End of cruise thoughts

 10 July

Boca Raton, Florida

We arrived at MIA (not Missing In Action) a full hour early.  Luckily, I felt the descent beginning and called our daughter to come pick us up.  She arrived shortly after we collected our bags and brought us home.  

When we arrived at Puzzle Palace, we were thrilled to be here.  We unpacked the car quickly, and I began to make our supper.  For those who are interested, I made grilled chicken on my indoor grill (too lazy to start the one outside) and George’s favorite raw vegetable salad (Broccoli, cauliflower, and peas).  Of course we had a bottle of Emeritus out of the wine cooler to wash it down.  That night we sat in the theater area and watched a movie while chatting with our daughter and eating dinner.  It is good to be home.

And now my thoughts on the cruise. 

We enjoyed it.  We really did.  The staff were (mostly) wonderful, the free flow alcohol nights were plentiful, the majority of the places we ended up in were worth the trip.  Even though we only got to 21 of the 101 stops from the original world tour (the ones including Australia and New Zealand), I was glad we went.  

A fellow traveler sent me a spread sheet detailing the ports and sea days.  I will give you some of his info now.  (Thank you Chuck!) This information is based on the revised itinerary that did not include Australia and New Zealand.  

On the 196 day cruise that we were on, we had 75 sea days-5 more than planned for initially.

We had 121 port days-6 less than planned.

17 of these days were spent in US ports.

104 were in Foreign ports.

We visited only 43 of the 52 planned countries.  

Interesting tor me was the milage traveled.  I asked on the ship for the total nautical miles and was told to look it up in the currents.  Wow!  Thankfully Chuck kept this information too.  (All numbers have been rounded)

Miami to LA was 5298 miles

LA To Papeete was 6642

Papeete to LA was 4407

LA to Barbados was 5430

Barbados to Miami was 3805

Miami to Athens was 8700

Athens to Barcelona was 2958

Barcelona to Copenhagen was 3481

Copenhagen to Stockholm was 1654

Stockholm to Lisbon was 3000

Lisbon to New York was 5751

(New York to Miami was 1090)

(Miami to Boca Raton was 45)

In total, we traveled 51,126 miles on this trip.  That is 2 times the circumference of the earth!  How many people can say they traveled twice around the world in six months without even circumnavigating the globe?  I believe it to be around 25, but since the ship won’t give out exact numbers, we will never know.  (This is only for the people who got on in Miami.)

Door to Door, we traveled 52,306 miles. I’d say that’s one heck of a holiday.  I’m glad I wasn’t driving it.  That would take me 804 hours of driving which amounts to 33 full days!  Now if taken one day at a time, that means I would have had to drive 4 hours a day to cover the same distance in the 196 days.  Gosh, when put that way we were really traveling at a snails pace.  

And of course this was true. I mean, does it really take 18 hours to get from London to Amsterdam?  I know, I know traffic, berthing, blah blah blah.  But really?  

15 of the ports we were to go to were canceled; either in advance and substituted with something else, or because of "weather".  While I’m here, I’ll just say it.  I don’t buy this for a minute.  If the weather was that bad on all of the missed ports, even those with docking facilities and deep water sheltered bays, they should look for a new captain.  Honesty would have been much better than using "weather" for every excuse.  Case in Point: Dublin.  There was another Oceania ship in port that day, the Insignia missed the port due to "weather".  This is where we were all to get our Duty Free stamps taken care of.  Now I’m not sure about others, but I lost over $1000 because of this "weather".  It seems odd though that we have had this port booked from the beginning back in 2020 but were bumped for a sister ship.  (Thankfully we got off in Cobh and got back on again in Belfast.  At least we could spend time with friends.)

There were to be 5 lavish special events with one having an extended overnight.  Sadly, we only got 3 of them and none were overnight extended.  George and I skipped the one in Amsterdam as the information didn’t come out until late and we had already made plans to stay with friends.  

