Oriana - Day 1

I am afraid I have been exceptionally remiss in keeping up to date with this blog - mainly becuase when not travelling or working at the day job, I have another book to finish! As always, this will have to be a retrospective look at the Christmas Cruise and, last week, a short one on CMV Discovery to ports around the Irish Sea.

So, back to when I last posted - I was packing to go on Oriana for Christmas and New year....

Day 1

We had had an email about three days before that boarding would be delayed so the ship could be deep cleaned following a severe outbreak of Norovirus.We arrived at the terminal at 2.30 and immediately were checked in. Then it was an hour wait in the departure lounge before, first Ligurian and then Baltic passengers were invited to board. I just love that moment when you cross the air bridge and step from land to ship. To add to my feeling of being back home – the first officer I saw welcomed me and said how nice it was to see me back on board. Our three-berth cabin is on E deck so we had to go up one deck to find it. A lift was empty and waiting for us. It is a standard inside cabin with two beds and an upper berth. My cases were outside the door so I unpacked first. My two friend's luggage didn’t arrive until much later and we were still unpacking the last things after dinner. In fact Joyce was getting seriously worried she would have no knickers for 23 nights (except what she was wearing) !!  Fortunately (being Oriana), there is reasonable storage and the steward has somewhere to take the cases away and store them for us. The cabin has four wardrobes (with four safes), four drawers each in two bedside cabinets and four larger drawers. Two of us with cases that open out in half, can fit them under the beds as an extra drawer so, with a bit of final adjustment, we were easily able to fit everything in.

Joyce was coming down by Eavesway coach and had not arrived yet so we went in for afternoon tea. This was more like a full buffet lunch, but served to us in the Pensinsular Restaurant – crumpets, scones, asparagus quiches, sausage rolls, cakes etc. Everyone is making a real effort to make sure we are well looked after and have a good time. There are the usual grumbles etc about the change in normal routine and that the Conservatory is closed for two days as a precaution, but I could not complain about a thing (except maybe the lack of a welcome on board glass of champagne at the lunch!)

Muster drill was at 8pm between the two dinner sittings, and Oriana set sail about 8.30pm for Oporto.

Our cruise had begun.