by Jim Bellomo | Oct 17, 2023 | Food Experiences
As is the case on so many cruises, it’s all about the food. There is something about being able to eat out at a restaurant every single night during a vacation, and they never bring you the check (except for drinks).
Within the cruise industry, it is common knowledge that Oceania is known to have the “best cuisine at sea.” Is this true? My judgment is that I expected too much and that 90% of their food is better than 90% of the food on other cruise lines. Other lines we have been on have had some dishes or meals that have stood out over the years. The original United States Dining Room on Celebrity’s Infinity was amazing, as was Qsine before Celebrity ruined it with their stupid Petit Chef. Some meals in Club Orange on Nieuw Statendam were as good as anything we ate on Vista. The grille on Viking Sky is better than the Waves Grille on Vista. But all in all, Vista has better food overall.
The Steve Test
After our disastrous Celebrity Millenium cruise in May of 2022, my brother Steve came up with a way to rate food and restaurants on a cruise better than I have ever been able to do it myself. From then on, I have called this the Steve Test. Here it is: If you eat in a food venue on a ship, be it the main dining room, buffet, grille or a specialty restaurant, and that restaurant were near you once you got home, would you go there again?
That’s pretty simple, right? I think it is the best way I have ever heard of to rate food on cruise ships and I will rate each venue (and, in the case of some of them, by the dish or meal) using the Steve Test.
Please keep in mind that the Steve Test Ratings below are my ratings. Steve will (I hope) chime in with a comment about what he thinks passed his test.
Editor’s Note: Since this is about the food, I struggled to figure out how to cover it. I didn’t want just to list things we ate. So let’s take it venue by venue. And sorry, but I don’t have the menus for every restaurant, but my buddy Mike will when he does his review. I am more about taking “pretty pictures,” and Mike is about remembering that you want to read the menus. I will post a link as soon as his review is up. Is it done yet, Mike?
The Grand Dining Room
This is the best place to start. We ate dinner here our first three nights and never went back. It wasn’t that we didn’t like the food. It was because they had just about the same food in the buffet, and when we went to the buffet, we didn’t have to dress up and put on hard-sole shoes. We also found that dinner took so much longer there. If we went to dinner when the dining room opened at 6:30, we never got out of there before 8:30. Sometimes that is fine, but when you are going to bed at 9:00, it leaves you stuffed and feeling bloated when you are trying to sleep. We also found that we ate too much. We would be seated; they would bring out some bread to keep us going while we went over the menus. They would take our order and bring more bread. We would eat it. They would bring the appetizers…and more bread. Then the same thing through the salad course, the soup course and finally the entrées. The only course without bread of some kind was dessert. And yes, I have absolutely no self-control when it comes to bread of any kind. So we switched to the buffet for dinner.
I will say here that the dining room food and ambiance were far superior to Viking Ocean or pretty much any cruise ship dining room we have eaten in for quite a while. Here are some of the dishes we had in the Grand Dining Room. I tried to remember what they were, but it’s been two weeks. I will mention if they were either exceptional, bewildering or just bad. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping.
Parma Ham–on the menu every night
Crab cakes. Just OK.
Beef Carpaccio
Thai Beef salad. Really good.
Really good eggplant appie.
Most salads–unimaginative.
I believe this was a Filipino dish. It was good.
Beef tenderloin but the disk thing next to it was AWFUL!
Sea Bass that Kathleen said tasted “FISHY!”
They had soufflés every night
Tried them twice—not impressed. Sometimes cold.
Rum cake that was delicious.
We also had breakfast in the Grand Dining Room once because they serve lamb chops for breakfast, and we all had to try that—because we all love lamb—at least Steve and I do. Here’s the pics on that.
Kathleen’s berry buckwheat pancakes
Jocelyn’s flat omelette
My lamb chops. Well cooked but tough.
My Steve Test Rating: Nope, not special enough. Nothing really stood out. If this restaurant were next door to my house, I wouldn’t go back.
The Terrace Cafe
In the buffet, we found pretty much the same food as the dining room but in a more relaxed setting, and we also found (much to our surprise) that we ate less. For one thing, a lot less bread. We would all go grab a salad or some sushi, have that, and then instead of eating bread and waiting for the next course, we would just walk back and get an entrée or two. When we were done with that, we went back and grabbed a dessert. And all of it was excellent food.
