Our Oceana Mini Cruise

Recently, I was onboard the Oceana for a mini cruise to Bruges.  If you follow my blog, you may remember I have had done the same itinerary last October, but I wanted to take my wife on her first cruise and give her a “taster” before committing to a longer cruise.  And I am pleased to say she enjoyed it! Once she got over the seasickness.  We headed off to Southampton on Saturday 1st December, and left plenty of time for our check-in time, as I know there are a lot of roadworks around Southampton. And boy, am I glad we left early! There must have been an accident on the M3, as traffic was backed up quite a lot, so luckily enough, my Sat Nav offered me a quicker route.

Once we got to Southampton, we parked the car using the CPS car parking, so right at the port, and with it only being a short cruise, it was self-drive so you take your keys.  When we got to departures, there was a lovely gentleman waiting to take our suitcase, and then we proceeded to check-in.  My wife at this point was a bit bemused as didn’t know they would take the case and we wouldn’t see it again until we got to the cabin.  Check-In was seamless, again my card wouldn’t register, but could do onboard.  We had a beer whilst we waited for our embarkation calling, and before I knew it, we were in the Atrium of the wonderful Oceana.  The reception was quiet so thought I would quickly register my card, in case I forgot later on.  The ship was wonderfully decorated and all the staff were going around wearing Christmas hats, so you could tell it was December.

We headed up to our cabin, we were in an inside cabin A210 at the front of Deck 11 and this is where we met our cabin steward, Jolwin.  lovely gentleman and came and introduced himself to us.  So we had a quick freshen up, headed for a quick bite to eat in the Buffet restaurant before the Muster Drill.  The Plaza was really busy, but everyone seemed to have the same idea as us, quick food before the drill and drinks.  We then headed back to your cabin for your life jackets and headed down to the Floodlights Theatre on Deck 7, which was our location for our Muster Drill.  My wife at this point wasn’t too impressed, but I explained that it is compulsory, and doesn’t usually last long, however, we had some stragglers, so ran on a bit long.

After the drill, we then headed back to our cabins to drop off our life jackets, then headed back up the flight of stairs to Lido deck, to join the “Sail Away Party” – now this is always a good laugh, as on this cruise, you could tell it was being used for Christmas parties and Hen Parties, the entertainment crew did a good job of keeping everyone going.  And there was plenty of staff around taking drinks orders, so this kept the queues down at the bars themselves.

We popped into the Monte Carlo Casino and Winners bar first for a drink or 2, and for my wife to have a go on the Casino, there was football on, so we watched a bit of that, then headed back to our cabin to get ready.  We headed down to the Linguarian Restaurant on Deck 5, as that was where we had been allocated, we were on Any Time Dining, so thought we would pop down about 8pm, as was at the end of 1st sitting and not quite 2nd sitting, we were told then that there were no tables, so they gave us a buzzer and said it would be around 8.30pm that we would be called, so we headed to Explorer’s bar on the same deck (deck 5) and we had a couple of drinks again whilst we were waiting.  We were then called just after 8.30pm, and sat down to a wonderful 5 course meal, I had Prawn Cocktail to start, followed by the soup of Cullen Skink, I then enjoyed a Ribeye perfectly cooked Medium Rare.  Unfortunately, my eyes were too big for my belly, and my wife wasn’t feeling too great so we left dessert and headed back to Winner’s Bar for just a quick drink then off to bed.

Next time, I will tell you all about our day trip to Bruges!  For any information on any of our mini cruises, or any offers we have, visit our website www.cruise.co.uk, call me on 0333 300 2662 or email me [email protected]