Southern Caribbean Cruise

03/04/05 - 03/13/05

Carlson Wagonlit Travel (Palm Coast, FL) / Norwegian Spirit

Clay & Pat Stahl

Barbados

Grenada

St.Lucia

Antigua & Barbuda

British V.I.

Friday 03/04 Bus From Palm Coast To The Ship at Miami

Jen drove us to the Palm Coast Cracker Barrel parking lot to meet our bus for the included ride to the Miami Cruise Terminal. We had a brand new vehicle and it left on time with 20 people. Carlson Travel co-owner Arvid and his wife Pat are accompanying us on the cruise. We headed south on I95 for about a half hour, exited, and picked up four more people at the Ormond Beach Wal Mart. We were back on I95 in a few minutes for the ho-hum ride south. There wasn't much to see with first forest, then swamps, and then extremely built up areas as we got close to Miami. The ride went smooth with a half hour rest room break at a Palm Bay shopping center, and only some snacks, a bottle of Champagne, a bottle of Shiraz, and some conversation to break up the monotony. We only saw one other bottle of champagne shared by two of the other couples on the sparsely populated bus. Pat did find that three of the ladies seated near us were also "Red Hats". We arrived at the ship at 2:15 and hoped to avoid the luggage delay by carrying on our one sizeable bag, but were told by Arvid that we have to let them take it as it would be too large to get through the carry-on x-ray machine. Duh. The check-in line was normal, but with many people at various stations asking you to show them the different documents. I guess that it makes the check-in at the desk go smoother, but it does seem excessive as we fumble with the carry-ons to dig out the correct document.

We put our stuff on the belt at the X-ray machine, and a few metal pocket things in the tray. It appeared that no one had ever seen a Swiss army knife before today. They were puzzling over it as Clay set off the walk-through X-ray Machine. There was much discussion with some of the supervisors opening and closing the knife before finally waving us through, and completely ignoring the fact that Clay set off the walk-through X-ray!

Built in 1999 as the SuperStar Leo and reconditioned as the Norwegian Spirit in 2004, it has been removed from the Asian to the American market and now sails to the Caribbean during the

winter and Alaska during the summer. It is a medium sized ship, at least when compared to the few ships we have been on, with 2000 passengers and 1100 crew. We again opted for a stateroom with a balcony, and although they have suites in a couple of much larger sizes and price ranges, this is nice and roomy for a ship, with a queen sized bed, a desk, and a two seat couch. We were warned both by Arvid, our travel agent and by a note from the ship that the bed is hard and a foam mattress add-on was available, but we found ours to be perfect for us. The room also has a 3-room bath! Naturally, there is a door on the shower, but the door separating the toilet from the sink seems useless and actually takes up precious room. The stateroom's defining feature is a sliding glass door to the balcony with two chairs and a small table, on the 10th deck the second highest passenger deck. The TV has CNN, TNN, ESPN, and the usual ship stuff, a course progress and clock channel, on-board shopping, shore excursions, etc. One small disadvantage- we are right under the smokestacks, and sometimes there is noticeable vibration from the engines, but you have to think about it.

This is a freestyle cruise, meaning among other things that you don't have an assigned place at a dining room table for dinner. We will try all the restaurants for either lunch or dinner, and today decided to get a little late lunch at the Bier Garten. It is a German-themed pool side bar that normally will have German wursts, but this first afternoon, there were only hot dogs, hamburgers, and french fries. We passed it up for now and got something at the big 24-hr buffet, but will be back at the Bier Garten later.

We didn't get our big suitcase promptly and found a note on the outside of our door when returning. It said that our bag was identified as one "not conforming to Norwegian Cruise Line standards"! Uh oh, we're burnt as we have two bottles of wine in there. Other trips on other cruise lines, we were not bothered with such triviality. We had to go to the appropriately named "Brig" Meeting Room and duke it out with them to get our suitcase out of hock. Amid the opening of other people's luggage and wrapping and identifying their mostly 1.5 liter bottles of hard stuff, we pleaded no contest and explained that we had the two bottles of wine. Wine is allowed, and we were politely charged a corkage fee of $10- fair enough. The guy in charge had a nice pin of a wine bottle on his suit and admitted to being the ship's sommelier, so we discussed attending the wine tasting the next day. We wondered how you would go about overtly bringing wine on board, declaring it, and willingly paying the corkage fee! We did hear later that another couple's big bottle of whiskey in one of their carry-ons went unnoticed. Hmmm, different X-ray machine, different procedure, maybe next time!

