Saturday, 7 December 2024

Miami

As promised, LFLatSea goes back in time to 7-8 December, our first days on board ms Marina. We have spent the night at the Sonesta Regency, more a construction site than a hotel. But management is very nice to us, the bed is good, and today we wake to a fine breakfast buffet.

Our hired ride to the port arrives exactly on time at 11am and we are soon off on the 30-minute ride in his extra-large SUV. Check-in goes smoothly and we are quickly on board enjoying lunch in the Waves Cafe--wagyu beef burgers and lobster on buns--until our stateroom is ready. We are located on Deck 9 mid-ship, just a few doors away from the Concierge Lounge. We spend the afternoon emptying our suitcases and putting away all our clothes and other paraphernalia.

At 5:30pm we head to the top deck Explorer Lounge to listen to the band and have a pre-dinner drink. Unfortunately, our waiter is a total fuck-up, taking 45 minutes to bring our drinks and then getting our order totally wrong. This is a very rare occurrence on Oceania ships and I make a point of complaining to the room manager, especially since these are drinks we are paying for. We get free champagne and wine or beer with meals, but we pay individually for drinks from the bars. The manager comps our drinks and we assiduously avoid this waiter for the rest of the cruise.

From here on the rest of the evening goes well. We have a table for two in the Grand Dining Room, where we enjoy our first of many glasses of fine French Champagne. We both start with bowls of lobster bisque, followed by shrimp cocktail (W), and Caesar salad with anchovies (L). We both have excellent bœuf bourguignon for the main course. For dessert Will enjoys a chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream; I have pistachio cream with almond croque. All that is more than enough to insure a good night of sleep as we sail away from Miami.

The Grand Dining Room

Sunday, 8 December 2024

Day at Sea

We awake to a fine day at sea on our way to Costa Maya, Mexico. As we are dressing, we discover a winged insect crawling down the fabric headboard of the bed. Will manages to dislodge the critter and after several attempts with his shoe, finally smites it fully dead. I imagine most people would think nothing of this and just drop the bug(ger) down the toilet. But we decide to show it to our stateroom steward as we head to breakfast in the Grand Dining Room, followed by cappuccinos at the Barista bar, and then to the Marina Lounge for the first of several lectures on television news personalities, starting today with Walter Cronkite.

Around 11am we return to our stateroom to find several messages blinking on the phone. Almost immediately there is a knock on the door and the head of housekeeping and several assistants are waiting to tell us that the insect we found was a dreaded BEDBUG. We are being moved to another Concierge Veranda Stateroom on Deck 10 (one above where we are), but pretty far toward the back of the ship. Before we can leave our stateroom, the staff collects every bit of our clothes and anything else made of fabric (backpacks, etc)--it will all have to be debugged, cleaned, and sterilized. Staff will collect everything else we so carefully put away in drawers snd shelves and bring it all to our new stateroom. 

We are escorted to the new stateroom and told to remove everything we are wearing (including shoes), and put it all in a bag outside the door. We then carefully shower and put on clean bathrobes. It's now about 1pm and we can't go anywhere because we don't have any clothes. So we order room service lunch and settle in for an afternoon nap. At 5pm all our clothes are returned freshly cleaned and pressed. We are dressed and ready to go to dinner in the Terrace Cafe at 6:30.

Clearly, Oceania ships have a regular protocol for dealing with bedbugs. Besides the small inconvenience to us, the staff handled everything very well. We were fortunate that another Concierge Veranda Stateroom was available. The concierge also informed us that we would receive an extra $300.00 cash to spend during the cruise. And so ends the adventure of the bedbug. 

The main reason I have delayed in posting this information is that fellow passengers often request to see the blog while we are sailing. I thought it best to avoid a bedbug scare while en route to Lima, and to publish this only after the cruise ended. We did not hear of any other bug incidents during the cruise.