Piraeus: The authentic Greek port the postcards skip
Most ships deal with Piraeus as a turnstile—the place you go by means of on the bus to the Acropolis, seven miles inland. Oceania Cruises treats it as a vacation spot in its personal proper. The deep-water port has moved cargo, navies, and vacationers out and in of Greece since the fifth century B.C., and it stays a working metropolis slightly than a manicured gateway: 1.85 million cruise passengers got here by means of final yr, however the seafood strip alongside Akti Themistokleous nonetheless belongs to Athenians, who flip up for grilled octopus and chilly ouzo earlier than the metropolis has totally woken. Here, the Condé Nast Traveler editors commerce in the issues guidebooks miss: the bronzes pulled from the harbor at the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus, or designer Natassa Pappa, who walks small teams by means of the coated arcades downtown and retains a bookshop, Desired Pocket, tucked inside one. Even Kerameikos, the historical necropolis Thucydides known as the metropolis’s most lovely quarter, comes ringed not with tour buses however with the sort of neighborhood tables—Osteria Mamma, Proveleggios—that locals maintain to themselves.
Monte Carlo: Limestone, gardens, and a glass of Bandol
Monaco is a sq. of glamour the measurement of a postage stamp, and most guests by no means see previous the on line casino. The richer story is geological: a principality stacked onto a limestone cliff that has spent the final yr coming again to life. The Jardin Exotique de Monaco reopened in 2026 after a six-year, €18 million restoration, its cacti and succulents—planted when the backyard first opened in 1933—as soon as once more clinging to the rock above Fontvieille as the elevators by means of the limestone caves run as soon as extra. Oceania’s intuition right here is to learn the land slightly than the model. Down the rock at the Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo, the eating room pours rosé from Bandol and from Bellet, a Niçoise appellation so small that hardly anybody exterior the area can identify it. And the chef-led Culinary Discovery Tours, capped at 18 visitors, climb out of the principality completely—into the Antibes marketplace for socca, the chickpea flatbread blistered in a wood-fired oven, or as much as Lourmarin, the place visitors prepare dinner a day alongside Reine Sammut, one among the few girls in France to carry a Michelin star.
Barcelona: Discover the farmers’ market the chefs prefer
Barcelona has by no means agreed to be merely Spanish, and its meals is the loudest argument: This is Catalonia, the place a smear of ripe tomato on bread is handled as an article of religion and the wine is cava from the Penedès hills. Oceania Allura berths at Moll Adossat, 10 minutes from La Rambla, however the day right here bends away from the boulevard. The Barcelona Culinary Discovery Tour begins at Escribà, the Modernista pastry store the place chocolate collectible figurines had been invented, threads the stalls of La Boqueria, then cuts east into the Gothic Quarter to the mosaic-roofed Mercat de Santa Caterina—the market The Culinary Center’s personal college tends to choose, insisting the produce beats its extra well-known neighbor. The afternoon loosens into tapas at Tapeo and no matter the pastry cooks are improvising that week at Bubó. It is a metropolis that repays an unhurried morning, and the ship is constructed handy you one.
Back aboard, the shoreline retains cooking
The cellar retains the identical persistence as the ports. A variety of meals and wine pairings runs throughout Oceania Marina, Oceania Riviera, Oceania Vista, and Oceania Allura, a number of of them multicourse flights constructed round Bordeaux verticals and Burgundy sourced a yr earlier than the ship sails. The Gérard Bertrand lunch—six programs of biodynamic Languedoc, $175 per particular person, inside Jacques restaurant, capped at 40 visitors—debuted on Oceania Allura in 2025 and reaches the remainder of the fleet by means of 2026. And in August 2027, when Oceania Sonata sails her maiden voyage from Rome to the Venice area, the line will open La Table par Maîtres Cuisiniers de France: 18 seats, reservations solely, the first restaurant at sea to launch with the guild’s formal endorsement.
The new dishes on Oceania Allura, the new restaurant coming to Oceania Sonata, and the backyard newly reopened in Monaco—every factors at the identical plain truth. The kitchen sits the place the coast does, and alongside this coast individuals have been cooking the identical approach for a very very long time. The pleasure of touring effectively, as Oceania Cruises calls it, comes all the way down to being someplace actual, at the proper tempo, in good firm, with the subsequent good meal already on its approach.
Explore extra at oceaniacruises.com.