After walking around most of the ship's public areas, we attended the muster drill, a typical pain in the butt, but required of course. At we were dismissed, they announced that two of the surcharged restaurants were two-for-one for the first half hour this day (it actually was every day!), and since we are going to hit them all, we decided to go to the Taipan Bistro. It has an Oriental decor, reflecting the ship's previous Asian routes (and clientele), but is definitely French Mediterranean in cuisine.

The first evening's show was preceded by short talks (commercials!) from many of the services managers such as the boutiques, duty free shops, photo gallery, etc.- very boring! The cruise director(s) shanghaied 4 men and 4 women from the audience to form two teams with each team member threading a ribbon with a spoon on the end through the top of their clothes to the bottom and back out again. Our (each side of the audience cheered for the team on that side) side lost both ways, in and out! The typical first show's sampling of the entertainment was only a short dance routine by the entertainers and a Rodney Dangerfield-like stand up comedian whom we rated as only so-so here, annoying with his continuous reference to the packed theater being a little reluctant to laugh and/or applaud his efforts. We saw him a few times later and loved him!

A last drink at the Champagne Bar (nice name, but only a typical ship's bar) featured "Best of Friends"- three young Filipino men playing guitars with recorded accompaniment and singing favorite standards. They did a good job, including a uniquely-accented Waltzing Matilda! We have dubbed them Tres Amigos!

Saturday 03/05, Caribbean Sea

This is the first of two consecutive days at sea, and we explored more of the ship after breakfast, frequently losing track of our room's location. We know we are aft and starboard,

but which way are we going when we can't see the outside? Also, the staircases turn you around and you forget directions in the middle of the ship. It is warm and sunny, although early in the morning quite windy, but that didn't stop the occupation of almost all of the deck chairs, although some people were wrapped so tight in blankets, what is the point?

We were part of a well-attended sushi demonstration in the Shogun Sushi Bar. The sushi chef and assistant were both Filipino, but they both had 13 years at it, and seemed to be very good. It was very interesting, with the chef making a variety of items, california roll, (cooked) shrimp, etc., but no raw fish!? There were free (non-fish) samples for the attendees afterward.

You are offered a deal where you show 5 previous wine bottle receipts and the 6th bottle is free. The free bottle allowance is the average of the other 5, extremely fair we think! With a bottle at each dinner and at a few lunches and other occasions, we expect to get a couple of free bottles by the time we are finished. We ordered our second during lunch at the "Blue Lagoon", open 24 hours, and sitting right in a passenger aisle on the ship's port side. It had no decor and a very limited menu only suitable for lunch, but there was a casual feel that made it quite nice. We came back here on the last port day.

Right after lunch, we attended a wine tasting at Champagne Charlies, de-rigueur on every cruise that we have been on. This was a little better than the others, with a decent (although still tasting sized!) pour of 5 wines, and an informative discussion of the wines tasted and of wine in general. The sommelier did state that Kendall-Jackson and Fetzer were from Napa, but it was only for simplicity in making a point and we cut him some slack there. He didn't seem to recognize us here as the ones that tried to smuggle the two bottles on board! At the end of the tasting, they offered two half-bottles of discontinued dessert wines, a riesling and a muscat, both from Australia for $15. We bought one of each, both of which will be available to us from all dining rooms. More on the availability later!

A half hour later, we attended a cooking demonstration in the same place. This was also nicely done with a Seared Ahi-Tuna on Bok Choi, a "Fire Star"- meat and/or seafood in an unusual flaming presentation and available in the Taipan Bistro for an additional surcharge (we passed that up the previous night), and Crepes Suzette. We tasted small portions at the end of the demonstration.

We wanted to go to the Hibachi at the Japanese restaurant tonight, but there is only one table for eight and they are full for the two early seatings. Tomorrow is taken also, so we made a later reservation and went to Windows, one of the two traditional dining rooms. We sat with two other couples, one of which went to school with Don Rathbun, a good friend of Clay at the early days at GE. Small world! The dinner was a little bit slow and we waited 20 minutes for dessert before we left for the show. That wasn't too bad as who needs dessert on a cruise, but nobody could retrieve one of the bottles of dessert wine we had purchased earlier at the wine tasting. We will get them working on that when we enter a dining room tomorrow evening!

