Oceana E502 Part I

Well, here we are again, back on the ocean waves, and back on Oceana. It was 2009 since we last stepped on board, and even then, only for 2 nights, so it was like boarding a new ship.

We had only booked this cruise on a morning in mid November as we were about to leave home for our Fred Olsen mystery cruise ( see previous blogs) and it was such a good deal that we couldn't turn it down we only paid .......... No, I'm sorry I can't divulge that.

So come the Friday before we left, we decided to book a hotel for the Sunday night, so that we did not have to fight the M25 / M3 etc. in the Monday morning rush hour. Plus there had been a few accidents on the A12 last week, closing it for a time. 

I first looked at the Premier Inn, which was £78 for the night, but you had to park away from the hotel   ( not sure where). 

I then looked at the Grand Harbour Hotel ( ex De Vere ) a hotel we had not stayed in since 2010, and they had a winter warmer deal, of bed, breakfast and evening meal for £99 for the two of us, so a bit of a no brainer.

So after a very pleasant, non rushed drive down on Sunday afternoon, we arrived at the hotel. A point to note if you travel on the north section of the M25, it seems they have installed speed cameras along the whole north section, and very busy they were too, as all you saw were continual flashes from the cameras, so you have been warned 😀

Arriving at the hotel, we found out that we had been upgraded to a king delux room, so a pleasant surprise to the start of the cruise. The new owners have spent £4M on a refurbishment so it was all very tidy, and the food was good as well. Our room had a balcony facing the Ocean Terminal, so we watched the Saga Sapphire depart on Sunday, and when we rose on Monday, she had been replaced by Oceana.

We left the hotel at 11am for the very short drive, and were on board by 1140. It's the first time we have been to the Ocean Terminal since they completed the road works at the entrance, and the right turn into the entrance of the terminal, instead of the one way system is a great improvement.

The sail away on deck was well attended, even though there was a chill in the air.

And the sun set was stunning.

So here we are on the first of two sea days as we make our way south to our first port of Lisbon, our entertainment tonight is a comedian called Jeff Stevenson. Regular readers of my blog will know that I am a great fan of social media, and have been a Twitter follower of Jeff for quite a few years, but until now not managed to be on the same cruise ship as him.

So I look forward to his show tonight, and of course will report later on his show.

The begining of the second sea day saw us leave the BOB, and I have to say, it was very kind to us, calm seas and no rain. The weather has slowly improved the further south we have travelled, and we even managed to sit out on the prom deck this afternoon, but we did need our coats.

Back to last night, we ate in the Horizon Grill ( inside ) with excellent food, with special mention to the salt and pepper Tiger prawns, after which we saw the late show from Jeff. A consummate professional  with good family entertainment.

Tonight (Wednesday) is the first formal night and the Captains welcome party, so I will need to scrub up and get the dicky bow out ( self tie of course 😜)

Tomorrow we dock in Lisbon, where we will just go ashore and have a wander and post this blog.

So until then, bye bye 

Cirque du Soleil

After my rambling on my last blog, I had  forgotten that we had booked tickets, some time ago to go to see  Kooza, which is the latest show from Cirque du Soleil, and is being performed at The Royal Albert Hall.

I had seen many Cirque du Soleil shows on TV, and if my memory serves me correct, there was even a documentary series on one the channels on Sky some time ago, so this had been added to my bucket list.

We had booked tickets for the matinee performance on Friday  9th January and instead of taking the train to London, decide to treat ourselves by booking an executive car to take us there from Executive Logistics, a company I have used before to take us down to Southampton etc.

So just after midday, Steve ( who we have known from previous trips) arrived in his E class Mercedes to take us to London.

Trying to miss some of the traffic on a Friday afternoon at the bottom of the M11, we went through Walthamstow and then on to Tottenham.

It all got a bit nostalgic as I was born in Walthamstow, so passing the Town Hall and Lloyds Park, and driving along Forest Road where my mother used to live, and all the public houses I used to drink in as a young lad (18 of course). Ah the memories came flooding back.

But we soon arrived, and had a few minutes to spare before the doors opened, so we popped across the road.

And there sitting in all his glory was the newly refurbish Prince Albert.

It was then time for the doors to open and we went inside and I purchased two of the most expensive glasses of wine to drink ( I'll never learn)


You can see a very short video of the show here

Before "curtain up"  the "clowns" came out and mingled with the audience as part of the warm up, and very funny they were.

The show of course is circused based, but it certainly had you on the edge of your seats some times. If you have watched the short video above, you will have seen two guys on what I can only describe as two very large wheels that spin about an axis. They are very nearly at the top of the Albert Hall when they are vertical, and the performers do "fly" above the wheels..

I am sure you will all have seen the acrobats and two of the larger ones jump on the end of a seesaw, and sends the person at the opposite end up in the air.

