DESINTATION GPS
A Taste of Place
A Taste of Place
Oceania Cruises’ Culinary Discovery Tours™ serve up the world, one dish at a time.
For travelers who believe the best way to understand a destination is through its food, Oceania Cruises is revealing experiences that are far richer than an expected shore excursion. Culinary Discovery Tours are deep dives into culture, flavor, and the people who bring it all to life. Here, we dig into a few of our favorites.

MARSEILLE, FRANCE
Michelin Chef Reine Sammut & Aix Market
In the lavender-scented hills of Aix-en-Provence, a morning at the market becomes a sensory snapshot into Provençal life. Stalls teeming with locals brim with sun-warmed produce and aromatic herbs, as you and your chef instructor from The Culinary Center on board select ingredients for the day’s menu. Inside Auberge La Fenière—the restaurant of Reine Sammut, one of the few Michelin-starred female chefs in France—a refined demonstration captures the region’s rustic finesse. Rosé, crisp and unmistakably Provençal, awaits your return aboard the ship for a curated tasting.

CORK, IRELAND
Ballymaloe Cookery School
Tucked into the rolling emerald hills of County Cork, Ballymaloe Cookery School’s 100-acre organic farm stretches toward the sea, framed by wildflower meadows and stone walls weathered by salt and time. Guests explore the estate’s edible gardens, heritage orchards, and free-range flocks with a chef instructor from The Culinary Center. Inside the original farmhouse kitchen, Ireland’s culinary traditions focus on freshness and seasonality, featuring dishes like rich brown soda bread slathered with golden farmhouse butter, or a compote simmered with just-picked rhubarb from the garden.

CASTRIES, ST. LUCIA
Spices Cooking Studio
St. Lucia has a way of disarming you with its inexplicably warm and generous locals. That warmth takes shape in the kitchen of Spices Cooking Studio, perched above the coast. Local chefs guide you through the layers of green fig and salt fish salad, a national dish that tells its own story of Creole, French, and West Indian influence. The experience ends at the Castries Market, where vendors stack callaloo, cinnamon, and breadfruit in bundles of riotous color.

ROATÁN, HONDURAS
Honduran Farm & Ocean-To-Table Experience
At Blue Harbor Tropical Arboretum, indigenous gardens and hydroponic greenhouses stretch with cashew trees, cocoplum, and sour orange clinging to the island’s heat. With a chef instructor from The Culinary Center as your guide, local growers offer insight and ingredients that later shape your onboard cooking class. Back in The Culinary Center on board, a guest chef from Roatán leads you through dishes built around the island’s prized pink shrimp, pulled fresh from the Caribbean. A bright lunch follows, layered with lime and herbs, capped with a tropical dessert cocktail that tastes like a breeze through the mangroves.
Discover your next travel story with Oceania Cruises.
DESINTATION GPS
A Taste of Place
A Taste of Place
Oceania Cruises’ Culinary Discovery Tours™ serve up the world, one dish at a time.
For travelers who believe the best way to understand a destination is through its food, Oceania Cruises is revealing experiences that are far richer than an expected shore excursion. Culinary Discovery Tours are deep dives into culture, flavor, and the people who bring it all to life. Here, we dig into a few of our favorites.

MARSEILLE, FRANCE
Michelin Chef Reine Sammut & Aix Market
In the lavender-scented hills of Aix-en-Provence, a morning at the market becomes a sensory snapshot into Provençal life. Stalls teeming with locals brim with sun-warmed produce and aromatic herbs, as you and your chef instructor from The Culinary Center on board select ingredients for the day’s menu. Inside Auberge La Fenière—the restaurant of Reine Sammut, one of the few Michelin-starred female chefs in France—a refined demonstration captures the region’s rustic finesse. Rosé, crisp and unmistakably Provençal, awaits your return aboard the ship for a curated tasting.

CORK, IRELAND
Ballymaloe Cookery School
Tucked into the rolling emerald hills of County Cork, Ballymaloe Cookery School’s 100-acre organic farm stretches toward the sea, framed by wildflower meadows and stone walls weathered by salt and time. Guests explore the estate’s edible gardens, heritage orchards, and free-range flocks with a chef instructor from The Culinary Center. Inside the original farmhouse kitchen, Ireland’s culinary traditions focus on freshness and seasonality, featuring dishes like rich brown soda bread slathered with golden farmhouse butter, or a compote simmered with just-picked rhubarb from the garden.

CASTRIES, ST. LUCIA
Spices Cooking Studio
St. Lucia has a way of disarming you with its inexplicably warm and generous locals. That warmth takes shape in the kitchen of Spices Cooking Studio, perched above the coast. Local chefs guide you through the layers of green fig and salt fish salad, a national dish that tells its own story of Creole, French, and West Indian influence. The experience ends at the Castries Market, where vendors stack callaloo, cinnamon, and breadfruit in bundles of riotous color.

ROATÁN, HONDURAS
Honduran Farm & Ocean-To-Table Experience
At Blue Harbor Tropical Arboretum, indigenous gardens and hydroponic greenhouses stretch with cashew trees, cocoplum, and sour orange clinging to the island’s heat. With a chef instructor from The Culinary Center as your guide, local growers offer insight and ingredients that later shape your onboard cooking class. Back in The Culinary Center on board, a guest chef from Roatán leads you through dishes built around the island’s prized pink shrimp, pulled fresh from the Caribbean. A bright lunch follows, layered with lime and herbs, capped with a tropical dessert cocktail that tastes like a breeze through the mangroves.
Discover your next travel story with Oceania Cruises.
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I have always been a Geography and Map Fanatic. I own a very large and well-utilized National Geographic Atlas in which I have recorded many notes and personal trips and routed out my journeys by ships, planes, trains, and cycling. I refer to it frequently in putting together my clients' trips and itineraries, as well as my own.
Going back to the time when I was a little girl, I have either lived just a few yards from the ocean or relatively close to it. I liked watching ships and wanted to know what life was like on the other side of the ocean. I was fascinated that my Grandmother came to the US on a ship as a teenage girl together with her sister from Ireland. Before my grandparents met in the US, my Grandfather from Ireland worked as a cowboy and copper miner in Montana at the turn of the 20th Century. They had many National Geographic issues at their home which I loved looking at. These impressions, plus taking my first cruise, all eventually led me to the cruise and travel ...