The "Night on the Town" show was typically good with 8 girls and 6 men singing and dancing to various world city themes. After the show, we sat down at Champagne Charlies to try and listen to Shane Cammell playing and singing Favorite Standards, but with nearby loud talking and smoking, we left before being served. In the night club, we found last night's trio playing dancing tunes, followed by the Dave Heenan stand-up comedy routine. We sat with Dean and Claudia from Nova Scotia, the other couple that was at our dinner table. During the comic's routine, he asked where one lady in the audience was from, and she said Schenectady, NY! I spoke to her and her husband after the show- she was from Burnt Hills, a Schenectady suburb. I told them I graduated from Mont Pleasant, and her husband said he graduated from Nott Terrace, the other city high school and our bitter rival, but he was older, and naturally before my time. It was indeed a small world today! We are going south of course, but also quite a bit east, and had to turn our clocks ahead.

Sunday 03/06, Caribbean Sea

We again had the served breakfast in the regular dining room, this time with two other couples, one from England and one from Columbus, Ohio. It was somewhat leisurely, and we will probably go to the buffet for breakfast on the next few days when we have time constraints because of the shore excursions.

I mentioned to the English fellow at breakfast that this ship needs an English Pub. He promptly said that there is one- Henrys! We had seen Henrys, but thought that it was just another

ordinary ship's bar. We went there and watched soccer on the telly while we both had fish and chips for lunch. It was so good that everyone else was eating fish & chips! Maybe that was because it is the only food served there! It is styled like an English pub, and there were a few bottled (and canned) English Ales, but only Amstel and Heinekin were on tap just like all the other ship's bars. The bartender and waitstaff were definitely not English!

As members of the Lattitudes (you are a member after your first NCL cruise, and we went on NCL for the 1999 Eastern Mediterranean), we were eligible for a cocktail party. There were actually two parties, as there are 900 Lattitudes members on board. We had a couple of free glasses of wine and hors d'oeuvres while the captain introduced the ship's officers and the cruise director handed out door prizes. We won the second prize drawn- a free scalp treatment in the spa while in port. Big whoops! Other prizes included tee shirts, baseball caps, a bottle of Champagne, a gift certificate to Maxim's, the primo surcharge restaurant that we will go to later. Pat thought that she may use the certificate, but it was wasted! There was also a prize for the most NCL cruises taken- 13! The winner seemed awful young to have done that, but he didn't have to prove it! Pat talked to the cruise director about the absence of a Catholic Priest, and gave him the name of an organization that coordinates things like that.

We saw land for the first time in 1¾ days, but it was only a couple of uninhabited islands far in the distance. The afternoon sun is on our side of the ship, and it is too hot to sit out on our balcony when it is perpendicular to the path of travel, and forget getting a chair on one of the crowded shady topside decks. Pat did find a spot in one of the many hot tubs for a few minutes.

We had a hard time finding La Tratoria, the Italian specialty (but not surcharged) restaurant. It turns out to be in a screened off corner of the 24-hr buffet and only exists for dinner each evening. The transformation is amazing with white tablecloths overlaid with a red, white, and green band. Service is also wonderful, the menu is somewhat limited, but very Italian, keeping with the theme. We also obtained our two bottles of dessert wine, had one opened and will carry a bottle with us when we enter future restaurants. They were both disappointing and that may be why they were taken off the ship's wine list, but you get what you pay for!

We made it to the theater on time for Tyler Knight and Mistie, a Magician/Comedian act "direct from Las Vegas". It lasted only 45 minutes, but was very well done although typical with card tricks, sawing the assistant in half, etc. We had a drink in each of two bars, first in Champagne Charlies with Millennium, two black girls singing "Favorite Standards", but actually more like '70s stuff. We thought that it was funny that they said that this was their last appearance, but they are from Barbados, the next day's port, and their contract is over. They had great voices and were very well dressed. Skippy in Henry's Pub, playing "Songs that You Love" was quite another story, with only a keyboard with no vocals. He can play very well we're sure, but he was not an entertainer. We had hoped to get to the Chocoholic Buffet later, but were too tired to stay up for that.