We did have a couple of quibbles. First, the desserts were always cold. Even cobblers and bread puddings that should have been served warm were kept cold on purpose. It ruined a bunch of very good desserts. Second, sometimes, they would repeat menus/theme evenings. The last two nights had the exact same menu, and we actually think that some parts of what was available that evening were just leftovers from the night before. Sadly, this is what their parent company, Norwegian Cruise Line, is doing with their top-tier Haven product. They have the same menu every night in their Haven dining room, so why not migrate that idea to Oceania? It would also be nice if they had a couple of other large tables. With seven of us, we had only two tables in the buffet where we could all fit. Steve and Jamie would often go up and save one of those two big tables so we could all eat together. Other than those three rather minor things, we loved the Terrace Cafe.
The thing I really loved the most, Terrace, was the service they gave our buddy Jocelyn, who was walking with a cane. Almost every time she would go to get some food, she would come back to the table with no plate in her hand…but she would be followed by a server or maitre’d with her plate in their hand. I loved how they took such great care of her—heck, of all of us.
My Steve Test Rating: I would go back…for certain items and for the amazing selection of things. There was never a night (not even when we had the same menu two nights in a row) that I couldn’t find something I really wanted to try.
I also need to mention one amazing meal that we ate in the Terrace Cafe. Other than our night at Toscana, this was the most memorable food I had on board. I wish they had done this menu again and again. I would have eaten there every day. It was a Mexican-themed lunch. And the Chocolate Mole’ Braised Short Ribs were the second best dish I had on the entire cruise…from any Vista restaurant. It is really hard to get a chocolate mole’ sauce to work. So many chefs try it but Vista’s chef hit the ball out of the park. That plus there were a lot of other great Latin-American dishes as well.
The aforementioned Mole Sauce.
Superb quesadillas
Empanadas and Flautas!!
An incredible chocolate dessert. Put a little chili powder on it and it is award winning.
My Steve Test Rating: If I could get this dish at home, that would be the only restaurant I would ever eat in again. Well, maybe not the only one, but I would get really fat if I could drive to this within an hour.
The Aquamar Cafe
My incredible Poke Bowl
This is a new eating venue for Oceania (or so I think–please correct me if I am wrong) and other than the design (open-air to the outdoors) it is one of my favorites. The idea is healthy alternatives for breakfast and lunch. We never ate breakfast here but I can tell you, when these guys do healthy lunch, the knock it out of the park. We ended up eating lunch here at least eight days out of 15. Maybe more. They had a poke bowl that knocked my socks off. Easily in the top three things I ate onboard. They also had some of the best sweet potato fries with chipolte mayo. Only problem was, you had to order them again and again because they never brought enough ?. The crispy chicken burger was Kathleen’s favorite. I had it once and really liked it but it was really hard for me to eat there without having that Poke Bowl. Here’s a few pics.
My Steve Test Rating: I could eat lunch at the Aquamar Cafe every day for the rest of my life. If it were next door to my house, I might never go anyplace else. Oceania hit it out of the park with this restaurant for lunch.
Waves Grille
On the opposite side of the ship from the Aquamar Cafe was the Waves Grille. They were really two restaurants in one. At lunch, they served burgers, paninis, one specialty dish (paella, chili, BBQ chicken, etc.) and had an ice cream counter. In the evenings, they turned into a great little pizza place with some pretty great pizza.
As a grille at lunch, I wasn’t impressed. Nice place (very crowded), burgers were OK. Paninis were “fine.” Fries (thick steak fries) couldn’t hold a candle to the sweet potato fries in the Aquamar Cafe. You could get the ice cream at the buffet, and the two times I had the specialty dish, I was unimpressed.
But at dinner, their pizzas were excellent. They do New York style, but the crust was a little too thin for me. But the choices were excellent, and one of our favorite parts was that you could order a pizza and have it delivered to the buffet next door. One night, we decided to do a pizza night, but there is not a single table that would hold seven of us in the Grille. So we took up our regular table in the buffet (just inside the door to the grille) and ordered one of every kind of pizza they made. They gave us a number, asked where we were sitting and brought us every pizza…and a BBQ beef flatbread that was WONDERFUL!
