Royal Caribbean Ovation of the Seas - Picton, New Zealand | Cruise Travel VLOG!

If you're new to my channel, my name is Jeff and I'm a husband, father of three, and a self-proclaimed foodie who quit my corporate job to trade, travel, and eat. During my recent travels to Asia Pacific, I had an experience of a lifetime where I embarked on a 12-day cruise to the beautiful island country of New Zealand that has long been on my bucket list. Join me in this video as I share with you some of the things we experienced during our stop to the picturesque port town of Picton located in the South Island that gave us a glimpse into the stunning beauty of this country that left us captivated and longing to come back for more. We arrived to the port town of Picton at 10am local time and the amount of time we would have to spend a day exploring was around 8 hours before having to make our way back to the cruise ship for the next sailing. It should come as no surprise that New Zealand is famously known for having some of the most stunning and picturesque landscapes on the planet so whenever it was possible we always tried to take advantage of any activities that would allow us to soak in those breathtaking views. Alright guys so we are going on our Queen Charlotte cruise to tour these beautiful sights here in Picton New Zealand. The duration of the cruise is around 2 hours and the captain of the vessel took us to some of the most spectacular viewing points scattered throughout the sound. Although we typically like to purchase tickets at the port itself to save money for this particular destination on our cruise we decided to purchase the tickets in advance through Royal Caribbean at the risk of all scheduled sailings being sold out upon our arrival. Hello from Picton New Zealand! Beautiful! Alright so we just got off that Queen Charlotte cruise and now we're looking for a quick bite and on the cruise ship there was actually a worker from St Vincent in the Caribbean Islands telling me that this place has the best fried chicken and it's just a little trailer food truck called Little Ripples. I'm gonna take her word for it and we're a little bit hungry so we're gonna try this out before we explore any additional eateries around this little town. And we ordered the around the world bucket. It's not really a bucket it's more like a box. And did we get a couple extra pieces too right? Oh wow look at that one's darker and one is normal Okay so this one here is a little bit on the spicier side apparently. Wow it's not really that spicy though. Oh yeah a little bit mild. So flavorful. It's very tender and juicy. Plenty of flavor on that outer layer of shell. The crust itself wow. And if you look closely you can actually like see some sprinkles of like some additional salt they put on it so it gives a very savory flavor. And I think that one's just the original ones right? Is that on the spicy side or? No this is not spicy. Okay. Yummy it's good. It's very windy out today. We just got back from that Queen Charlotte cruise. Beautiful absolutely beautiful. I imagine when we make it out to the different sounds later part of our cruise it's going to be much much nicer because the seawall is apparently in the actual sounds that we're going to see at the end of our cruise supposedly are like triple the height of what we saw today. What I'm going in for now is just one of these regular country fried chicken drumsticks the non-spicy version. You can tell it's a little bit lighter in terms of the outer layer batter. It's quite hot still. A little bit soggy, but I think that's just the way it is the recipe itself. There we go. And even that part right here you don't see a whole lot of batter, but I think that's just the way they fry it. Very flavorful. Not a whole lot of crust. Not a lot of crisp either. It's good though. Plenty of meat on there. All right so we're going in for one of those thighs. The original country fried chicken recipe. Tasty huh? Yeah yeah marinated very well. And so this establishment you got to eat outside or you can take your chicken that you buy and just go eat somewhere else in town. But there's a bunch of little outdoor benches just right next to the little trailers that they set up. So going in for my second drumstick you can see there's actually a french fry that's glued to it from all the oil. You ever have fried chicken where like you just bite into it and all the flavors in the crust and the outer layer batter? This one has so much flavor in that batter already, but the actual chicken, the marinated part, they marinate it very well. So every bite inside the meat itself is very tasty as well. And I think it's a custom here in New Zealand and Australia where if you want any ketchup for your chips or your fries you have to actually pay extra. So over here we pay 50 cents for a pack of tomato sauce ketchup. It's marinated or sprinkled with whatever they put on. Not just soft grass, but it's very tasty when you put it in your mouth. It's almost like you don't really even need ketchup. I think that's probably why they charge extra for it because the fries here are so tasty in itself already. So that was really good. That was called Little Ripples country fried chicken. And I personally actually enjoyed the spicy version much more because I like spicy food. And the total, the box that we ordered was called Around the World. We added a couple extra spicy nibbles and the total cost was about 19 New Zealand dollars, which comes out to about maybe 14 US dollars. All right, so right now we're just making our way through town. Gonna find something else to eat or drink. A lot of people from the cruise ship just kind of hanging out, killing some time before it's time to board back to the ship. All right, so we are indulging in ice cream at this ice cream shop called Indulge Ice Cream Parlor. I ordered a waffle cone with some salted caramel. Super tasty. Quite sweet, but it's a different type of salted caramel flavor. And what did you order? A boysenberry or something? Boysenberry ripple. Yeah, boysenberry ripple. And this one here just got a waffle cone with a bunch of sprinkles and some vanilla. What is that? It's like a big chunk of caramel or something. Wow. The pretty little seaside town of Picton, surrounded by the waterfront, lush hills, and mountains, is filled with plenty of eateries and local boutiques that offered us a nice little break from the giant cruise vessel in our journey. The highlight in coming here was definitely the cruise we took through the Queen Charlotte Sound, allowing us to admire the natural beauty and picturesque landscapes within the beautiful South Island of New Zealand. If you enjoyed this video and want to see more of my New Zealand cruise adventure, please be sure to like and subscribe to my channel. Thank you so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in my next video.