kekilia

Look for my summary review, which includes the ship and staff, the restaurants and beverages, and other review particulars. I will post a separate thread for this and also submit it as a review. And to all, a goodnight!:D:D

More ship pictures. I remember being captivated by every photo posted of the Riviera. Anticipation is half the fun of traveling.

Martini Bar

Great singer/piano man, but again, very old tunes.

Art, art, art!

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Here are pictures of the ship. I tried to capture the feel of the cruise rather than the layout, which the Preismans have done so well.

The elevators (lifts) which may be the most often seen areas of the ship.

The public rooms of the Grand Bar - more a promenade than an actual bar.

Real amethyst quartzite.

The empty and lifeless Horizons Bar with a band, adequate musicians but singing dated versions of moldy oldies. Given that this was a port intensive cruise, I get the empty, but no excuse for the off key singing.

Library, not used by U.S. But beautiful! I love models of ships.

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Thanks for the beautiful photos and reviews. Sounds like you really enjoyed your trip and Riviera. Hard to believe it's almost over:(

But the afterglow is still warm in my heart. I will be doing a summary review next - the ship, the staff, amenities and service, fellow passengers, and food. To get started, I am going to post pictures of the ship as it was on our cruise.

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Our final port is Livorno and most of the ship's passengers went on tours to either Lucca, Pisa or Florence. Since we are touring Italy post cruise, we enjoyed a wonderful day with a few others who stayed onboard. I did some organizing to pack and we walked around the ship getting photos we'd missed. At 4pm, my DH and I went to the Pizza Master Class. I found the instructor well prepared and the staff which consisted of a chef and two assistant chefs who roam the room helping students were spot on perfect for keeping us on track. We learned about three styles of pizza - three doughs - and how to make the dough, the consistency for good pizza, the techniques for stretching and shaping pizza (no, you don't need to learn to flip it in the air!). We also learned about the proper way to make he sauce, using uncooked tomatoes with olive oil, salt, etc. We made a small pan pizza which was not thick crust nor heavily filled. This was my favorite. Next we made a margherita pizza, full size. Finally we learned how to use a grill to make a pizza. The ingredients were all prepared ahead of time by the staff and each station was complete with a complete set of cooking tools, mis en place, and range top. First, there is a demonstration, then we go to our stations and prepare as per the demo. In the pizza class, there is only one person per station, which felt luxurious. After each pizza, we ate our own dish and they served an accompanying wine. This was timed perfectly for an early dinner. Here are some pictures of the class.

More pictures of our day in Portofino and surrounds.

These are of Camiglo, a larger town.

This building is trompe l'oille, not a sculpted facade.

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Explanation of above pictures: First one is entering Portofino by tender. Not pleasant. Second, our taxi boat with Capt. Williams on the left. Lighthouse as we come round to San Frutuoso. Third, the tiny cove and small village of San Frutuoso. SEE THIS PLACE and bring a swimsuit. For a couple of euros you can rent a changing room, get snorkel gear and swim through clear waters to view the underwater statue of Christ. Reachable only by boat. Fourth, oops! Another look at Williams! fifth, the umbrellas and pristine waters of San Frutuoso. The reason the water is so clear, other than the fact that the place is remote from human pollution, is because the beach is rock, not sand. Therefore, the water does not get murky.

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Here are the pictures to go with the review of Portofino.

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I'm having this wonderful vision of you falling asleep just as you were trying to post the photos.

 

Great work kekilia!

It might have been, but, no, it was once again the Oceania internet service. It is very inadequate at any time that is common for people to be using it. Not enough bandwidth I suspect. When most are at dinner or sleeping or off the ship, you get very fast speed for uploads. I'll try again this morning.