The complete menu
Pizza
Pizza
Pizza
Did I mention…Pizza
The really great BBQ Beef flatbread.
My Steve Test Rating: For lunch—FAIL! I would not go there for burgers. The grille on Viking Sky was far superior. But for dinner, their pizza was really good and that night was one of the most fun meals we had. That said, I probably wouldn’t go back there either—I make better pizza ?.
That’s going to be it for today. What’s left here are the four specialty restaurants on Vista. I have some work to do today, and I want to get this post online. So tomorrow morning, I will hit those and then the final review and comparison.
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
—George Bernard Shaw
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 16, 2023 | Food Experiences
This is a short bonus post for anyone who, like me, likes to cook. Vista has a culinary center on deck 14 forward that ranks with any facility that I have ever taken a cooking class in.
Prior to the cruise, I signed up for the only cooking class available in the online reservation section for our cruise. I had hoped to do a few classes, but the one I ended up taking was all that was available for pre-cruise booking. We later found out from the instructor that there are usually spaces left for some to book on board and that there are cancellations as well. So, if you aren’t able to reserve the class you want or as many classes as you want, check with the reservations desk on Deck 5 when you are on board. Happily, the one class I signed up for, Cathy, signed up for as well—so I had a cooking buddy.
The cost for the class was $79, and that included two hours of instruction by our amazing teacher, Noelle, cooking and having fun, as well as eating what we made. To say that this class was well organized, that the facility was impressive and that the instructor was excellent would all be a gross understatement. All those things were true.
Our class was called “Lovers Together” or something like that. Cathy and I kept teasing Mike and Kathleen that they better come up and keep an eye on us. But the “Lovers” the class description referenced were the wine pairings—when wine and food are “Lovers.” I know—stupid marketing speak. Just say Wine and Food pairings.
I would guess by now you get the fact that this class and facility were top-notch. Forget the fact that we are on a ship; I would take classes here (at a great price) at sea or on land—just an amazing experience. If you like to cook, take a class on an Oceania cruise. You won’t be disappointed. Another great thing about these classes is that Noelle had three assistants who would set us up with everything we needed for the next course and clear out our refuse from the previous course while Noelle would have us come forward for instruction.
Here are some photos I took (with my phone) of the culinary center, the food we made and the class itself. I put captions on these so you will know what you are seeing.
Culinary Center class starts
Culinary Center
This was our Individual set up.
Great view to be able to see.
Everything was set up for us.
Our instructor was awesome.
She would gather us around to teach and then send us back to cook.
We did five courses. Four were paired with wine.
First stuffed prunes wrapped in prosciutto.
Followed by crostini with caramelized onions.
Watching Cathy cut up her watermelon. YUCK (I hate watermelon)
If you forgot to take pics of your food, they kept the chef’s copy for photos at the end.
We made dessert first so the cake could bake.
The food and wine pairing.
A watermelon and duck salad. I passed because I hate watermelon and Kathleen can’t eat duck.
Finished with a Croque Monsieur.
Dessert was a cake full of Bailey’s.
After photography, cooking is my second favorite hobby and I love experimenting and taking cooking classes. These were great. The instructor was super helpful and answered all our questions including helping us with possible substitutions. That’s a great teacher—willing to adapt.
Be back tomorrow or Wednesday with my final review.
I’m not a chef. But I’m passionate about food – the tradition of it, cooking it, and sharing it. —Zac Posen
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 16, 2023 | Photography
I forgot to mention earlier that I needed to break my tour of Vista up into different posts because there are so many photos. I got all the rest into this post, but it may take a few minutes to load, so read slowly.
BTW: There are no public areas on decks 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11. Those are all staterooms, and there are even some more staterooms on the forward area of deck 12. And, of course, due to silly superstition, there is no Deck 13.
Deck 12–eating and swimming—all in one place
Deck 12 is basically broken up into three parts—those staterooms that are forward, the swimming pool area midships and three food choices in the aft section. I am not going to say much about the pool. Not only did we not use it on this cruise, but no one really did until the last two days or so; it was just too cold or rainy. But I did get some pictures of the pool and the surrounding area.
