Celebrity Cruise Dubai-Singapore - Days 1-4 Dubai - Oman & At Sea Saturday 10/11-Tuesday 13/11/12

We left Glasgow this afternoon heading to Dubai for our 12 nights cruise aboard the Celebrity Solstice. On arrival in Dubai, after horrendous queues at passport control, we were met by our taxi driver who took us to the Towers Rotana Hotel for our overnight stop. It was 3am local time when we got there and we both just went to bed so that we could enjoy our breakfast next morning, which was fabulous. We were collected at 1.30pm from the hotel and taken to the port and were on board by 3pm. Our stateroom 1017 was lovely, very spacious, great full sized shower cubicle, dressing table, couch, huge island bed and good sized balcony which took 2 recliners and a table - ah, home for 2 weeks....nice! The ship holds 2,500 passengers and crew, so quite a lady! We enjoyed a lovely meal in the Epernay Dining room at 6.30pm, 3 courses plus coffee, with plenty of food to choose from on the menu. Their menu had 2 pages - on the left classic dishes served every evening and on the right - the choices for that specific evening. After a few drinks and getting to know the decks and layout of the ship, we crashed out for the night and had a late lie in and late breakfast in the OceanView Cafe on Deck 14 - the choices were unbelievable, fresh bread, rolls croissants, bacon, sausage, eggs, omelettes cooked to order, smoked salmon, cold meat, cheeses, pancakes, waffles, hot roast meat, sushi - every country under the sun was catered for! The Solstice was leaving Dubai 1.30pm, so after breakfast, we played some table tennis and then headed to our balcony to watch the departure with some room service lunch and some champagne. I love the no pressure of someone else helming and crewing! Then it was time for the Table Tennis competition at 3pm which we both lost in (bloody Ozzies) and getting changed for our formal night dinner at 6pm. Great food again and everyone was dressed to impress. After dinner we headed to the Theatre for Pulse, the Show, which involved high octane dancing to the live orchestra. Very good. After another good night's sleep, we were up early on Tuesday morning at 7am to watch our arrival at Muscat in Oman. After breakfast, we left on our organised tour of Oman which took us to the Grand Mosque, Souk, the Presidential Museum and Sultan's palace. We were very pushed for time as the traffic was chaos, but we saw enough of Muscat to know it was very beautiful. The weather was very pleasant at 32 degrees. After returning to the ship, our canapes arrived at the room, at 4pm (daily service for concierge class cabins.....yipee!) and then it was time for dinner again.....We met a lovely couple at the table next to us, Margaret and Eric, who were from Vancouver and we hit it off with them right away. Margaret was originally from Govan and was brought up there. After dinner, we headed for the Casino and some fruit machine feeding. No luck tonight!