Ikos Oceania

When you book the "Best All-Inclusive Resort in the World" you have pretty high expectations. Neither of us had done the all inclusive resort thing before and did not know what to expect in terms of quality. Ikos Oceania did not disappoint even the slightest. 

Dining

The biggest decision we had to make was which of the fabulous restaurants do we want to eat at? There are five restaurants on the resort to choose from and each of them has Michelin Star chefs. You can't go wrong with any of them, even the buffet restaurant is beyond any buffet I have ever been to. They even have pureed baby food for those with kids. This is the most kid friendly resort by the way. I will go into this more later. 

I have so many restaurant/food pictures I had to divide the restaurants up into different blog posts so keep checking back for each restaurant post! 

Tip:

 If you get the deluxe package room you can prebook your dinners. Breakfast and Lunch do not need reservations however definitely book your dinners ahead of time. Also if you are from the US keep in mind you are going to be around everyone else that is from Europe (only 10% are from the US) and everyone eats dinner LATE. I mean book your meal for 7:30 or later if you can. 

Also with the deluxe package you get dinner on the beach one evening. Book this for 7:00 or so depending on what time of summer you are there (we went in September) and check the sunset time. If you get there to early you are just eating on the beach, to late and you are eating in the dark. The key is to get there so you can experience the sunset. I think our reservation was 6:30 and we stretched our meal out as long as we could to get to sunset. 

If you have a food intolerance/allergy/dietary restrictions they will accommodate you to the best of their ability. They start the meal by asking if anyone has any dietary restrictions so for me that was amazing. Not being able to eat gluten makes traveling difficult, another reason we went with the resort. They bend over backwards to make sure you can eat there.

Celiacs:

  I will have to say that for people with extremely sensitive celiac be very careful. They give you gf bread however I did not inquire on how it was toasted or about the cross contamination risks. I have no actual symptoms and was on vacation so I just was careful to eat things marked gluten free at the buffet and got my gluten free bread. Also I found out the last day that all of the drinks by the pool are made with (we think) wax coated noodles. Long story short they gave me a paper straw instead of the usual one after finding out about my gluten "allergy" at the pool the last day. The restaurants do not give you these funky straws, just at the beach and pools. Next time I will just ask for a paper straw up front. Just something to be aware of.  Noodles straws were definitely something I had not come across before!

On a final celiac note, you can eat so many things there so if you do not see something on the menu that works for you, be sure to ask someone. Everyone speaks fluent english and they are more than accommodating. They will go out of their way to make you something gf. Do not be afraid to ask! 

To be continued in the next blog post