There was a serious lack of communication on this cruise.  Some of the ATW passengers got emails about changes, I got nothing.  We sailed along in blissful ignorance. I got more information by reading Cruise Critic than I did from Oceania.  Even my travel agent got nothing.  The people on the segmented cruises knew more than we did.  

Prior to leaving, I painstakingly went about getting all of the information together tor the visas needed for the trip.  These were all to be paid for by Oceania so I didn’t get them myself.  In hindsight, I’m glad all I did was have photographs made up and print out the forms to carry along with us.  This saved us a great deal of hassle and money in the end. None of the visas would have been used because of the way the trip went.  

A minor nuisance for us and by that I mean me, was the filling out of entry forms for various countries.  We were told on the ship if we didn’t have them filled out, we wouldn’t be able to get off the ship.  They took longer than they should have taken to submit, not because of my ignorance with the systems, but because of the lack of internet speed.  Whenever possible, I did this when we were on shore and I could use my roaming, or I would wake at 4 am to do this when most people were sleeping.  At this time the internet speed was much better. 

Which of course brings me to another thought.  If you have 2 people in a cabin going around the world, give them 2 internet accounts!  There was a time that someone was handing out an extra account if you complained loud enough.  I never did so when George and I were both wanting to be online we would have to take turns.  It is such a strange sensation to be home sitting next to him and being able to both be online.  

Let me talk about the food.  The first 2 months it was amazing.  I love to cook and I think I’m a fairly good one so I’m a bit critical.  First off, I was able to get a blue steak that was so wonderful, I ordered it again later in the cruise.  The second time around, the meat was tougher and blue was a poor choice. But that is just one instance.  It seems to me that they were trying to make the food so fancy, they forgot about flavor.  Numerous times we got gritty salads that could have ben avoided by simply washing the vegetables. The oysters always had grit and I just gave up on them.  Many of our fellow passengers made note of the decline in the quality of the food.  I’m not sure why this happened, but it did.  But this is actually a good thing.  I didn’t gain much weight!  In fact, I only put on 2 pounds so I’m pleased with the changes. I guess the other reason I was not as impressed as many on Cruise Critic chastised me for is that after 196 days of eating the same food it gets old! There is a 2 week rotation on the menus with the specialty restaurants always having the same food.  For some reason, I did not expect this.  Although, it does make sense.  Why change the menu at all? I mean, our club also only changes it twice a year and I get bored with their food too.  Toscana had a nightly special and that was usually what I chose.  I was also very pleased to say that when I went to Toscana, they would often just cook pasta with a brown butter sauce for me.  

The ship was wonderful about food allergies as well.  Well, mostly.  I put in my menu by noon for the dinner meal.  If there was ever a problem, they called me and we changed the menu.  On quite a few occasions, I would ask for vegetables that weren’t on the menu and they always obliged with the exception of two.  I was never able to get raw carrots or celery.  This is a goto lunch for me at home, and I was missing it.  

I did "steal" a recipe for the caviar on potato appetizer they made. This was delicious!  

Room service was funny for us.  Not once did they get an order right.  We alway got a big laugh out of how it was different from what I ordered.  Often times, they would double the order.  We aren’t big eaters so when we got 4 full meals for 2 people when I ordered 1/2 portions, it was major wastage, but it also made for good laughs.  If we ate all they put in front of us, we would have gained 100 pounds for sure.  

In the dining room I took to showing the waiter a fist and telling him I wanted no more than this amount of food on my plate.  That worked!  

My goto dessert was an ice cream cone-just the cone, no ice cream.  At first this was hard to get across, but after a few weeks, it just showed up!  Great staff!  

The bed was uncomfortable in the beginning of the cruise.  It was too hard for me.  We asked for a topper to make it softer and it showed up.  This was better, but still too hard for me.  I often woke up with sore shoulders.  Which led to another great surprise!

The masseuse on board was wonderful!  So much so that I bought a number of packages and got a weekly massage just because.  