Monday 03/07, Bridgetown, Barbados

Tuesday 03/08, St. Georges, Grenada

Wednesday 03/09, Castries, St. Lucia

Thursday 03/10, St. John's, Antigua

Friday 03/11, Tortola, BVI

Saturday 03/12, Caribbean Sea & Atlantic Ocean

We are heading back to Miami, and will just take it easy for the day. On our way to breakfast about 7:00, there were many "Do Not Disturb" sign on a lot of staterooms along the way, after five busy port days. Unfortunately, the main dining room does not open until 7:30, so rather than wait, we went up to the uncrowded buffet, although it was easy to get custom made omelets!

We walked by the pool, and there are more deck chairs reserved than there are live people in them, even though there is a big font bold message in the ship's paper every day prohibiting this! We are not pool people, and since we have the balcony, we don't care much about the poolside anyway. Actually the pool itself is pretty small, but there are large areas around it for the deck chairs. There were still many chairs available at this time, but after getting back to our cabin, the weather finally turned gloomy for the first time on the trip, and it rained pretty hard for a while, so the sunbathers may have been a little disappointed, but it cleared up after about an hour, and the sun came back out as before, but it is now not very hot and still quite windy.

We both attended the Entertainment Director's "important" Disembarkation Talk in the theater. There was the usual customs and immigration stuff and also the usual yuks. We again heard about the guy that forgot to save clothes for disembarkation and the customs agent said he "obviously had nothing to declare!"

We went to the Bier Garten for lunch again, and although we thought that would have a variety of German sausages, it was only ever bratwurst the two times we ate there. Today, we were early and sat at one of the picnic tables in front and had a drink. When they open the line, we ordered a bottle of wine and had some of the bratwurst and sauerkraut. Variety aside, the brats were very good, especially with a German pretzel. Arvid, the co-owner of Carlson travel was there with another couple from Palm Coast, and we talked with them for a while. On the way out, Clay's Pennsylvania tee shirt caught the attention of two other couples from Ontario, and we chatted with them for a while.

Back in our cabin, we packed our one suitcase, it is now pretty heavy. Passengers are allowed 200 lbs each, but of course, we weren't anywhere near that. One man that we met on the ship said that his wife would have taken advantage of that if they didn't have to fly! We had to have it outside our stateroom tonight before bed.

We went to a party hosted by Carlson Travel at 5:00 with the people that were on the bus from Palm Coast. We had a few drinks and were the first to leave for our 6:00 reservation at La Tratoria, the restaurant that we went to earlier in the cruise, and exists only in the evening. This is the only specialty restaurant that we repeated. There is a limited menu that is the same every time, but the service is excellent, and they do a wonderful job in every aspect.

There is only one show tonight, an amateur hour with passengers being solicited to perform, sort of an economy sized karoke! We passed on that and went to Champagne Charlie's who had guitarist/singer Shane Connell. Earlier in the cruise, we were in the same place to listen to him, but left when we encountered loud talking and smoking. We enjoyed him, although not as much as some of the other acts on board. There is an area between the singer and the seats that people use as an aisle, although there was access behind the audience. He had a nice voice but did only a few vocals. Quite a few people passed in front of him while he was performing, and he acknowledged that by holding a note longer or repeating a note, and rolling his eyes. Maybe it was inconsiderate by the walkers and we thought he overreacted, but it was sort of funny.

Our favorite act, the Best of Friends, i.e. The Tres Amigos(!) was scheduled in the Galaxy of the Stars at the other end of the ship, so we slipped out of our seats in between numbers. But

tonight they were The Dos Amigos! The leader kept looking for the third to come in the entrance, but the two finally started playing. After about 10 minutes, the third showed up. There wasn't much of an audience and we gave him some light applause, which he acknowledged with a wry smile. Pat asked them if they had any CDs and of course they did, but only in Spanish. She passed on that!

