Oceania Regatta | Baltic Cruise 2005
At Sea, from Dover to
Belgium: I type this late at night, after another wonderful day in
England. We have a full moon, rough seas and clear skies.
First, I must first thank our Fantastic English Hosts, Martin & Shirley. DT
and I are blessed with many good friends - people who like us regardless of
our faults. We have enjoyed Martin and Shirley's company since we were
neighbors in Taipei in 1986 and Lisa became fast friends with their gorgeous
daughter, Emma. Though it is very difficult to see each other, we have
vacationed together many times since our Taipei Days - and this was the
first time we have been together without the girls! Yes, we did TALK
about the girls quite a bit, but we managed just fine without them thank you
very much! (Emma, and her younger sister, Kate, were off in Hong Kong for
two weeks working at a huge soccer tournament.)
This morning, Martin went back to work and Shirley drove us down to the
ship. No kidding, after a 90-minute drive, we pulled into Dover, followed
the traffic signs to the cruise terminals, we jumped out of the car, had a
tearful goodbye and I phoned Shirley ten minutes later to tell her we were
in our cabin.(Oh, yes, don't worry, my mobile phone works great here, but
if you phone me make sure you have something to say worth 99-cents per
minute, okay?)
This
is our fifth cruise, our first on Oceania, and the Oceania Regatta is the smallest ship we have ever sailed at 650 passengers and 400 crew. Of
course, the ship is still huge, but maybe we won't get lost as often as we
do on the mega-liners. Today at 2 pm, after checking in, we waited in line
for dining reservations, credit card registration and a few odd things. Then
we unpacked and explored the ship. Our plans to visit the castle at Dover
collapsed due to the late hour. We had a perfect view of the White Cliffs of
Dover from our stateroom! There were two SAGA ships leaving the port today
and countless ships and ferries sailing to France. From our room, we could
see across to France twenty-two miles away. We have a nice stateroom, with a
balcony, mid-ship on the port side of the Regatta. (Our itinerary is listed
on the bottom of this page.)
Our stateroom
The White Cliffs of Dover and Dover Castle
DT poses on the Oceania Regatta
If you can even believe it, we have internet access in our
room. Of course, I will be accepting donations from All My Dear Readers to
pay for this extravagance. I had to take my miniature laptop down to the
Official "Oceania @ Sea" Center so the computer guy could set it up for us.
He started my laptop and a fabulous photo of our Adorable Girl popped-up as
my screen-saver. The Computer Geek said "Wow, what a beautiful
girl!"(Obviously, nothing is wrong with his eyes.)He was Filipino and he
went nuts when I told him (in Tagalog!) the Beautiful Girl was born in
Manila."No wonder." he said. Who-knew giving birth in Manila would
produce great computer service aboard a cruise ship in the English Channel
twenty-three years later?
(If anyone told me in 1981 I would have something called a "computer" the
size of a magazine and surf the planet while cruising out in the open sea I
would have thought they were from Mars.)
We had a cocktail in the lounge in front of the ship and then went to dinner
in the dining room. Of course, the food is over-the-top. Jacques Pepin is the Head Chef of the cruise line, so chances of us starving within the
next two weeks are slim. Slim... hum... no pun intended. The ship
provided a nice bottle of champagne in our cabin and Nancy (our travel agent
at Azumano) provided a
bottle of red for DT and a nice bottle of white for me.
As Jimmy Buffett would say: It is going to be A Lovely Cruise.
As we finished our meal, the Regatta set sail at ten o'clock under
a full moon. We are being rocked to sleep tonight by the tossing seas.
Our Itinerary:
Day + Port
1 London (Dover), United Kingdom
2 Bruges (Zeebrugge), Belgium
3 Amsterdam, Netherlands
4 Kiel Canal Transit
5 Berlin (Warnemunde), Germany
6 Copenhagen, Denmark
7 Gdansk, Poland
8 Cruising the Baltic Sea
9 Helsinki, Finland
10 St. Petersburg, Russia
11 St. Petersburg, Russia
12 St. Petersburg, Russia
13 Tallinn, Estonia
14 Stockholm, Sweden
15 Stockholm, Sweden