The room we had was a veranda room, not with the butler.  The size was ok for us. The showers we were told were small, but it was not an issue for us.  The layout was good enough for what we needed it for and since we spent most of our time in the room, if I’m not complaining, you know it was good. 

On the original itinerary, I painstakingly went through all of the excursions and picked out one in every port.  There were overland trips that we decided not to go on-mostly because we’ve either done them before, or it is much easier to do on our own than it would have been to do with with the cruise.  Because of the u-turn, all of that work was gone.  At the beginning of each segment we were given a list of excursions and I did try to use as many as I could, but at the end of the cruise, we got back a massive refund because we simply didn’t want many excursions.  

We are well traveled, and a lot of the excursions on offer we had already been to.  When in the Caribbean, we opted to do private dives in every port we were allowed.  When we hit Europe, we spent the time visiting friends we haven’t seen during the time of Covid rather than taking excursions.  I don’t feel bad about Oceania losing money on us in this way because we did stay on for the duration.  

And now to money.  Yes, it is an expensive cruise.  Do I feel cheated by missing out on the original itinerary?  No, disappointed yes, but not cheated.  Oceania graciously gave us 15% back on our purchase price if we stayed on the ship.  I was fine with that. In fact, it was rather unexpected, and more than covered our additional expenses on the cruise.  I added 26 countries to my list of visited places, the majority of which were in French Polynesia and the Caribbean and George added about 5 to his list. We are now part of the Century club because of this trip; not that I’m going to pay money to any organization simply for bragging rights.  

When asked what the best part of the trip was, I have two answers: the people we met and buying a castle.  We have truly made some wonderful friends along the journey and hope to meet with them again in the future.  We will keep in contact with many of our fellow journeyers and hope to make good on our mutual plans to visit.  

Buying the castle is the start of a new adventure for us.  We currently live in a beautiful home on the fourth green of an amazing golf course in a very nice country club.  I had no desire to ever leave here, but when opportunity knocks one must open the door.  I’ve aways dreamt of living in Italy and because of an excursion on this trip, that dream is now going to come true.  

I could complain about everything that went wrong on this trip, but I won’t.  I’ve given the good the bad and the ugly all along in my blog and that is enough.  A few nights ago I was asked if I would do it again, and to be honest, we had signed up for the 2024 ATW. But after buying the castle, we cancelled it because we will just be too busy.  It’s a long time to be away.  If you have the time, I’d say go for it.  But if you are like me and find it hard to settle down and relax, this is not a trip for you.  I’m always on the go and being locked down on a ship as it were, I don’t really want to do it again.  But it is a good way to see places we’d have probably not otherwise gone to and to see places we want to visit again.

And now for the good news. We like 9 other people on the ATW (as near we can figure taking hints from missing passengers for days on end and slips from staff-but don’t quote me on that number because for sure I’ll be wrong) made it all the way without getting COVID!  

Alas, with all good news, there is bad.  When we got home, I was having a scratchy throat and a bit of a headache.  I just chalked it up to allergies.  The next day I was worse.  I thought maybe I had a flu.  Then on the 7th, my daughter brought me a COVID test.  Sure enough, I was positive.  Talk about irony.  We made it ALL THE WAY AROUND THE WORLD, only to get COVID when we returned home.  Technically I suppose I caught the virus on the cruise if you consider the incubation period, but we will never know as they stopped testing us. I can only hope I did not infect anyone else by not knowing I had it.  

A couple more days in bed for me and I’ll be right as rain.  Sadly, because I love George so much, I shared it with him.  He’s 5 days behind me with his run of it so he will be out of commission for a bit longer.  Our golf game will have to wait.  

I will be going back to my normal puzzle blogging now, but if you wish to follow our adventures in moving to Italy, please bookmark this page.  It too will be blogged about. I want to thank everyone for following along these past 6 months.  It has been a real pleasure to read all the comments on the various forums.  Until next time, Happy Puzzling and Smooth Seas to one and all.