After visiting the five Caribbean countries, we noticed a lot of similarity and all their features and our activities kind of blend together. Following is a table that helps us keep them straight:

COUNTRY BARBADOS GRANADA ST. LUCIA ANTIGUA TORTOLA (BVI) FLAG CAPITAL Bridgetown St. George's Castries St. John's Road Town AREA (Sq Mi) 431 344 616 443 153 POPULATION 277,000 189,000 160,000 67,000 21,272 HRS IN PORT 1 pm - 7 pm 7 am - 5 pm 7 am - 5 pm 7 am - 5 pm 7 am - 1 pm SHORE EXCURSION SIGHTS Harrison's Cave Orchid World Gun Hill Station Spice Estate Grand Etang Lake Annandale Falls Silk Screen Anse-La-Raye Marigot Bay Green Parrot Dow's Hill Shirley Heights Nelson's Shipyard Virgin Gorda Ferry Beach The Cave Ferry Back LUNCH   Tout Bagay Caribbean Pirates Commissioner's Grill   BEER Banks Carib Piton Wadadli

Sunday 03/13, Bus trip from the Miami Cruise Terminal to Palm Coast

We still have a half day on the ship, but you can't do much because you have to be ready to get off at noon. All of the other cruises that we have been on, we had to leave early, usually around 9:00 as they want to get the ship ready for the next cruise which left that same day. With us getting in at noon, they probably don't go out until the next day, and we're surprised that they haven't found a way to charge us for the half day! Since we can't do much and have plenty of time, we went to the main dining room for a leisurely breakfast. We sat with two other couples, and we had some good conversations although there were a few negative comments about the trip that we thought were uncalled for, such as that NCL "nickeled and dimed" you. Duh! Of course! It's a cruise! One lady thought she may have got some food poising the previous evening, but she seemed OK here and ate everything!

The final bill was waiting for us in the morning, and it was pretty extensive with the shore excursions, the $10 a day "service charge", wine, drinks, laundry, and a few other things. Because this is a freestyle cruise where you don't have the same dining room seating each evening, the service charge applied to all the people to whom you would have to give a gratuity, usually the waiter, his/her assistant, the room steward, his/her assistant, and the dining room steward. In addition, we had a bottle of wine at each dinner, and at a few other times, and some drinks at the show bars. Any discrepancy on the statement had to be resolved that morning during a two hour window, kind of tough to do, and unless there was something big and obvious, not worth the time. We kept track of the charges as we went along with a spreadsheet on the laptop, and the quick assessment was within $5, so we were satisfied with that. Later we saw that there were a lot of people in line at the desk with their statements in hand, so that seemed like a good move! We hope they got it resolved in time! After the trip, the final reckoning was right on the amount that we thought it should be.

About 9:00, Pat saw buildings off our starboard side balcony, but there shouldn't be anything there, land should be on the ship's port side as we are going north! However, at that point, we were heading directly east and it was probably North Miami/Hollywood. Still pretty far out, Pat got a cell signal, and called our family and Jen Ebel. We weren't sure that Jen got our E-mail about us getting in a day earlier than we had told her when we left. Up on deck a little later, there were many more cell phones plastered to ears! We entered the channel to the cruise terminals and





continued slowly past two docked Carnival and two Royal Caribbean ships with a gap in between. We turned around in an enlarged area further in, and snuggled in between them. It took almost an hour to do that as we went very slowly and were docked about 10:45, well before our scheduled disembarkation time of 12:00, although we won't actually get off the ship until about 12:30.

The room steward took good care of us, especially with timely ice bucket fills, and we gave her a little extra gratuity. Very welcome was more ice this morning for the bottle of wine that we are going to take on the bus back to Palm Coast. It is one of the bottles that we had brought on board for which we were charged the corkage fee! The announced disembarkation procedure allowed staying in the room until getting off the ship, but our steward hinted that it would be nice if she could have the room sooner, so we went up by the pool at 10AM to wait, but there were plenty of others that did stay in their rooms. We were the third baggage tag (red) to be called, and we got out a little after noon, retrieved our bag right away, and had a speedy disembarkation breezing through immigration, customs, and on to the bus. The entire process took less than an hour from the time we started down, until the bus pulled away!

The ride back up I95 was uneventful with heavy traffic only in a few places. It naturally seemed longer because the trip is over. But we are still on vacation and had some snacks and the bottle of wine. Pat alerted Jen when we passed Daytona Beach, we made the same stop in Ormond Beach for the two couples and were back at the Palm Coast Cracker Barrel at 6PM. Jen was waiting for us and the trip officially ended!