Day 9 - Portofino

This morning we embarked on an extraordinary day with a boat tour out of Portofino. Like a lot of the "in" or well known places along the Riviera, Portofino is a but fake, with your required row of Gucci, Chanel, etc., shops, large yachts and a parade of pretty people showing off their stuff. Fine if you like that sort of thing, but we prefer getting out of the crowded town and out to see the real place. This was the only port that we were tendered and I am glad because I hate tendering (don't we all?). But it was only a few minutes of crowding and stinky oil. We boarded our Water Taxi tour and had a very comfortable boat with leather seating so that we could lay down or sit in the front or regular seating in the back and decent cover from the sun. We went first to San Frutuoso, a very small place only reachable by boat or hiking. Our Italian captain, Williams, spoke wonderful English and was not hard on the eyes, either. He said it would take 2 hours to hike from Portofino and it took us only 20 minutes! There are ferries, but they are crowded and you do not get the tour. Along the way, he pointed out places that were reserves and parks, protected by infrared sensors, and the history of how this remote village came to exist. Next time, and there will be one, we will mind what the tour owner told us - to bring our bathing suit - because the water was crystal clear, an entirely different shade of blue than I have ever seen in water, and snorkeling! if you want, you can dive down to see the statue of Christ, about 15 m deep, to protect and to memorialize all the fishermen. Next, we went to Camogli, a bigger town and delightful with avenues along the seashore, gelato, jewelry, pasta with pesto and seafood. Great place to stop for lunch. On the way back, more history and time to get to know our small group of six. Well, we knew one couple from our other tours, but were joined by one new couple on this tour. On Oceania, you find lots of common interests with the passengers, especially those who have posted on cruise critic and the roll call. I arranged four private tours, only one of which was larger than 6. And with every one, we got to know a couples from across the U.S. Who shared our interests and point of view regarding how we like to travel. Great time!

After another excruciating tender to the ship, we freshened up for dinner. Actually, I must confess, I went to the salon and had my hair done and a manicure! Yikes, expensive, yes, but I justified this by not having bought any jewelry. Well, there was the perfume at Fragonard, but nothing really expensive. I feel less need for things at my age, preferring to indulge myself at the Spa. For dinner, we returned to Toscana, where we had a much reduced meal of salad and pasta of the day. Then off to our refreshed room. It wasn't long before we were snoozing.

Here are some pictures of this amazing day on the Ligurian coast.

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Just for the record kekilla, the roads you mentioned for the Grand Prix are not for the Grand Prix which is run thru the city streets of Monte Carlo but, part of the Rally Monte Carlo which is headquartered within Monte Carlo however, the stages which is where the cars race one at a time are outside the Principality of Monaco in France. Am very familiar with motorsports and especially rally since I have competed, officiated, and spectated at rally events world wide for about 50 years.

 

Thanks for all the wonderful pictures and commentary.

Yeah, something like that. People, what he said. :D

Hi kekilia:

 

I cannot tell you how much I'm enjoying your review -- especially the pictures. They are gorgeous.

 

Here at Cruise Critic we are so thrilled and appreciative when people post LIVE from their vacations. Just to know that you are thinking of all of us here back home -- brings a smile to our faces here in the office.

 

Thanks....

 

Laura

Indeed, high raise from the top. Thank you!:D

[r QUOTE=tropicalkerry2002;47140106]On our first ever cruise, Venice to Barcelona, we had a wonderful private guide to take us to Aix en Provence and Cassis, as I wanted to do a boat tour of Les

Calanques SO much!

Unfortunately, the winds were too strong and no boats were going out. You had a perfect day for it, the blue skies and water as your backdrop. I am envious!

We have docked in Marseilles twice since, and I have had the same guide to different areas of Provence each time. Also been to Monte Carlo twice, and have a guide take me out of the city. I adore the tiny villages of Provence and the French Riviera...my favourite is St. Paul de Vence. My dream is to rent a house for a month and maybe get back to Cassis!

And for the first 50ish years of my life, all I wanted to do was get to Italy, and I end up loving France more!

Did you see any lavender fields in bloom while there? We have always been in spring or fall, so don't see them.

Thanks for the fabulous photos and memories!

We didn't get to see the lavender growing in bloom. Apparently the great weathe we are having has caused the growers to harvest early, so nothing is left for the year:(.

Pictures of Monti Carlo

Dinner en suite

The Royal Palace

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Day 8 - Monaco

We arrived in Monaco and were able to disembark at 8 am, with departure at 11 pm. This was wonderful because it meant no pressure to get back to the ship for our private tour with the same company. Our guide was fun and knowledgable and had excellent English. She even used American slang, so we knew she had spent some time in the U.S. We left Monte Carlo early in the morning to go up to the open market in Nice, where we had free time to look and shop. We purchased a peach, and apricot and a baguette! What a beautiful

Market, stall after stall with remarkable things - hundreds of spices, luscious fruits, fresh flowers and bouquets, fish, cured meats, marzipan fruit displays! These things are not expensive. For example, a bouquet of fresh flowers might run 5€. Next we headed to the medieval town of Eze, stopping along the way at Villefranche and other little towns along the lowest corniche. There are three corniches, which are scenic narrow roads that are part of the famous Gran Prix race, a low corniche which follows the coast, the middle corniche that is full of hairpin turns and climbs high up the steep landscape and the highest corniche which is quite steep with dangerous grades (it was pointed out to us where Princess Grace went off the edge). Once we got to Eze, we had to walk up narrow steps of cobblestones to see this ancient tiny place. We had a lunch at the top which was delightful with all local foods and wine. My only disappointment was that this wonderful tiny place with its once tiny houses has been filled with shops from fine jewelry to trinkets and art galleries.

