The pool on Oceania Cruises’ Vista
What a cork-popping start to the year! In March, Cunard marked 100 years since it invented world cruising. In April, I was in Rotterdam (the city) on Rotterdam (the ship) as Holland America Line celebrated its 150th anniversary and this month’s issue of Blue Horizons, my friends at ROL Cruise tell me, is the 250th edition. My congratulations to them all.
And then there is Oceania Cruises, which has just celebrated its 20th anniversary in the best way possible - with a new ship, Vista, the cruise line’s first new ship for a decade, christened in the Maltese capital of Valletta in May.
They say the best things in life are worth waiting for and Vista was certainly worth the 10-year wait. She’s a beauty, similar in layout to her sister ships Marina and Riviera (but a tad smaller at 1,200 capacity), which will please Oceania Cruises fans, but with some inspired changes and a quality finish that has taken the line to another level.
The decor is softer and I love how new designs in the restaurants have incorporated multiple partitions so the venues feel more intimate. The floating lilypad loungers in the pool are also great. There are only six, though, so you have to be quick to bag one!
On the dining scene, Jacques, the French restaurant on Marina and Riviera, is replaced by Ember on Deck 5, a casual steak, burger and mac ‘n’ cheese type eatery that I suspect many will find a welcome break from all the fine dining. Aquamar Kitchen, a new restaurant on Deck 12, serves a healthy salad and wrap-style menu at breakfast and lunch that acts as a counterbalance to the burgers and fries dished out in Waves on the other side of the ship.
Both venues are complimentary, as are Toscana (Deck 14), Polo Grill (Deck 14) and Red Ginger (Deck 5), three long-standing Oceania Cruises favourites back for another outing. Add them to the Grand Dining Room, the Terrace Cafe and the made-to-order pizzas in Waves in the evenings, and you can dine in a different place every night of the week for free (or you can splash out on a six-course Dom Pérignon tasting experience for $395pp in Privée, a private dining room for just eight people).
And then there are the inside cabins. Or, more to the point, the lack of inside cabins. They’ve all been scrapped on Vista - hooray! - and the extra space has been used to add bathrooms fit for a suite, complete with large rainforest showers, to all outside and balcony cabins. The bathrooms were the talk of the ship, which proves better than any description I can come up with. What a brilliant move that was.
But back to the anniversaries, because there is another I must mention. Come 2024 it will have been 14 years (a milestone marked with ivory, apparently) since Celebrity Cruises started sailing from the UK, so it is celebrating by bringing the lovely Celebrity Apex to our shores next summer.
She kicks off her no-fly season from Southampton on Wednesday the 15th of May 2024 and is sticking around until October, in that time clocking up cruises to the Norwegian Fjords, Scandinavia, Iceland, Spain, Portugal and the Canaries.
I have fond memories of Celebrity Apex as she was not only one of the first ships I went on in 2021, as cruising restarted after Covid-19, but I was upgraded to an Edge Villa, a fantastic two-storey room with a cheeky back door to The Retreat, a private sundeck exclusively for suite passengers. The cruise was in Greece, the weather was glorious and I was looked after by Izzy, my wonderful butler. It was heavenly.
Read next: Jane Archer: Suite dreams
There are some villas left on Celebrity Apex next summer but they won’t last long so if you fancy a real spoil - and who wouldn’t? - have a word with the guys at ROL Cruise. Be warned, though. Returning to a balcony cabin - even the great Infinity Balcony Cabins on Celebrity Apex - will not be easy!
