Oceania Marina - Europe Cruise Blog #1

We're on board the newly launched Oceania Marina and pretty much we're straight into a couple of long shore excursions, which haven't allowed for a lot of exploration on board. Day one was an eight hour trip to Rabat, one of four Imperial cities in Morocco. We boarded in the Spanish city of Malaga and the next day it was a cultural shift and this is one of the places in Morocco that gets rave reviews.

As one of the four cities that was at least once the capital of Morrocco, there's plenty of monuments and ancient and medieval history to take in and our tour pretty much covered the best of the best. We docked in Casablanca, the biggest city in Morrocco with a port that's big enough to handle the 1,280 capacity Marina and the bus journey up to Rabat is about two hours each way, so we had about four hours in total in the coastal city.

Luckily we were bumped up to the Oceania Choice Shore Excursion after someone else dropped out - this is a program developed by Oceania which provides for smaller groups and a more personalised tour experience. We had just 16 people on a 21 seat mini-bus which meant we were able to whizz around the sights a little faster than on a normal tour and it made the whole experience a bit more enjoyable.

It basically meant we were always ahead of the other tour buses as we headed to the Royal Palace, the Mausoleum in which contains the tombs of Mohammed V ands two sons King Hassan II and Prince Abdullah.

After lunch at a traditional Moroccan restaurant it was off to the Kasbah which is a fortified city which dates back to the 12th century. It's a residential area these days and a bit of a tourist destination but well worth a look.

The day was topped off with dinner at Jacques Pepin's restaurant on board - classic French and pretty amazing but we'll go into the dining options later as this is a major drawcard for this ship.

Off to Cadiz for Seville tomorrow …