Headed back on the starboard side from the pool, you walk right into the Waves Grille. On the opposite side is the brand new (not on any other Oceania ship) Aquamar Cafe. We loved both spaces, but on our last sea day, we noticed something that may be a problem in both places. That last day, when we finally got into warmer temps, we suddenly realized that both venues are open to the outside with no way to air-condition them adequately. We had lunch (a lot of times) at the Aquamar, and that day, it was hot and humid—no AC. After lunch that day, we wandered over to the grille—same problem. When we were in colder weather, they had heaters in the ceilings that kept everyone toasty. But when it got hot and humid, there are no fans or AC that can keep up with the fact that the place is wide open to the outside air. In the Caribbean, this may be a BIG problem.
Aquamar Cafe
We loved this big table.
Aquamar Cafe
Aquamar Cafe
Waves Grille
Waves Grille
Waves Grille
Waves Grille
Waves Grille
Waves Grille
Waves Grille
And finally, the Terrace Cafe or, as it is well known…the buffet. It was a very nice buffet. Well-designed, with really nice tables, and it included an outdoor area that was really only used on the last two days of the cruise because it was cold out there. We wish there had been more tables that would fit the seven of us (there were only two), but sometimes there were only six, and there were a few more of those.
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
The outside section of the Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Terrace Cafe
Deck 14–Eat it on 14
One of our favorite places on the ship was on Deck 14, where Kathleen and I had breakfast almost every day—Baristas. The incredible Massimo presided over a wonderful coffee bar, and within two days, he got to know our coffee order and where we were sitting. It’s a really nice space, and I know I took photos of it, but darned if I can find them. If I dig them up, I promise to post them.
But I do have photos of other spaces on Deck four, including both of the specialty restaurants located on the aft end of the deck. We ate in both Polor and in Toscana, and the decor and wrap-around windows made both rooms a joy to visit.
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Polo Grille
Toscana
Toscana
Toscana
Just in front of Toscana was a truly beautiful and much larger-than-expected library. They had some really great. books, tons of games and very nice places to sit. I spent a little bit of time there because they had some great books on travel photography.
At the front end of the ship were a variety of smaller rooms and the really wonderfully large Horizons Lounge. You find this type of forward-facing lounge on most ships, but this one had a lot more real estate for a smaller ship like Vista. It was a good place for cocktails, especially when entering or leaving a port, but our last night in NYC it was a madhouse because the Captain was nice enough to buy everyone complimentary cocktails while we sailed down the Hudson. The place was JAMMED! So it can get crowded. It can also be loud and conversation-stifling because starting at 5:45, the ship’s band made dance music (very few people danced—never saw more than six or eight couples), and if you weren’t seated all the way on the other side of the lounge, it again became impossible to hear anyone who wasn’t whispering in your ear.
Horizons
Horizons
Horizons
Horizons
Horizons
On your way into Horizons from the stairs or elevator, you pass a number of small rooms housing the Culinary Center (took a cooking class here), the Smoking Lounge (one of the nicest places on the ship???), the Lync Digital classroom/meeting room (you could go there to take a class or for internet help and they also used it for meetings) and the Artists Loft (where you could take an art class).
Smoking Lounge
One of the nicest…
Quietest…
Lounges on the ship.
Artist’s Loft
Artist’s Loft
Artist’s Loft
Lync Digital Center
This could be a classroom or a meeting room.
Deck 15–Lost it on 15
I’m just going to run through these from bow to stern. Upfront, the spa is the star. Didn’t use it or the gym or the Aquamar Spa pool, steam rooms or hot tubs…but I did take their pictures so you would know what is available.
Gym
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Aquamar Spa
Also, on Deck 15 aft, there is a one-tenth-of-a-mile running/walk track (I spent a lot of time here), a shuffleboard on the starboard side and a bocce court on the port side. My one complaint about this deck was that they closed it too often for winds. If you are going to have a deck, you have to keep closing due to wind, but some kind of wind barrier up. My guess is that on the sea days (when I needed it for exercise) it was closed four out of five days.
Walking track
Walking track rules
Shuffleboard
Bocce court
Deck 16–A little more activity
Deck 16 only exists on the front of the ship. It is another outdoor activity space that gets closed when the weather is windy. You can find pickleball, miniature golf, a golf-simulator and cornhole.