Its fairly standard in any circus, but in this one they wear  6 foot stilts, get thrown up in the air, and incorporate a few somersaults as well.

So all in all a very good two hours of entertainment, and highly recommended.
If you can't get to London, I believe they are going on tour around the UK once they have finished at the Royal Albert hall.

Enjoy

Happy New Year

Well Christmas has come and gone, and here we are in 2015.

I hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year.

My 2015 is turning out to be a bit different from what I had planned. My good lady Sue retired at the end of December, so we had planned out the year with quite a few cruises.

However, for those of you that are regular readers, you will know that I have  CLL but after 6 months of chemo in 2009/10 have been in remission ever since.

The "chronic" part of the title means that there is no cure (at present), so it was inevitable that Mr C would raise his ugly head again and demand a rematch, and that is what he has done.

So I'm off for another CT scan this month so my consultant can decide when I need to start another 6 months of chemo (different chemo this time).

So here is the dilemma, what crusie do we cancel / move so I can find a clear 6 months in my diary ?.

We are due off at the end of the month on Oceana, and then again in March on Black Watch for the Solar Eclipse "up north". I think those are going to be OK, but after that "who knows" at present.

So at least you should get another couple of blogs about cruising from me before I disappear into my black hole.
That said, I will still be blogging throughout my treatment (as long as I'm feeling OK) so the blog will have a "medical feel" about it. But I promise I will not be too gory.

I also hope to blog for Leukaemia Care a charity that Team Aylott  fund raises for.

But until then I do have the two cruises to look forward to :-)

Beside getting a new camera recently, it was my birthday just before Christmas, and I was lucky enough to get a new "prime lens", so this week I went out with my SIL from JRM Photography  and his friend Simon for some long exposure shots of the sunset at West Clacton.

And if you want to see some more of my handy work, can find them here

So until we board Oceana in a few weeks, I will say farewell

Fred Olsen Mystery Cruise - Photos

As promised here are my photos from the cruise

Vigo

Gibraltar

Malaga

Cadiz

Lisbon

Leixoes

Lorient

Misc


Enjoy

Fred Olsen Mystery Cruise Review

The Cruise

A14 night mystery cruise onboard Black Watch, sailing from Tilbury, London

The Ports

Vigo

Gibraltar 

Malaga

Cadiz (overnight)

Lisbon 

Leixioes 

Lorient

I think Fred played "safe" with their choice of ports, and we did hear one or two complaints of "I have been here before", but when you go on a mystery cruise, you can't mind where you go.

Having said that, Fred's USP, is smaller ships that can get into ports that the big ships can't. So why with the exception of Lorient, why did they pick major ports ? As I said, playing safe IMHO

The ship

Black Watch had just left Hamburg from a refit, where beside planned maintenance, added extra cabins on the Prom deck. Now I mentioned this in my blog, and IMHO a bit of a daft idea.

This is only our third Fred cruise, the first for 3 nights on this ship last year, then 12 nights on Braemar earlier this year, and I have to say out of the two ships Braemar is my favourite as the flow of passengers, and the space  works much better, and feels a better ship. Having said that we are back on the Black Watch in March for the Solar eclipse cruise. But I don't think we will cruise on Black Watch again after that.

Shore excursions 

This was a subject I blogged about before we left. Fred sent us a shore ex brochure, and it was very difficult to choose a tour, not knowing where you will be. 

Having said that, if you had the time, you could compare the description in the brochure to that on Fred's website and work out where you were going. I think Fred could take a leaf out of Saga's book who have been running mystery cruises for some time ( and yes our first mystery cruise was with Saga) and include a shore ex within the price.

As always some shore ex were better then others, with the winery and flamenco dancers the best.

Entertainment 

When we saw the first show by the theatre company I did think they were quite poor. They have however gone from strength to strength and are well worth watching

The Magician Peter Wardell was excellent, but I do love magic

The Singers, we did not go to see as they do not appeal so can't comment

The talks during the day, on all things Mystical given by Mei Trow and Prof Terry Keefe were well worth attending, both factually and entertainment wise.

A note of course has to be made for the "Crew Show" with some very talented people. 

As always, quizzes featured a lot, and the evening quiz saw us team up with Pat and Michael from our table, and Val and Brian. We saw a lot of second places, but did manage to win a name that tune one night, by a sterling effort by my good lady Sue. The chilled bottle of Cava the following night ( our prize) tasted even better for all the effort.

Murder Mystery Evenings

Run by Brad and Tamara from Black Watch Entertainment, they also ran  some acting workshops as well. Due to the intimate surroundings required for a murder mystery, they were held in the garden cafe, which limited the number of people who could attend. The original plan was just to run two evenings with two different murders. This caused some disquiet amongst passengers, so they soon had to double up on the evenings. Now I'm not bragging, but after solving a murder mystery at our local before we came away. We were also in the winning team on both evenings on board.

