Embarkation was a breeze at the new Terminal 18 at Port Everglades in Ft. Lauderdale. We grabbed a taxi from our hotel, The Renaissance, and were onboard by 11:30 Saturday morning. There was a bit of the snafu when we checked in for the cruise as they had a credit of 1 penny on our account that had something to do with a service dog charge! Had I known, Zoey would have certainly been packed in my carry-on bag! We enjoyed our Bon Voyage lunch at Giavanni’s Table, one of the specialty restaurants onboard Oasis. It’s a beautiful venue with delightful cuisine and wonderful service. It’s a complete Tuscan experience, at sea! Giavanni’s is located in the Central Park neighborhood.
Central Park is the single most innovative feature of the design of Oasis. This is truly the world’s first at-sea park. It took a whole lot of dirt to complete this park – 82 metric tons of dirt to be exact! Daily guided tours of the park are led by onboard expert horticulturalists. The greenery is lush along the paths & walkways. Two living walls that measure 25 feet across and 5 decks high create an amazing focal point with flowering vines such as Clerondendrom ‘bleeding heart”, Thunbergia ‘stormy sky’, and althernthera ‘purple night’.
As you can see, I am learning quite a lot about this ship and product through the seminar, led by two of Royal Caribbean’s best managers! We are a group of 30 agents & our guests, so we number about 60!
Our hosts and leaders, Peggy and Monica, hosted a welcome cocktail reception and group dinner the first evening. The following day was seminar for me while Ken explored the ship on his own. The seminar was fun as we were grouped into teams and were assigned a shipwide scavenger hunt with group presentations to follow. My group worked well together and I have made some valuable friendships already!
We enjoyed dinner in the Opus Dining Room and our evening was topped off by experiencing the Broadway show, Hairspray. The production was excellent! I can’t imagine that it would have been better on Broadway!
Today we are in Labadee, one of Royal Caribbean’s private islands, located in Haiti. I was here about 5 years ago and all I can say is WOW – it is even better than it was then! & it was pretty perfect then! The Dragon’s Tail zipline drew me…. and the roller coaster too! The location is so gorgeous… beautiful turquoise water, white sand beach, and lush foliage on this mountainous island. Every type of water activity one could possibly want is offered here. Several locations for beach barbecues, lots of chaises, personal watercraft, kayaks, parasailing, scuba, snorkel, of course plenty of pocoloco (the famous labadee island drink).
We are back onboard now and I have been watching the high divers practice for tonight’s Oasis of Dreams aquatic show. They are diving from 17 meters from the surface of the water. Ken & I have tickets to this evening’s show so I will write more about it tomorrow. Oh yes, we also have reservations for dinner at Giavanni’s Table. You all know that I just love Italian cuisine, right?
Love and Kisses for now!
No comments:
Post a Comment