Pickleball
Golf Simulator
Cornhole
Miniature Golf
Miniature Golf
Miniature Golf
Miniature Golf
The view looking down from Deck 16
Whew! That does it. The grand tour of a grand ship. Hope you enjoyed it. It’s funny that this one took longer to organize than any other post. So many great places. Vista is a classy, new ship. When I do my final review tomorrow, I will mention the few things we really did not like about her.
You can find tranquility, you can find party, you can find new friends. I’m a cruise convert. —Guy Fieri
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 15, 2023 | Food Experiences, Photography
We are home, and I am sitting in our living room after a very late flight, a good ride home with Century Car Service of Seattle and a fairly decent night of sleep. So, as promised, I am bringing you (between taking a walk, helping Kathleen with loads of laundry and sorting through our mail) my virtual tour of Vista with my comments on the different parts of the ship.
Going up! Let’s start on Deck 5
Unlike any ship we have ever been on before, Vista started with public decks on deck five (there is the infirmary on four). Most ships start at two, three or at least four, but Vista starts on five. And only about half of deck five, is open to passengers. Starting from the very front, there’s the Vista Lounge, Vista’s main showroom. I would love to say that I saw a bunch of shows there, but sadly I didn’t. If you want to read about the shows, make sure and check out my buddy Mike’s review in a few weeks. He saw them all. I saw one—a hilarious comedian—Cory Kahaney. We had seen her on an old show called Last Comic Standing and truly enjoyed her, so I joined Mike and Cathy at the show.
BTW: The reason I don’t attend shows is not because we don’t like shows. It used to be (on Celebrity) that we stopped going to shows because we had seen them all after so many cruises on the same line. We stopped going because, in case you can’t tell from the description on my photos, I get up REALLY early to take photos and to write posts REALLY early, like 4:30 a.m. (See what I give up for you my readers ?) So, by the time it rolls around to show time (usually 9:15 or 9:30), I am out of it. Cory’s performance was hilarious, and I really wanted to go back when she did her second show a few days later; I was wiped out and had to skip it. I should also say that I did attend some of the lectures by our two excellent enrichment speakers held in this lounge.
The Vista Lounge is a nice theater, but it needs more height. If you are at all of a diminutive stature (short ?) then you will be moving your head from side to side to see anyone on the stage. Part of this is due to Vista’s size. On most cruise ships, the theater is much larger, but on Vista, they don’t need the large number of seats that a 6,000-passenger ship needs. There is nothing that can be done about it, but this is just a heads-up. Here are some pics. For all of these shots, feel free to look at them on your phone. Nothing artsy here. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can then scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping.
Shops and Customer Service
Also, on Deck 5, you will find the Oceania Shops and a reception desk, a concierge desk and a Destinations desk (shore excursions) midships. Not being a big shopper, we walked through these once, just for me to get photos. And I only had to visit the reception desk once. And I almost forgot, these shops and desks are placed all around the grand staircase in the Atrium, where there is a beautiful glass sculpture. Here are some pics.
Two specialty restaurants
I am going to review the dinners we had at these two restaurants in an upcoming post on food. But I did want to show them to you. Vista has four such restaurants, and deck four has Red Ginger (Asian food) and a new restaurant to the Oceania fleet—Ember. (We heard it referred to as this shipboard version of Applebees.) Either way, here are some pics.
Red Ginger
Red Ginger
Red Ginger
Ember
Ember
Going to Deck Six—climb the stairs–the elevators suck
Before I go on to Deck Six, I want to take a moment to talk about the elevators. There aren’t enough, the ones they have aren’t big enough, and many of the people on them are beyond rude.
First, let me say that other than walking on with carry-on luggage at embarkation, I NEVER take an elevator on a cruise. But Kathleen does, and she encountered so many problems she reminded me that I had to mention them.
