‘Tapas & Togas’ - Ocean Village Mediterranean Cruise, Oct 20-27 2009 TRIP REPORT UPDATED 10/26 About This Page:

[Colexis Mom]

Safe travels!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Tinkerboo

You'll have to be quick - it's being sold off next year!!

No way! And just when I found the perfect cruise for January 2011 too... good grief, I am having no luck with spending our Clubcard vouchers right now. OK, it could be back to Virgin Holidays then and their £700 limit per passenger.

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Tinkerboo

We are safely tucked away in the airport hotel - I am writing this using their free wifi (it's the first time I've ever used my little netbook on a network other than our one at home and wahoo - it's working!! ).

There's not really much to do here - Andy wants to go over and watch the planes but I think we'll just grab an quick snack and chill until the restaurant opens and we can have a proper meal. And then it's straight to bed as the airport shuttle is at 4.15AM tomorrow morning!!

Ta ta for now!

Safe travels!

[pamcarey]

Have a GREAT trip! Can't wait to read all about it!

[Tinkerboo]

Day 1 (20th Oct) - UK-Palma-ship!

I’m a bit of an obsessive packer - I just can’t do it last minute like some people can, I have to write lists weeks in advance and sometimes even draw up an Excel spreadsheet to organise myself. You’d think that as my job is basically to use Excel all day (I’m a performance analyst for the police), I’d want to avoid it at home but this has never proved to be the case. It’s just such a useful tool - I can‘t resist it!! As a result of this, we’d packed up our trusty Samsonite suitcases well in advance and were ready to go.

Our flight was scheduled for 6.55am, so we stayed overnight at an airport hotel on Monday night before to avoid having to get up and drive the hour‘s journey at an ungodly hour on the day itself. We’ve used this hotel - Bewley’s - for all our previous holidays except the first cruise and we just love it. It’s a reasonable rate (which never seems to go up!), has a free shuttle to the terminal, a nice restaurant and decent rooms. The night before the flight we reserved our seats on the 4.15am (yes -AM!!) shuttle and I kept telling myself that the reward for the horrendously early start would be that we’d be onboard earlier!

The alarm went off at 3.30am (yes - AM!!) and we packed up and stumbled downstairs, half asleep, to the shuttle bus. We were the only ones going to terminal 2 and after a five minute drive we were unloading our cases and joining the check in queue. This was all pretty normal and went as you would expect and we went through to the departure lounge. Now, I had met a lady called Christine via an Ocean Village travellers group on Facebook and we’d chatted and exchanged numbers in advance of the cruise, so we texted one another and met up in the lounge. Chris was travelling with her son and daughter and all three were lovely and very friendly, and we got on immediately - it was like meeting old friends!

At about 6.30am we boarded the plane. Mine and Andy’s seats were 27A and 27B - the plane was configured in two rows of three, so I was crossing my fingers that the third person in our row wouldn‘t be a) loud and obnoxious, b) a screaming baby or c) a snuffly/heavy-breathing/noisy eater (I‘m not the most tolerant traveller in the world!). Fortunately it was a very elegant and quiet older lady, so that was all good. We took off about 15 minutes late (doh). The flight is only two and a quarter hours but you still get a meal - we had a passable breakfast (sorry PassPorter peeps, I didn‘t take a photo, but you‘re not missing much!). I passed the time listening to a podcast on my trusty Sony Walkman MP3 (possibly my favourite ever gadget) and pretending that we were actually flying to Orlando…

In no time at all we were coming in to land at Palma airport and the local time was about 10.45am. We went through the slackest passport check I’ve ever experienced (i.e. are you carrying something that looks like a passport from a distance? Yes? Well then come on through!) and collected our cases and then went to meet the coach.


On the road from Palma airport to Palma dock


Nearly there...


Palma Cathedral (note the ominous clouds - they didn't actually look quite that bad at the time, but would become a familiar sight later in the week)


A Majorcan/Mallorcan house...complete with cannons outside (?)

It’s a twenty minute drive from the airport to the dock, and as the ship came into sight I remembered how excited I’d been four years previously when faced with that sight - not that I wasn’t excited this time, but as I knew what to expect this time the sheer scale of it was less of a surprise.


Apologies for the bloke's head in the way, we were on the wrong side of the coach to get a proper picture!

We hopped off the coach - leaving our cases as they were tagged with our cabin number and would reach us later - and queued up to go through ‘embarkation’ with an OV rep before boarding. They also take a souvenir photo of you at this stage in front of an image of the ship - last time we had no idea this would happen and consequently looked AWFUL…hot, red and sweaty…but this time I was prepared with ‘papier poudre’ to take away some of the shine from our foreheads! ;o) I can’t upload this photo yet as they don’t give you an electronic copy (curses!), and I haven't had chance to scan it in yet.

Arriving on board is not like the Disney experience I’ve heard about - you don’t get announced or anything, you just go up a gangplank and come out into the lobby where people are already milling about or drinking coffee (or something stronger). They take your photo for security purposes and link it up with the card that you use to identify yourself and pay for everything and tell you that is your Most Important Item for the next week, DO NOT LOSE IT!! By now it was nearing midday and we couldn’t get into the cabin till 3pm, so we went to the top deck, purchased a Frosty (non) Alcoholic Beverage (FnAB) and watched some of the entertainment team do some flamenco dancing (random!). I typed up this part of the report while it was still fresh in my memory and Andy roamed the deck taking photos of the Palma shoreline and whatever else was around (I think he may well become my official photographer!).


Reporting live from the scene...

