Oceania Marina: Converted to Cruising

Everywhere on board there are lovely bars and lounges and little surprises, like the Culinary Center which, during our sailing, will offer cooking demonstrations, and The Artist’s Loft where we can learn the techniques needed to create gorgeous and colorful collectible plates.  Sanja is impressed with everything from the terry-covered mattresses on the deck chairs that surround the pool to our special Penthouse category perks:  Use of a card-access Executive Lounge stocked with round-the-clock drinks and snacks, a large screen TV and computer terminals, and the private Aquamar Spa Terrace, an exclusive sunning area with two bubbling hot tubs and entry to a serene indoor space featuring heated tile lounge chairs.   When we arrive at Baristas, a coffee bar overlooking the pool high atop Oceania Marina, it’s love at first sight for Sanja, a devoted caffeine afficionado.

Yeah, I think, this is going really well…and she hasn’t even experienced Oceania Marina’s dining yet!

As the sun sets that day, Sanja and I enter Jacques, Oceania Marina’s French restaurant with dishes created by master chef Jacques Pepin.  Wine orders taken, we sit back to peruse perhaps the most decadent menu on the high seas when a lovely young server approaches our table and says what sounds an awful lot like:  Video sam vaše ime i pitao se da li ste iz Srbije?

SAY WHAT???  Immediately, I suspect that—once again—a Covid mask is preventing me from reading the server’s lips and understanding what the heck I’m hearing.  At least that’s what I think until I hear Sanja respond:  Da!  Poreklom sam iz Beograda ali sam otisao pre dvadeset godina za Kanadu I sada zivim u Njujorku.

It finally dawns on me….they’re speaking Serbian!  What a wonderful welcome—and that welcome continues during our cruise as Sanja meets friendly countrymen and women staffing the bars, the spa, the restaurants and even the Executive Lounge.  They all approach her, tipped off, I suspect, by the fact that her last name has a gazillion letters in it and ends in “ic,” a dead giveaway.

A few days later, Sanja is sipping a freshly squeezed carrot, orange, beet and apple concoction that she picked up at Waves Juice Bar.  “I think I’m going to start with miso soup and then have the sea bass and matcha ice cream” Sanja tells me quite out of nowhere.  I’m baffled, the statement coming as it did not as we were sitting in Red Ginger, looking over the dinner menu of Asian dishes but before noon, as we sat beside the swimming pool.  I look at her quizzically and she confesses that she’d reviewed the menu on the interactive TV in our suite in anticipation of dinner that evening.  It was then that I suspected that this would not be the last sailing Sanja and I would share.

Ten days aboard Oceania Marina was all it took to convert Sanja to cruising.  She dined exquisitely, danced every night at Horizons Lounge, saw magnificent sunsets, relaxed in bubbling hot tubs, was massaged and pampered.  Cruising, she happily discovered, really spoke to her… and, thanks to many of the staff and crew aboard Oceania Marina, it often did so even in her own language.