Cruises and cruising
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 20th, 2019
Well, I’m home. Yesterday was a long, hard day – in UK time terms I got up at 2am, started travelling at 4am, and walked through my front door (or staggered through it) at 10:45pm. I was hanging around Dubai Airport for five hours before boarding the plane, then take-off was delayed, and then there […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 19th, 2019
I was packed and ready before 8 o’clock, the listed time for independent travellers to start their disembarkation. In the event I joined the end of the party disembarking at 8 for the Emirates flight to Heathrow. It all went smoothly. Once off the ship we all had to get our main luggage. This had […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 18th, 2019
I’ve just (at 8am!) done my face-to-face immigration check in Dubai and got my passport back. Oceana docked at Dubai sometime around 7 am or so and the passport return and immigration check was the first order of business. Basically, passengers must go ashore and first collect their passport from a P&O desk on the […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 17th, 2019
Just as happened when we re-entered the UAE at Abu Dhabi from Bahrain, authorities at Dubai require us to do a face-to-face passport check when we re-enter the UAE there tomorrow morning from Oman. I’m not clear yet how this is going to be managed, but it will probably involve passengers to go through this […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 16th, 2019
The captain made an announcement as we were leaving Muscat to the effect that Khasab would be a tender port. Apparently, the port will have neither a pilot nor or a tug available tomorrow. So we’ll be tendering. And even that’s not certain. The captain mentioned that that high winds with squalls were forecast, and […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 16th, 2019
As I said in an earlier post, today we’ve been in Muscat, Oman. We’ve actually docked in the port area of Moutra – I think that’s how it’s spelt (it seems to vary). This is a classic bay with a dock area at one end, shops, mosques and a Souk around the centre of the […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 16th, 2019
Today we’re in Muscat, and as is my habit I’ll be going ashore on my own. This is another country (Oman) so of course there is another currency to deal with (Omani Riyals) and this presents some additional hassle. Horizon is advertising the US$ as the currency, but the port presenter said that while some […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 16th, 2019
It’s that time of the cruise – the disembarkation instructions have been issued, even though it’s still 3 or 4 days before we actually disembark. Broadly speaking, they seem to be more or less as expected: Bags out of the cabin before midnight at the latest (“…in the afternoon is fine”); Vacate the cabin by […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 15th, 2019
I’m enjoying the first, and only, sea day of the cruise. This is during the passage from Sir Bani Yas island round the Kasandam peninsula, through the strait of Hormuz and and down the coast of Oman to Muscat. I’ve also triggered one of the three internet days that I booked before the cruise, so […]
Posted in Oceana, Oceana Persian Gulf, P&O on Feb 14th, 2019
I went ashore at just after 11 o’clock, stayed for about two and a half hours, and then came back to the ship. I actually started the ‘going ashore’ process at about 10:30, but what with queuing for the tender ticket and then for the tender to be available, it was just gone 11 before […]