West Africa Cruise: Ship Life (11.14.24)

We boarded the Oceania Riviera on November 14, 2024, in Barcelona.  Oceania is our favorite cruise line, and the Riviera is a fairly new ship carrying just 1250 passengers.  We finagled a cabin with a veranda, and life on this 28-day cruise was good.
 

The Riviera was small enough to dock in ports the huge ships couldn't.  Oceania is known for its great food and exotic ports, both of which endears it to us.

I soon learned that, to avoid gaining weight, I had to eat just dinner and, maybe, a tiny breakfast or lunch.  The Terrace Cafe served food that was as good as the main dining room and specialty restaurants.

Dave and I walked, most mornings, for several miles around the top deck.  The average age of guests on Oceania is 70, so the sunbathers in their bikinis were not a pretty sight!

Dave and I loved eating dinner in the beautiful main dining room.  Specialty restaurants were available at no extra cost, so we ate again and again at The Polo (steak and seafood), Toscana (Italian), Red Ginger (oriental), and Jacques (French).

A highlight of the cruise, for me, was taking eight two-hour, hands-on cooking classes, covering everything from cooking with lemons to grilling meat to making Moroccan and Turkish specialties.

For each class, the chef, Leah Caplan, and her staff arranged the ingredients and end products in a display, so we would know what to buy and how the food should look, when we made it again.  We also received brochures with all the recipes we had cooked.

We each had our own cooking station, as well as gathering around Leah's main station, again and again, to watch her demonstrate the steps to make our dishes.  I think of myself as a good cook, but I learned many new techniques, such as how to grill vegetables and how to make paella the authentically Spanish way.

The ship was especially beautiful at night, when the top deck and pool were lighted and the sky was dark.