Oceania Moments

I’ve been performing on beautiful Oceania Cruises ships since 2015 and I just love it. The food is fantastic. I’m always treated with appreciation, respect and kindness by the Captain and the entire staff. I enjoy performing my one-woman show with the talented musicians on board. The itineraries on Oceania Cruises are wonderful too – they’re unique and different. I feel so lucky to be able to travel with Oceania Cruises and see the world while doing what I love. I am very blessed to be part of the Oceania Cruises family…I can’t wait to see what adventures are next!

My wife and I have been sailing for over nine years now. Along the way, we’ve made lifelong friendships with many guests and staff on board, and it is always a pleasure to return to share moments with our extended family. We have seen staff and crew members fall in love, get married, have children and they have seen this with our family also. We have visited places we had only dreamt of before – and what made it even more special was sharing these experiences with friends. We know that we now always have a home away from home to be welcomed in around the world.

Some of our most memorable moments have been enjoying lunch with one of the Oceania Cruises captains and his family in his favorite local restaurant in Italy; taking a European Christmas market holiday with Leslie Jon, one of our wonderful Cruise Directors; snorkeling The Great Barrier Reef with guests from Australia; inviting the officers, staff and crew to our home for paella when the ship docked in Málaga, Spain; humpback whale watching in Iceland with our children, the General Manager and Karlis Celms, one of the Chef Instructors at The Culinary Center; and when one of our dear and most well-traveled guests invited us, along with senior officers, to a lunch at Raffles Singapore. Finally, one tradition we love to keep every time we're on board is the Disney drawing and painting competition for the staff and crew. The best ships are friendships!

We were ecstatic to be one of the first guests back on Oceania Cruises and we’re pleased to discover firsthand that you’ve not missed a beat. The outstanding service and cuisine we know and love, combined with enhanced sanitation and safety protocols, reduced number of guests on board, on excursions and in the ports made our voyage a uniquely wonderful experience. We actually feel now is the ideal time for us to travel so we booked another Oceania Cruises voyage just two and a half weeks after disembarking!

Sharing stories with Oceania Cruises guests and putting a bit of personality in the historic places visited is the fun of my travels with all of you. When we join together to reflect on our travels, it is not only remembrances of beautiful places, but of the people with whom we shared the experience. It is the joy of traveling together that draws cruise travelers. I couldn’t be happier to be back on board seeing familiar faces and making new friends as we sail the world.

Being an Artist in Residence with Oceania Cruises has been an amazing experience over the years, not only meeting people from all parts of the world but sharing the experience of traveling together and sharing what I love – making art. In my workshops, I teach a class on painting on glass. I show guests how my dyslexia affects my work and how they can experience this through using glass dessert plates. The excitement and thrill of doing something together that they’ve never experienced before makes me smile every time. It’s a rewarding challenge to figure out how to work in reverse and consider the opposite of the plate as the finished work. In the end, everyone is usually really happy with the outcome. Lots of smiles and surprised laughter. I often hear later how they tried it again themselves or with their grandkids once they returned home.

I think the happiest moments are when I invite all guests to stop by Artist Loft to see all the participating guests’ artwork for their first art opening exhibition – it becomes like a celebration. I’m thrilled to be able to get back to that.