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Cruise Day #2: At Sea

Dec 31st, 2013 by

Today was a relaxing day at sea. And, actually, after the hustle and bustle of Christmas week, it was a welcome respite of doing pretty much nothing. We took Emerson to the dinosaur-themed kids’ pool area, which she enjoyed (we thought it was a little too limited in space and yet spread over too many levels, making supervision difficult). In the afternoon, Emerson and Libby went to the “Circus Jam” and them Mom joined them for a cupcake decorating event. While they were doing that, Pop and I hung out on the balcony and watched the world go by…

Tonight, we went to Bamboo, the ship’s Asian restaurant. We ordered all seven appetizers and shared them among our table, dim sum style. All of the food–including our main courses–was excellent. This has always been one of our favorite dining venues aboard NCL.

After dinner, I went to see Second City perform. The show was mostly of the sketch comedy variety… some better than others. However, it was packed. Indeed, the cruise generally is busy. Lots of kids and families. Lots of people out to have a good time this holiday week.

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Cruise Day #1: Tampa

Dec 29th, 2013 by

We’re aboard the Norwegian Dawn in our home port of (not so sunny, today anyway) Tampa, Florida. We’re sailing to Central America via the Western Caribbean. On this journey we’ll add two new countries to our tally: Honduras (#87) and Belize (#88).

I’ll blog along the way, but I may not update posts daily, preferring to use wifi on land if/where I can find it.

This should be a fun, relaxing cruise with Mom and Pop. It’s also the first time we’ll have been on a cruise for New Year’s.

Update

Sailing out of the Port of Tampa and down through the mouth of Tampa Bay took about 2 hours. Libby was especially excited to pass under the impressive span of the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Honestly, it’s not the most attractive sail away we’ve experienced, and the weather was gloomy with clouds and rain. But, it was still special to leave our home via the sea.

For dinner, we went to Moderno Churrascaria. It’s the ship’s new (to us anyway) Brazilian steakhouse concept. You start the meal with a ‘salad bar’ that was actually quite a bit more impressive in terms of the quality of its selections than the name suggests. Indeed, it was more like a Latin-themed antipasto spread. We then enjoyed a number of meat carvings (like 10 different selections) and a host of side dishes. According to Emerson, it was a T-Rex’s delight!

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Cruise Day #8: San Juan

Dec 1st, 2013 by

We docked in San Juan early this morning. Overall, this disembarkation process went well, especially after we got off of the ship. We seemed to be running a bit more than 30 minutes late and not knowing how long it would take to get from the pier through airport security, I opted to have us leave with the ’12’ luggage tag group rather than our assigned ’18’. This had us off the ship by 8:45 or so…

The customs/immigration line was a bit long, but it didn’t take too long for us to pas through it. From there, it was smooth sailing to and through the airport. All told, we were sitting in the JetBlue terminal’s food court sipping coffee by a little after 10:00.

We happily passed two hours playing with Emerson and then boarded our plane on time for a roughly 3 hour flight back to Tampa.

Here’s a cool photo from over the Bahamas:

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While it might seem like a hassle, I actually think San Juan is a fairly ideal cruise port. The cruise fares usually seem to be a bit cheaper, thereby offsetting the cost of the flights. Plus, with direct flights on a good schedule from Tampa, it’s not much more time consuming than driving down to Port Everglades and Miami. What’s more, the itineraries are usually better. By “better” I mean a greater variety of ports and fewer sea days. San Juan: two thumbs up.

For this trip, I’ll skip writing an in-depth cruise review. Overall, it was a good cruise. We like this class of ship (having sailed on her sister ship, Brilliance, twice) and the large balcony was awesome with the little one (as I expected). I think our cruises aboard the Caribbean Princess (itinerary, food, and truly “escaping completely”) and Norwegian Dawn (duration, family, Freestyle dining) were a bit better, but it’s been our best RCI cruise in the Caribbean.

Posted in JetBlue, Jewel of the Seas, Puerto Rico | No Comments »

Cruise Day #7: At Sea

Nov 30th, 2013 by

Not a lot to say about today…

It was our only full “day at sea” punctuated with the usual activities that we’ve either done before numerous times or never cared to do in the first place. Upon reflection, I clearly like traveling via cruise ship and the “travel tapas” aspect of cruising. For certain destinations, it’s very efficient to have a moving, floating hotel. However, I don’t like the cruise ship experience–in and of itself–nearly as much, which is why we prefer port intensive itineraries (preferably to new places).

Speaking of which, I was strolling past the Centrum during the Q&A session with the ship’s senior officers. I was shocked by the number of guests who complained about Martinique. To quote one of my “enlightened” fellow passengers, “why visit a French speaking island when most of your passengers speak English and Spanish?” Even more shocking was that most of the guests in attendance applauded this point (and some offered additional, helpful “insights”).

Seriously? Why the hell do these people even travel? Martinique was a major reason we picked this itinerary, and it was by far one of the more interesting Caribbean ports that we’ve been to on a cruise.

My advice to would be “travelers”: if you think wherever you go should be like where you live, do yourself and everyone else a favor — stay home!

But, I digress…

We spent most of the day playing with Emerson, either on our balcony or somewhere about the ship. I finished packing for our journey home tomorrow, and we attended the ship’s farewell show.

Posted in Jewel of the Seas | No Comments »

Cruise Day #6: St. Lucia

Nov 30th, 2013 by

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today, we’re visiting St. Lucia…

Since Emerson’s birth, we’ve been on a Thanksgiving cruise every year. At this point, I guess you could call it a quasi-tradition. Upon reflection, I can’t say that it seems especially Thanksgiving-like. It’s certainly not the Thanksgiving of our childhoods; although, I suppose it might be the Thanksgiving of Emerson’s. :-)

In any case, this year feels especially foreign as the rest of the family is at home. That’s mostly a quirk of the calendar as we have two other cruises happening with my mother and grandfather and then with my mother and Libby’s parents in the next few months. Still, it’s odd not to have any of them here with us.

Back to St. Lucia…

We made today another “beach day” and took a taxi out to Reduit Beach in Rodney Bay ($14/pp roundtrip). This really wouldn’t have been my first choice for a beach, but it’s kind of where the taxis we’re going… so we went along with the flow. Reduit Beach is rather narrow and popular with the tourists (as it’s lined with resorts). As a result, we overpaid for our beach chairs and umbrellas ($20 for the day) and found ourselves pestered by all sorts of hawkers until they finally figured out we didn’t want to buy any of their worthless crap. Sadly, the waves were also up today, and the red flags were out. No swimming for us.

Emerson made friends with a nice family plopped next to us on the beach. They had a 19 month old daughter, who enjoyed destroying sand castles as Emerson happily built them up. All in all, they were nice people. Too bad we generally don’t like making friends. 😉

We returned to the ship and strolled around the shopping arcade. Emerson bought some toys. I bought some St. Lucian rum (which the ship didn’t bother to confiscate… just passed it right through the x-ray machine and picked it up without a comment).

We had a later lunch aboard the ship and them played a couple of rousing rounds of miniature golf. Afterwards, we hung out on our balcony and them put Emerson down for her nap.

Tonight we returned to Chops Grille for our Thanksgiving dinner. We did this in part because we like Chops. I also couldn’t face eating our main Thanksgiving meal in the Windjammer. That just seemed wrong somehow…

After dinner, we went to the headliner show.

Today’s box score: +1 country (St. Lucia)

View of St. Lucia:

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Posted in Jewel of the Seas, St. Lucia | 1 Comment »

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