First, there are only two elevator banks on Vista. One aft (nearest our stateroom) with two full-size elevators and the other at midships with four elevators. Of those four, two are full-size elevators, and two are small, oddly shaped glass elevators that hold fewer people. Just about every day, at times when people would be moving around (usually meals or before shows), those elevators were slammed. Going to lunch in the Aquamar Cafe on Deck 12, I would leave her at deck nine and climb the stairs. Many, MANY times, I would climb the stairs to deck 12 and have to stand and wait for 5-10 minutes for her to arrive. It was even worse at the dinner or cocktail hour. It got REALLY horrible when one of the elevators would go down. This is ridiculous on a six-month-old ship. By now, they should have fixed any problems and they can’t chalk it up to the ship being old.
At disembarkation, I had to carry my carry-on and my 35lb computer/camera down a flight of stairs because one of the aft elevators was out…during disembarkation—when people are trying to get down to get off—are you kidding me? Every floor had at least six to eight people waiting to get on an elevator. And many of these people were elderly or handicapped.
Deck 6—you got here—let’s eat and drink.
Deck 5 had started at the bow and went back to the Atrium. Deck six starts at the Atrium and goes to the stern. Basically, decks five and six are one deck. This is because the theater on deck five needs more space above the theater, and when you enter the Great Dining Room (GDR) at the stern, you walk down into the room. That gives the GDR some very nice high ceilings.
Starting from the Atrium, you have the Oceania Club (people who have sailed with Oceania before) and future cruise sales. This sits right above the Atrium. If you are interested in purchasing a future cruise, please keep in mind that there are only two reps selling them (they give you GREAT incentives for booking on board), and that means a lot of waiting. They also have limited hours because they have so much paperwork, so be cognizant of that when you are planning your time. Sea days are the worst—big lines.
Moving aft, you run into Martinis, a very nice lounge—especially early in the morning—this is where I did most of my writing and photo processing between 4:30 and 7:00 a.m. We only went there for drinks once or twice because of the live music they play that makes conversation almost impossible. Otherwise, it is a very nice lounge. Here are some pics.
Further on beyond Martinis is a long hallway with a beautiful floor that runs on the outside of the casino. We are not casino people, so the only time we walked through was when I was taking photos. I did walk by a few times when it was open, and since the wall between the hallway and the casino is glass, I could tell that things were hopping and people seemed to be really enjoying themselves.
Further down that hallway, you walk into the Grand Lounge, which is really just a long, wide room leading to the Grand Dining Room, where they serve you drinks prior to dinner. It is also where the wonderful classical string quartet plays every night. We had cocktails here a few times (which were great), but this, too, was not a place where we could converse. The quartet were excellent musicians, and the people who were there to hear them deserved to be able to hear them and not us talking, so we continued to search for a place where we could have a nice cocktail and talk.
On the other side of the ship from the Grand Lounge, in a much smaller space (with a VERY low ceiling, as my brother found out), is the Founder’s Bar. This was the place for truly special cocktails. The kind that cost a bunch but are often smoky (with real smoke). But this one didn’t work for us because there were only tables for two. It’s a kind of an out-of-the-way bar, and their main job is providing the cocktails for the Grand Lounge.
And lastly, at the stern is the aforementioned Grand Dining Room. This room is drop-dead beautiful. It is everything I like in a dining room, lots of space but divided into smaller spaces. It reminded me of a nice restaurant instead of a banquet hall. My only quibble with the design was that the only two tables we ever had dinner at were in the corners with no windows. When I go on a cruise, I want to see the ocean. More about this in my final round-up but I will say that this dining room is beautiful. Here’s my final set of pics for this page.
This is a kind of waiting area for those waiting to get in but we never saw it in use. When you got to the GDR you were seated promptly.
Our table in the very far right corner of the GDR. The window behind us was not really that close to our table.
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 14, 2023 | Photography
I am waiting at the airport and thought I would do two things. I want to drop you a photo of one of the most magnificent sunsets I have ever seen (taken last night at sea off Florida from the 14th deck).
Disembarkation
We did all the usual stuff: Put our luggage out the night before, kept clothes and carryons to get off with, had breakfast in Baristas, told Massimo goodbye, packed up and got out of our stateroom by 8:00.
Disembarkation from the ship was a little delayed. The first people were not allowed off until 7:45, so please take that as a warning if you think you will just be able to walk off to catch an early flight. We got off with the first group.
