In order to keep some semblance of order about these posts, I wanted to let you know how I am planning on organizing the cruise posts. Here is my idea for posts (obviously subject to change as per my mood that day, let’s call it whimsy):
First Impression (this post)
Samana, Dominican Republic
Tortola, British Virgin Islands
Antigua, St. John’s
Bridgetown, Barbados
Castries, St. Lucia
Final Cruise Thoughts
I am actually going to post the post in reverse order. So instead of reading from the bottom up, you will get the first post last and then be able to scroll down. Since the price of the internet is prohibitively expensive on board ship I won't be able to post until either the Hilton in Miami or back in Casa de Tobin.
So, on with the first thoughts. Oh and at the end of each or some posts, I’ll put the ‘in case you go segment’. For reasons that are really only funny and applicable to me and a certain elemental Shaman, we’ll call this the ‘Tuha Segment‘.
First impression starts now:
DAMN, the boat is BIG. Mental note, stop calling the ship a boat.
The room is nice, the balcony is great. As expected the room is small, but you are not noticeably cramped or anything. Each room has it’s own flat screen TV, and there are not one but TWO espn channels. Very good news. Also there are two movie channels showing relatively new movies (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Ocean’s Thirteen were on when we walked in) plus a Turner station also showing movies commercial free. On an ironic note, Titanic was the first movie we saw on this station. Foreshadowing? I hope not.
We checked in at 1 PM, and what seemed to be an interminable line actually moved fairly well. It took us about an hour from the time the taxi dropped us off from South Beach (where we went to kill 5 hours since our flight arrived at 7 AM from Seattle) to get into our cabin.
We are sailing on the Norwegian Cruise Line Pearl. It is supposed to be ‘freestyle cruising’, thus no set times on dinner, no eating with the same people every night, you do as you want. The ship has about 12 different restaurants, of which the largest two by far are buffet style. As Paty hates buffets, our goal for the trip is to never eat in the buffet. Also there are a plethora of bars scattered throughout the ship. While the food is free, a few restaurants have a premium surcharge, the drinks are not. The first bar we came to had a nice selection of beers on tap, including my personal favorite Stella Artois. Great news for me! So I ordered a pint glass of Stella, to my chagrin the bill came and the beer was $5.50, plus all drinks they added a mandatory 15% service fee. Thus one beer cost $6.33. And it all gets charged to your room, you pay at the end. I quickly realized that the bill at the end is going be extremely painful.
First Tuha note: Make dinner reservations as soon as you get to your room if you are planning on doing any of the premium restaurants for dinner. We did Tepin Yaki ($20 surcharge, entirely worth it) the first night, it was great.
Official day 1 was a sea day as we made our way to the Dominican Republic. The weather was nice, it was a tad windy on deck, but I think that might be because the ship was cutting through the seas at 22 knots (about 25 mph). Paty and I went to the gym in the morning, I actually ran 5 km on the treadmill, there was a soccer game on TV that made it bearable to run on the treadmill.
So far so good, the ship is actually much nicer than we thought it would be. Dinner #2 was at the Italian restaurant, no surcharge. Not necessarily ‘Casa de Tobin West Seattle’ but good nonetheless.
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