Then to kill some more time, we went to the buffet restaurant. The food was a bit of a mixture and it was quite busy so we just grabbed a few different things to keep us going. We hadn’t eaten since our tiny in-flight breakfast at 7.30am remember!

By the time we finished it was near enough time for the cabins to be available, so we went up to see if we could get in early and ours was ready, with our cases waiting inside (hurrah!). We were so excited to see what the suite would be like and weren‘t disappointed in the slightest! It is even bigger than we expected, and feels really luxurious…almost like a mini Manhattan apartment but with more drawers than we have stuff for and a balcony overlooking the sea. We spent a lot of time looking at everything and generally just going “wow“…



5.15pm saw the obligatory safety drill where we trooped down to the muster point and practiced putting on our life jackets (no picture taken sorry, but I‘m sure you can imagine it!). After that the mighty Ocean Village set sail and as there is no sail away party like on DCL we just kinda wandered around the ship, checking out the shops and the spa etc. We entered a free raffle to win some spa treatments (I made Andy enter too!) and then passed by the buffet again so stopped in for some chips. Coming back to the suite (and marvelling over how wonderful it is all over again!) we chilled out for a while and I typed up the rest of this entry. We've just come now from the ‘Opening Night Spectacular Extravaganza’ in the Marquee (stage/theatre type thing), I have to say that it wasn't really spectacular or an extravaganza, but never mind…it is only night 1 after all, and I have been up since 3.30am (yes - AM!!)...

The weather today was well to be honest, it was dark and still the middle of the night in Manchester, but it was sunny and 21 degrees C / 70 degrees F with a bit of a breeze blowing in Palma
The best thing today was meeting new friends and feeling like they were already old friends
The worst thing today was the RIDICULOUSLY EARLY start
The funniest thing today was the complete lack of passport control in Palma airport, especially considering that we’re used to being interrogated, fingerprinted, iris-scanned etc etc every time we go to the USA
Today we tried staying in a balcony suite
And the result was OMG it was flipping awesome, this is the way to live!
The most magical moment today was walking into the suite for the first time, seeing at once how much bigger and better it was than the regular cabin we’d had in 2005 and feeling like royalty as a result.

Next: Day 2...we’re all at sea!

[Minnie Lor]

Wonderful update! I caught myself smiling as I read it. Can't wait for pictures.

[Colexis Mom]

Great start!

[chezp]

Wonderful first day! I wonder if the passport check was something to do with the fact you have to provide all your details in advance when you travel to Spain. When we flew into Alicante a couple of weeks, there was no passport check at all! :

[lauriep]

Great start! I just went to the Ocean Village website to look at photos of the ship. It looks beautiful. If your suite is like the one they show in the video, it's incredible!

[pamcarey]

Great start!!

[Tinkerboo]

Originally Posted by lauriep

Great start! I just went to the Ocean Village website to look at photos of the ship. It looks beautiful. If your suite is like the one they show in the video, it's incredible!

It should be the same layout/decor I think - I do it but we suffered a lot last night with noise from above...being on the highest cabin deck has its advantages but also the major disadvantage of being directly underneath the main deck with the pools etc, so lots of thumping about (I guess this is the same on most if not all ships). There was also a mystery noise coming from the ceiling in the corridor which was so loud that it kept us both awake for hours - it sounded like someone dropping a full suitcase on the floor and tipping it over (boooom-boom-boom)...repeatedly, but not constantly (so you think it's stopped, start drifting off, only for it to return)...I can't sleep when there's noise in the room at the best of times, but even with earplugs this was awful. We have complained but they can't do anything till they hear it themselves so we have to phone them if it starts again tonight...

Other than that and the fact that it's been reeeeeally cloudy all day things are great! Will put another update together later and post it tomorrow...

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Tinkerboo

It should be the same layout/decor I think - I do it but we suffered a lot last night with noise from above...being on the highest cabin deck has its advantages but also the major disadvantage of being directly underneath the main deck with the pools etc, so lots of thumping about (I guess this is the same on most if not all ships). There was also a mystery noise coming from the ceiling in the corridor which was so loud that it kept us both awake for hours - it sounded like someone dropping a full suitcase on the floor and tipping it over (boooom-boom-boom)...repeatedly, but not constantly (so you think it's stopped, start drifting off, only for it to return)...I can't sleep when there's noise in the room at the best of times, but even with earplugs this was awful. We have complained but they can't do anything till they hear it themselves so we have to phone them if it starts again tonight...

Other than that and the fact that it's been reeeeeally cloudy all day things are great! Will put another update together later and post it tomorrow...

Sorry to hear you had so many problems with sleeping. I hope it doesn't happen again.

[Tinkerboo]

Quick query - I've managed to get Flickr to upload photos (thanks for nothing Photobucket!) but now I can't remember how to add them to my posts...I thought it was just a case of pasting in the URL Flickr gives you and then putting a certain code on either side of it ( [IMG] and [/IMG] ?), but this isn't working. Any suggestions?

[Colexis Mom]

Never used Flickr There's an icon with a mountain/sun in the reply box. Hit that, and it should pop up a window, and paste the URL into that (although doing the IMG thing should have worked as well)!

[chezp]

Originally Posted by Tinkerboo

Quick query - I've managed to get Flickr to upload photos (thanks for nothing Photobucket!) but now I can't remember how to add them to my posts...I thought it was just a case of pasting in the URL Flickr gives you and then putting a certain code on either side of it ( [IMG] and [/IMG] ?), but this isn't working. Any suggestions?

Well, that's how it works on Photobucket, but I've never used Flickr.