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Published: September 16th 2014
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Now usually I find blogging about my life at sea rather monotonous and boring, BUT now there is change! For the first time since the Oasis started cruising the Caribbean back in 2009 we took a break from the Eastern/Western Caribbean cruises and pointed the ship East to Europe. This is all part of the plan to drydock the ship in Rotterdam for 2 weeks in October. There aren't many drydocks available for a ship this large so the company sent us for a couple weeks of cruising based out of Barcelona to show off the ship before we head to the dock. There will be quite a few projects going on during drydock but mostly it's just planned 5 year maintenance.
The crossing was pretty much non eventful. We had extremely good weather. It was so good that I would have been blown away by seeing in the Caribbean let alone the middle of the Atlantic. The conditions would have been ideal for water skiing even! The only unplanned event was a medical evacuation in Bermuda a couple days into the crossing. As we passed by the Azores, I made sure to shout out LAND HO when we saw
them, as it had been nearly a week since we had seen land. The crossing was made even better by the fact that I had a very good friend cruising with me onboard. So I saw all the shows and ate all the food.
Malaga, Spain was our first call in Europe and everyone and their dogs came out to see us. There was almost 100 reporters onboard, tons of people on the pier, helicopters making fly bys, and events happening in the town just because of our arrival. It's almost as the biggest cruise ship in the world is a big deal. Departure was even more amazing as people lined the pier to watch us leave, the fire brigade had a fountain from their fire boat as well. It was definitely a sight to be seen.
I managed to get ashore in Civitavecchia, Italy for a brief amount of time and was very quickly reminded of why it was called Shitavecchia by the crew of the last ship I was on that went there. There's literally nothing to do here and as it's small town Italy nobody really speaks english either. But most people take the train
to Roma and I really didn't have the time for that. But I did get off the ship in Napoli today, and we're in port smack in the middle of downtown. Everything is within walking distance, I saw some sights, ate some delicious Calzone, and the only thing that would have made it better would be the fact that I didn't have to go back to work this evening.
Today we depart back to our "home port" of Barcelona for this very short European season. It's been lovely sailing in the Mediterranean with some actual traffic to keep me occupied on the bridge.
Stay tuned for more updates as our European season and drydock approaches!
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Pete Beier
non-member comment
welcome to europe
Don't worry, mom hasn't drank all the wine in Italy yet. Next time you find yourself in some piazza, grab a seat and ask for a spritz. Very nice on a hot day