Ocean Village in The Times Newspaper!
Chris Campling reviews family-friendly cruise in The Times - 8th March 2008
Read the article below, or click here to download the review.
How to entertain an 11-year-old? Chris Campling hasn’t a clue, which is where Ocean Village comes in . . .
Ocean Village promotes itself as "the cruise for people who don’t do cruises" and for a divorced father, it works a treat. So much so that my 11-year-old, Grace, and I have just returned from our fourth cruise with the company. I’ll tell you a secret — I love my daughter dearly and like to see her happy when we go on holiday, but I don’t have a clue how to entertain her.
Usually, what happens when Grace and I get to a cruise ship is that on the first afternoon she hangs out at the pool, gets talking to a child of her own age . . . and I don’t see her again for the entire voyage until I drag her, tear-stained and clutching a handful of mobile phone numbers, off to the airport at the end. I am left to sit and read books in the sun. It’s a happy arrangement.
This latest time, though, not so much. Grace didn’t hook up immediately, and became loath to go to the Hideout, which is where the children are looked after. Which is how she came to spend so much time with me. Which was good. Reading is overrated anyway.
Superimposed on the side of the ships is Ocean Village’s mission statement — "See more. Do more. Be more" — which has a nice holistic ring to it that captures the OV spirit. See more? This is a holiday that, to quote my friend Sophie, entails "waking up in a different city every morning" (Ocean Village always travels at night, except for the first day’s trawl from Palma de Mallorca to Tunis). So, over a fortnight it is possible for a little girl and her dad to see Genoa, Florence, Pisa, Cannes, Barcelona, Ajaccio and two Provençal fishing villages: briefly, sure, but enough to make Grace far more travelled than I was at the same age.
Do more? At every stop there is a variety of excursions, but our favourite was the reasonably priced biking, with a daily tour from £29. The ultimate test of muscle and nerve just has to be the tour of Rome — not, you would think, a natural venue for cycling, and you’d be right. We did that one first, scattering pedestrians hither and yon as we threaded our way through, around, and seemingly over the city where the car is king shark, and scooters are its pilot fish. A couple of days later, we consumed miles of Provence, and suddenly came across a field in which kites were being flown, hundreds of them. That’s the sort of serendipity you just don’t get with a guide and a coach.
Be more. That’ll be the massaging and facials and general body pampering available in the Karma Spa, deep in the bowels of the ship. For me, though, it was the daily general knowledge quiz, for which the first prize is the not inconsiderable temptation of a bath-sized cocktail.
Finally, there is a fourth, unwritten part to the OV mission statement — Eat more. The ship carries about 2,000 passengers and crew, and the galleys produce nearly 7,000 meals a day, which means someone is getting more than their regular three square. Much of this, granted, is conveyorbelt food, doled out from buffets in the Plantation and Waterfront restaurants, but some of it is a little more expensive and a lot better prepared. James Martin’s Bistro and La Luna both offer three-course à la carte menus that change frequently, and at supplements so small that it makes you wonder why they bother to charge one — at La Luna it set us back £4.75 a head.
Good old Ocean Village — even when you give yourself a little treat it comes out as a bargain.
Chris and Grace Campling sailed with Ocean Village on the original Ocean Village ship, which this summer is based in Crete sailing the Greek islands. Ocean Village Two sails the western Mediterranean from Majorca. The one-week Tapas and Togas itinerary, available from April to October, including Tunis, Rome, Genoa and Monte Carlo, costs from £599pp.