From that point on, we split into two groups. Mike and Cathy were driving home to Wellington (just 40 miles or so north), and I needed a ride to the Avis office to get a rental car for the day. Mike, Cathy and I were some of the first to exit under a covered awning and then into an air-conditioned room warehouse-like room where all the luggage was located. We got their luggage (Kathleen, Jamie and Steve would get ours when they got off), and we were on our way. Their driver met us right outside the building, and we didn’t get too wet getting in.
I talked them (and their driver) into taking me the two miles (as the crow flies) but nine miles (as the car drives), which was awesome of them. We had a heck of a time finding it because our driver was only letting his phone show written directions and not a map. We came very close to hitting a median barrier head on. It was about as scared as I have been while driving in a while. But we did finally get there.
People had warned me about this particular Avis office. That they would not start their shuttle to the port until 9:00 am (when you have to be off the ship) or that they would not have cars ready when you got there, no matter when you reserved them. I was hoping this would not be the case with me, but alas, it was. I was the first customer in the door at 8:00 a.m. when they opened. The lady at the desk said that they were cleaning my car and that I would have to wait. We had reserved a Chevy Suburban because there were five of us with all our luggage, and when I came in, I had seen a white Suburban about a block away in their parking lot.
Did I forget to mention that when we got up this morning on the ship, there was a light rain, and it was 85 degrees? And that as soon as we left the ship, the heavens opened up and literally dumped water. Thunder, lightning and the equivalent of a firehose of water. So, getting from Mike and Cathy’s ride to the Avis counter left me soaked to the skin.
Inside the agency, I was told to have a seat. There were four chairs and room for about eight other people to stand, and by the time I left (25 minutes later) the place was full. Not sure what was going to happen when their 9:15 shuttle arrived.
In the meantime, while waiting, I was watching the white Suburban out the window. No one was cleaning it, or anywhere near it, so I kind of assumed it was not my car. Wrong again. After seeing it sitting there with nothing being done to it, my name was called, and I was told that it was my car. Since it was still POURING, I asked if they could possibly pull it up to the office for me so I didn’t have to get the two bags I had with me (and myself) totally soaked. I was told (by the three people working there—doing nothing) that I should just walk the block…which I did, getting myself and my bags thoroughly soaked. I mean, I looked like a wet dog who had been walking in Seattle rain for at least an hour.
And when I got to the car, I could not figure out how to open it. I got the front door open but not the rear cargo area. I knew it was on my key fob, but I couldn’t see through the water on my glasses which little icon it was—I finally got it figured out and got into the car to try and figure out the car’s systems. It was at this point that I wished I had paid better attention in high school Spanish because all the controls on the cars were programmed in Spanish, and I was darned if I could figure out how to change them back to English. In the meantime, 9:00 am had rolled around, so I needed to get back to pick up Kathleen, Jocelyn, Steve and Jamie at the ship. So I had to use my phone to navigate, and I was back in front of the cruise port within about 20 minutes…just as they were walking off. They jumped in the car, and we were off.
Off to where? Originally, we had wanted to do a Miami tour because all of us were leaving in the late afternoon. But at the last minute, Steve and Jamie’s flight got moved way up (it’s 3:30, and they are already in the air), but ours didn’t. That’s why I rented a car. I also found a Miami driving tour app that did a nice 1.5-hour tour of Miami with narration and GPS. It worked fairly well, but it still needs improvement. When we were done with the tour, it was time to drop Jamie and Steve at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Once we had them off to airplane land, we headed into downtown Fort Lauderdale to grab lunch. We found a great Mexican place downtown—El Camino. Give it a try if you are downtown, but remember, the portions are enormous.
And that led us back to where we are now, Fort Lauderdale airport at 4:30 p.m., waiting for our 5:40 p.m. Alaska Air flight. We will get back tonight around 9:00 PST (which will be midnight based on when we got up), and then we have about an hour ride home. Whew. I am tired just thinking about the six-hour flight coming up. Thank goodness we are in First Class. And thank goodness we are heading home. See you tomorrow with a ship tour in photos, provided I get out of bed. Otherwise, it might be Monday.
Oh, and we have all decided it was basically a great cruise and a great trip, no matter how many rental car snafus there were? .
Where we love is home – home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts. —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
