many days before my daily posts get to this point, but there were at least five passengers taken off the Riviera on Friday morning 4/15 with COVID-positive test results. We believe there were more who were positive, who chose not to go to the ship-sponsored hotel in Rome. And those were just from the people who got tested on Thursday. We'd seen hazmat-type behavior earlier too. With the ship having I believe under 500 passengers on it, that's a 1% positivity rate which is far higher than the CDC alert level of 0.3% positivity. For some mysterious reason the Oceania Riviera has been taken off the CDC cruise ship results page:

 

https://www.cdc.gov/quarantine/cruise/cruise-ship-color-status.html

 

Nobody (besides the sick people) on the ship was told about the positive COVID cases. You could hear people whispering about it in the hallways who happened to know someone who was positive. But the ship passengers were never officially told. Some passengers were quite upset when they heard the rumors because they had thought of the ship as a 'safe bubble' where they could go maskless without risk. 

[BellaOnline]

Day 4 on our Oceania Riviera cruise was on Thursday, April 7th, 2022. This was an “at sea” day – really an “at ocean” day – as we cruised out toward the Canary Islands. On Thursdays I teach an Outschool teen writing class which on ship time was going to be from 8-9pm. That was my only external time constraint. On board I had a still life two-part session at 9am and then 5pm. So I couldn’t sleep in :).

 

I’m not really a breakfast person, so I just grabbed a few pieces of fruit and some OJ before heading down to my art class. By now it was the ‘usual cast of suspects’ – about 8 of us – coming to these. I was sad to find that someone had stolen my calla lily drawing from the previous sessions! How the art classes work is that each of us gets an open cubby on the wall to store our graphite, erasers, paper, etc. in between sessions. That way if we want to work on our art during quiet time we can come in to the art room (which is always open) and work on things. The ship doesn’t want us taking charcoal / graphite / etc. back to our rooms for sort of obvious mess reasons.

 

My cubby stuff was completely gone. Someone had taken my picture and supplies. I’d signed my picture, too, so it’s not like someone could reasonably have thought it was theirs. It was just gone. So I had to get fresh supplies from the instructor. Luckily, at least, the calla lily sessions were done and we were moving on to starting a fruit still life. I was sad, though. I’d worked hard on my calla lily and a friend of mine loves calla lilies, so I was going to give my drawing to her. I guess now I will need to create a new one for her.

 

In any case, the morning still life session was really wonderful, and I learned a lot. I stayed after class working on it. Then I asked Noel which painting on the ship he recommended I study. He suggested the one right near the art room which was of tree leaves. He said it had wonderful shading and contrast. That was “El Descanso” by Luis Armando Zesatti.

 

I decided to explore more of the ship’s art while waiting for lunch to open. Some of the art I found a bit iffy, like buxom naked ‘women’ without heads being hunted for consumption (“Feast of Love” by Ramon Vasquez):

 

I didn’t take a photo of the ‘man in lust with a horse’ painting :).

 

Finally it was lunchtime and I went to the patio at the back of the ship. It was pretty much empty. I sat down with my laptop and tarot deck to do some more card readings for people. I had a nice veggy selection of cucumber salad and spring rolls. The server even carried it out to the table for me when he saw my hands were a bit shaky. That was quite nice. The food was delicious and just what I like for lunch.

 

I did a lot more ship exploring and art-viewing during the afternoon. There is a wealth of quite intriguing art on the ship in all areas. There were all sorts of details on the artwork to draw you in. This is “Eden Before the Apple” by Ramon Vasquez, with then just one detail from it. How long must this painting have taken to create?

 

The artist Humberto Benitez had quite a few faces-hidden paintings around the ship.

 

Occasionally one would see a staff member on cabin levels wearing protective gear. I was glad they were taking precautions to clean things. Nearly all people wore masks while walking the halls, but all masks came off any time people were sitting either watching the tea-time music or in a restaurant or in a ‘cocktail area’. So there were lots and lots of people congregating maskless and talking.

 

Finally it was 4pm and time for classical music. They were lovely as always. Right when they ended it was 5pm and time for my next art session. We worked more on our still life. And right after that it was time for our dinner reservation at Jacques. This specialty restaurant was about half full. This was nice in terms of quiet experience, but again, was just a bit odd compared with normal cruising. So again a clear sign that the ship was fairly empty.

 

The food here was nice. It was not the mouth-nebulae level of Daniel Bruce at the Boston Harbor Hotel, but of the level of a nice regular-city steakhouse. I think my expectations were starting to settle in to what this post-pandemic Oceania cruise would have for food.

 

I had to go right from dinner up to Baristas to prepare for my teen writing zoom class. Again the wifi signal is really poor so I had to be really cautious about how I did things on my laptop during class, so I didn’t compromise the wifi signal in any way. Luckily the signal held on during the class – the wifi on the boat would randomly come and go without warning.

 

By the time class was over I was ready for sleep. I wanted to be sure to be fresh and ready for the Canary Island in the morning!

 

Ask with any questions!