After Eze, we went down the hill and next door is the Fragonard perfume factory, where we had a tour and private "smelling" which felt extravagant and, yes, I broke down and purchased body cream and a very small perfume, Etoile, which means star. We drove down the middle corniche and the guide gave us lots of information about Monaco, from the high security and strict rules, the beyond imaginable wealth (300 million euros for an apartment!). We stopped at the Casino, where if we wanted to enter, we had to check our camera!

Back onboard after this full day, we were exhausted and did not feel like dressing up to go to dinner. We opted to eat in our room. This couldn't have worked out better because, for the first time this cruise, we had a view from our balcony of the entire port, including the Casino, the Palace of Prince Albert, the yacht harbor, the houses on the "rock." Dinner en suite was exquisite and I did not notice any difference between eating in the restaurant v. our suite. The butler was delighted to be able to "show his stuff" as this is where they excel. He promised us a glorious evening as he knew the view would be stunning as the lights came on after dark. And, it was all as promised. We ordered from Jacques and were NOT disappointed. The butler gave us plenty of time between courses, the food was fresh and hot or cold as intended, the table setting was elegant and we were very comfortable. We took desert on our balcony and watched the lights come on.

First, a picture of Villefranche

The market at Nice.

Marzipan "fruit"

Spices!

Eze

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Here are pictures of our boat tour of the Calanques in Cassis.

Do not attempt this, please. The gentleman was an expert diver. PS - got permission to photo.

Both of these last two are of Virgin de la Garde in Marseille.

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Back onboard, we had our canapés already waiting for us. Earlier in the cruise, we got things worked out with our butler so that he would not worry about our ordering tea or canapés, he would just leave us a small assortment of whatever he saw that looked good. This has been wonderful as I do not have to worry about any paperwork at night and can count on having something waiting after a long tour. So, he would have ice in the bucket, a small selection (4 or 5) from tea and canapé service. I recommend that on the first day of your cruise, you take some time to discuss this with the butler and remember that he is not the concierge (we learned the hard way, stumbling along. On our other cruise lines, the butler did different duties, some taking on the role of a personal concierge. On Oceania, the butler is a private waiter for in suite dining, for changing reservations, for bringing ice, opening wine, delivering the morning paper, arranging parties as to the room set up, and taking care of the laundry or complimentary pressing. The concierge will help you print boarding passes or tickets for tours, will help you with certain computer issues (easy ones) and with getting invitations to other staterooms. Just keep in mind, butler for food, concierge for unique requests not related to food or laundry.

This night we ate at Polo Grill, which was not our favorite. I have decided that at the end of this review, I will review the restaurants food no service. I will also review the ship, staterooms and staff.

Here are some pics of Provence.

Docked at Marseille

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Day 7 - Provence (Marseille)

Provence is a magical, bucket list destination for us. Ancient little towns, country lanes, and the tastes of France! Today we disembark to meet William Templar of One Day in Provence. He is everything g Trip Advisor reports and should be rated #1 in my opinion. It costs so little to share a Mercedes Benz van stocked with cold water and a superb guide - why would anyone book another tour. My advice is to book with William well in advance. I booked a full 6 months in advance and there is only 1 William Templar. What a great guide, he knew every history, every question, was flexible in meeting our requests and always went out of his way to make us more than happy, delighted, with our tour. Thank you cruise critic for this recommendation. Our tour started by getting out of Marseille, and on to the ancient town of Aix-en-Provence, where he walked with us to explain every nuance of the history of the place, each building, each fountain, each special place. We went to the Cathedral that was once a Greek, then Roman, then Christian place of worship. The interior was of several eras of architecture - columns from the Roman forum now part of the bapistry, which was from ancient Christian Era entries old when Christians would strip naked inside the marble columns to have full immersion baptism in the ancient pool filled with water from the springs of the hills surrounding Aix. I lit a candle for my mother, who departed this last year. We visited the fresh market and ate a peach. We stopped for lunch in Cassis, where we shared local mussels in garlic and cheese, calamari lightly breaded with garlic, and salad. Very local with great dry rose wine. I don't like rose wines in the U.S., but here it was dry, fresh and just right for lunch. Later we witnessed the "crown of Charlemagne" a rock formation that does look like a crown and another formation of rock, which changes color through the day. Circling back to Marseille we stopped at the Cathedral de la Garde, the main cathedral for Marseille. This tour cost only 610€ for 6 people and we had such an intimate tour with such a knowledgeable guide. I recommend booking William early as he is truly worth it!