The food

We were 1st sitting in the MDR on a table for 6, and it's fair to say we had some interesting evenings 😜 I will say no more.

There has been nothing that has stood out food wise. It's been hot and adequate, but I have not said " I really enjoyed that" after a meal.

Breakfast we mainly took in the buffet in The Garden Cafe, and lunch in the MDR, but they did have a buffet there, and the Sunday Roast Beef for lunch was the highlight.

The crew

Excellent as always and a credit to Fred

Conclusion

It's been an OK cruise, but I think Fred could have made it a lot more exciting and interesting. I know it's wrong to compare, but as I said above, we have cruised with Saga on a mystery cruise, and left saying it was one of our best cruises. Sadly I will not be saying that this time. 

Fred, you need to improve.

And finally

I would not normally add this to a cruise review, but felt I did have to mention it. On our last sea day (Friday) in the afternoon, we were in the Lido lounge taking part in a music quiz. The Lido lounge is on deck 6 and overlooks the aft deck. Mid way through the quiz, the CD announces that there is a medical evacuation about to take place by helicopter. 

Now when you see this on TV etc., it does look spectacular, but watching in real life, it was amazing. I hope the person who was evacuated makes a full recovery. But this is just a vote of thanks to the men and women who risk their own lives  to help people who are ill.

Also next time you pass someone shaking a tin for these brave people, please put your hand in your pocket and be generous . 

And finally, 

Disembarkation was fine, but 200/300 passengers with luggage waiting for the coach to take them back to the long stay car park was utter chaos. Not enough coaches, took us 1.5 hours 😁😁😁😁

Until next time, bye

Fred Olsen Mystery Cruise Part IX

So we arrived at our last mystery port, most of the speculation had been on La Rochelle, but no, we arrived into a very foggy Lorient, in Brittany. It's a port we have never been to before, and also a port I have never heard of before.

After breakfast the fog started to lift so we took the shuttle bus into town. We had also bumped into Pat and Michael on the bus, so it was the dynamic foursome again 😄

As we all alighted the bus, there were some local guides offering a 1 hour walking tour for €5 per person. Now when we do walking tours as part of a shore exe it's normally £26 per person, and if you are a regular reader, you will know that this price does get under my skin.

So off we went on our walking tour. It's seems Lorient was the largest of submarine pens for German U Boats during the Second World War. As they were so fortified ( 12 foot reinforced walls) , the only way the allies could find a way of disrupting the U Boats was to bomb the town of Lorient, which ened up totally destroyed. 

Our first stop on our walking tour was a bomb shelter from WWII.

From there we moved onto to some windmills and watch tower, some of the only buildings to survive WWII

We made our way back to the pick up point for the bus, via a cafe for some hot chocolate as the temp is now down to 10C, only to find it had stopped for lunch.

 

However, a band of us intrepid explorers managed the 20 minute walk back to the ship.

So tomorrow is our last sea day, and we are back in Tilbury on Saturday.

I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog, and I will write a cruise review and post links to my photos once we get home.

I found an app to convert my RAW files, so I hope they are better now .

So until then, bye

Fred Olsen Mystery Cruise Part VIII

Well here we are at our penultimate port of Leixoes, the port for Oporto. 

We were here in May on Braemar and took a tour on the river ( see previous blog)

So this time we just took the shuttle bus into town, which took about 30 minutes as the traffic was very busy.  We had only been in town about ten minutes, when we bumped into Pat and Michael from our table. Pat had decided she wanted to take a tram ride,so we tagged along for the ride ( see what I did there)

The trams had been imported from Pittsburgh USA and were of a vintage variety. 

It's was only €2.50 so excellent value and great fun. We alighted at the South end of town close to the river, and we could see the bridge that has several levels through the buildings. So we found some steps and started to decend. The steps twisted and turned downwards and were very steep. It must have taken us what seemed ages to decend to the bottom  after about 250 steps.

But made it we did, after a short walk along the river bank we found a delightful cafe with tables out side, so we sat in the sun for a coffee. This then increased to include a glass of Port ( well it had to be done)   We then moved on to include some Tapas like nibbles,which included Octopus, some thing I had not tried before, but can now tick that off my list.

We then found a less arduous route back up into town.

Where we finally made it back to where the shuttle bus picked us up

It had been one of our best times ashore this trip, so thanks to Pat and Michael for their company

This afternoon sees us on the aft deck again. It's warm with patchy cloud, in fact I have to stop writing the blog when the sun comes out as I can't see the screen on my iPad.

So we have three days left, which will be a sea day, somewhere in France, another sea day, then back to Tilbury

So until next time, bye