Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 2 - Wednedsday May 11th 2016 - At Sea aboard Ovation Of The Seas

Waking up on this cruise shop was a lot easier knowing that there was a kettle in the room to make that first all important coffee with and Trevor had really thought ahead and bought as decent a jar of instant coffee as you can.

We headed up to the 14th floor and the windjammer buffet restaurant for breakfast. The windjammer is a buffet restaurant on steroids. It has about 30 different food stations offering every kind of breakfast treat you can think of and it does this for the different periods of the day (lunch and dinner) almost 19 hours of the day.

With food being in abundance on a cruise (along with alcohol) you really do need to think about your waistline a little so with this in mind we both went for the healthy option this morning. Smoked salmon, capers, bagels, red onion….yum!

It was then off to Starbucks (well not quite Starbucks but they sell and make their coffee) for our second cup of the day before we headed up to deck 16 (the top of the boat) and started a proper tour around. As I said yesterday we have already been on this class of ship before so it really holds no surprises but needless to say it is huge, a real floating town.

On board you have such facilities as the Seaplex centre which is a multifunctioning are that can be a roller skating rink, a dodgem car ride, a trapeze circus space with table tennis tables its own hot dog restaurant ……you name it. Just around the corner you have ifly….a wind turbine tunnel that simulates skydiving, you really to float on the power of air and then you have the flowrider surf simulator, three pools, spa and fitness centre, a theatre that would put many theatres to shame in terms of technical ability and a cabaret lounge, a shopping high street, an Irish bar….the list goes on and on.

This boat also offers what is termed as Dynamic dining, meaning you eat when you want to eat and choose from the five complimentary restaurants depending which menu you like the sound of. Now this sounds great in practice but actually it’s a bit of a pain as we then spent the rest of our morning sorting and booking our slots in the shows and the restaurants. Unfortunately, the favoured slot of 1930 – 2000 was really hard to get as like most people, that’s when you want to eat and it’s the best time for not clashing with the shows in the theatre etc so it took a bit off jiggling between restaurants to get the best time slots and actually a few hours to sort out. Learning on this experience we went and booked all our restaurants for the next cruise when we re-join this boat in Singapore bound for Beijing. It’s a god job done to be honest and we are both glad that is now out the way.

So as it was a sea day this was all about lazing around and not actually doing that much but come late afternoon Jonathan kept the promise to himself that he had made and forced himself off to the gym for a run. It was his first since completing the London Marathon some two and a half weeks ago and his waistline was definitely saying that he needed it, especially after cruise food.

We ate at The American Icon Grille Restaurant after our normal pre dinner cocktail at The Schooner Bar. The Schooner Bar is the piano bar on board and our pianist and singer for this holiday is the very talented Laurence……. he’s one of us!

After another night of alcohol (we are both on the unlimited drink packages) we headed off to bed knowing that we needed to be up in the morning as it was our first port of call day. All in all it was a frustrating day sorting things out and booking things on board that really you wish were just taken care of for you but hey, we are lucky to be here so stop your moaning!

Night