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So I am hoping to provide some pictures from this last review. Barcelona and Red Ginge.

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Did it again. I am using tapatalk and it just dumped the second half of my review.

I was extolling the virtues of Red Ginger and it posted in the middle and I lost my review of The dinner. So, what I wanted to say is that it is our favorite of the four specialty restaurants so far. And also that I really didn't expect this from my reading of the menu and pre cruise research. The vegetable tempura, the spring rolls, the miso glazed sea bass, lobster pad Thai, sushi, everything was elevated but not beyond recognizing our traditional favorite.

Upon returning to our room sated and tired, we find the lovely turn down service another amenity that pampers us as in a 5 star hotel. I have a drew full of chocolate pillow bites that I will take home to my chocolate loving friends!

Whew! What a past few days! Since we docked in Barcelona, it has been very port intensive and with full day tours and dinners until 11 pm, I've simply haven't had a minute to catch up on posting the review. I will try my best to review Barcelona, Provence and Monaco, but the internet is so very slow, I may not get to the pictures until tomorrow.

Day 6 - Barcelona. We arrived in port at 8am and debarkation was again so very easy, no crowds or lines. Oceania's process for this is organized and smooth on and off. In the smaller terminals, they have only stairs rather than ramps, but if one is disabled, you can go to the lower Deck 4 for accommodation off the ramped crew gangway. My DH can handle going down the stairs, but we use Deck 4 to return. At every point, coming or going there are friendly attendants with chilled or regular room temperature water. By this day, midway through the cruise, a lot of the staff know our names and we get friendly smiles and "Have a good day."

We decided to do Barcelona on our own and it was so hot, we thought a taxi to the center of town would be best. We were wrong!! Better to take the shuttle bus which is free and from Columbus monument you can take a taxi or get the metro. The taxi to the Casa Botillo cost us 22€ and was terrible ride. I recommend the hop on hop off bus instead. From the drop off point near Casa Botillo, we walked. The facade, the architecture is amazing and you can see a progression of Gaudi's style mature with each structure. We walked to Casa Mila and it is a grandiose building sprawling in the large intersection. It is also very crowded and not handled well for tourists. We didn't go inside, instead we walked on about a mile or so to Sagrada Familia. I was completely unprepared for the overwhelming beauty of this masterpiece of modern architecture - modern in the sense that most cathedrals here are hundreds of years old.and

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This and the two pictures posted above are of Cartagena, which was Day 4.

Day 5 - Ibiza. Today we stopped at the island of Ibiza in the Balearics Islands off the coast of Spain. Embarkation was quick, there are never any lines. We took our time because it is such a small island, you can see it in just a few hours. We rented a Smart car cabriolet and while it was fun with the top down, it was also very hottie further you got from the water, so we put the top up and let the air conditioning go to the max. We headed across the island, seeing the plajas (beaches) and visiting Sant Jorgi before coming to San Antonio, a smaller port town. Ibiza is another playground for the rich and famous, so we saw a lot of large yachts, but , alas, no sightings of DiCaprio.

The most fun was on the way and just outside St. Eularia. We found a small winery, Bodega Cesar. We enjoyed wine tasting by the man who makes the wine and to our surprise, he shared also three cheeses his father makes. Hearing about his family from Italy and how the tradition of wine no cheese making has been handed down was right out of the promotional literature! I recommend hiring a car and getting out of Ibiza, which is crowded with tourists, young people who take the ferry over for all-night parties and tourist traps. Here are some pictures.

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Lovely photos and you are looking good!

On my screen, the photos are so huge that they go beyond the actual window. I have to scroll left and right and up and down to see them. Could their size be the reason for the slow upload on your side?

You are most gracious to compliment me. I so enjoy dressing for dinner. I was worried about this because I had only been on Celebrity where dressing up for dinner was the norm. Yet, I have observed that in all the specialty restaurants, there is a wonderful elevated dress and such diversity! Everything from women in lace with turbans on their head to the little black dress. Hurray for Oceania finding the middle ground here. No photographers, but you can bring your camera and get a nice picture. The wait staff even offer to take a photo of both of you, if you wish.