NCL Bliss

and it is board today for a quick trip back (well, quicker than my trip over…)

our route

As I was sitting here this afternoon – I starting thinking about my old tag line from Cruise Critic –

400 + nights at sea – too bad they aren’t all on the same cruise line

which is obviously and patently no longer true, the nights I mean. It is more than 400 nights over the years still certainly not on the same line but the differences have been interesting. So I decided to see if I could add them all up. First – there are the Rivers which I decided to count since they qualify both as ships and water –

2000 – Donau
2007 – Yantzee
2008 – Nile
2014 – Donau (Phoenix)
2017 – Columbia & Snake – American Queen Steamship

which I guess leaves me the Amazon, Mekong & Volga as rivers I would seriously like to cruise.

On the high seas – the first ship we were on was 2004 – Costa something in the Baltic the summer after I returned from a lovely 15 months in Kuwait and related garden spots. Since then – I think it has been Costa x 4 total (One TA), MSC x 3 (2 TAs), Celebrity x 9 (1 transpacific, 1 Panama), Royal x 56 (14 TAs, 1 Circumnavigation of Australia and NZ, Panama, 1 TransPacific, 2 Suez), NCL x 15 (1 TA, 2 Panama). Then there are the One of’s. Princess, La Ponant, P&O, Phoenix, Crystal (TA). I think that adds up to around 92 cruises.

The reason that I noted the TransAtlantics, TransPacifics, Panama and Suez is that they average 14 days. That is around 275 days right there. Even if the other 65 ocean cruises were 7 days each plus the rivers it puts me over 900 nights.

Perhaps I will change the tag line when I hit 1000?

For those who don’t remember, the Panama Canal runs a SW to NE course through the isthmus.

According to the info we were given the pilot was going to be boarding ~0500 and we would be to the first lock about 0700. Accordingly several of us got up early and staked out our normal places in the observation lounge.

Naturally there were those not happy when they arrived as we approached the first lock to find both the lounge full and the forward railings crowded.

Duh.

I spilt my time between wandering out to enjoy the travel through the locks and my cross stitch.

I will have photos when I am somewhere that I have real internet.

Having been here before (Costa Rica) I was looking forward to a relaxed wander through town.  And then we turned  out to be ship #3 in port. There are two berths in town. The commercial port is not either next door or walkable. In fact the only thing you can do after you shuttle from the ship to the port entrance is get on another bus ($15/return) if you want to go to town or go back to the ship.

Not hard to figure out which I chose.

We stop here again on the return journey and I will plan on getting to town regardless. Meanwhile, there is a hot tub in my future after I finish a bit more of the cross-stitch.

Ok. Not all that organized today.

We are stopped in a lovely little port with almost nothing here. An outdoor bar& cafe (no wifi) and a crafts/tourist junk center. Their wifi is expensive and overloaded. So here I am two fingering it on my phone.

If I had been organized I would have gone out to pre-Columbian ruins. But I am not; enjoying the breeze and walking a bit of distance in a straight line.

-Holly

Cruise lines have loyalty programs which should come as no surprise. There is always a competition for passengers and hooking people into a single line increases profits. It also increases specifically cruises on a particular line if there is choice between several if someone is close to the number of points to jump a level in privilege. People like perks, like being treated as special.  I don’t really think it applies to the high end ships, except as a status symbol but for everyone else, the lure of free internet time, free drinks, free specialty meals or free laundry does have an appeal.

NCL in my opinion had a very sane and limited program up to this year. There was a cap on the levels that was achievable in a reasonable number of years (80 points/nights at sea). It got your a free bottle of ship wine, a free meal with wine for two, a bag of laundry free and some internet free. Overall not a bad deal and fairly consistent across the fleet. Then they changed it. Some how the naming convention and levels where the points cut seem to be eerily similar to Royal – right down to a [level] with the next one being  [level]Plus. Go figure. The perks have definitely increased and I now received invites for a meal with an officer and a behind the scenes tour (seem familiar?).

So there I was, getting back on the Sun in Puerto Vallarta and facing a 1900 meal with an officer. Unlike Royal, there doesn’t seem to be an official Captain’s table and you get the same menu as the rest of the diners. Not a problem as the food continues consistently good. It has the advantage of not increasing costs and providing a full range of choices thus avoiding all the special requests. The downside is that you don’t get the souvenirs (like anyone who has cruised a lot needs them). Besides the Hotel Director who was hosting there was a Canadian couple from Winnipeg, an English couple from north of Manchester, an American pair now retired to Florida and me making eight total.

It was a nice evening.

Today Jill and I spent a fair amount of time first in one of the lounges then later in my cabin doing cross stitch following which we went to supper. And so went Day 6 about the “Beautiful NCL Sun.”

Seems to be the same announcements out of the Cruise Director on every ship from every line. I generally ignore them, but that is a rant for another time.

I had forgotten that Cabos San Lucas was a tender port. I don’t actually remember much from the cruise Noah and I took in April. I suspect that I didn’t get off the ship at all. Certainly I wasn’t in the mood for a tender operation. When Carmen and I came through on the Star Princess, I vaguely remember going from the ship’s tender down the dock and onto the whale watching zodiac that had been organized ahead of time.

This time I just took the tender in and set out from the port. I figured that if I walked a reasonable distance from the ship I would be able to find a cafe for coffee and wifi. If I strolled far enough, there wouldn’t be a lot of other cruise ship passengers competing for time and space.  Down the long avenue and up a couple of side street and I found a lovely little place called the Giggling Bean. They had extremely strong coffee, they had wifi. They had a four footed vacuum cleaner who wandered his fat self around to check out all the new customers. He decided I was good for a scratch but totally inadequate in the food offering department. Personally, I didn’t think he really needed anything else to eat. I spent a pleasant couple of hours getting this, that and the other thing updated followed by a meander back to the ship.

It was both warm (32*C) and extremely humid accompanied by bright sunshine. Photogray glasses were good, sunblock was even better. It was honestly nice to get back into the ship’s A/C.

Dinner was a progressive affair; we sampled the food in the Tapas Bar, then went on to the sports bar. As it turns out, it is the Sports Bar which is open all night in case one gets the munchies pretty much eliminating the need for after-hours room service unless you just can’t stand the thought of wings, hot dogs, soup or dip in the middle of the night.

Oh, and cheesecake. That would make an excellent 0300 snack.